David E. Powell wrote:
Thought folks might want to know about this one.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1188

Chinese Test Anti-Satellite Weapon
By Craig Covault, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Cape Canaveral
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Courtesy of Aviation Week & Space Technology and Aviationnow.com

U. S. intelligence agencies believe China performed a successful
anti-satellite (asat) weapons test at more than 500 mi. altitude Jan.
11 destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic
kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile.

The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the
Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA and other government organizations
have a full court press underway to obtain data on the alleged test,
Aviation Week & Space Technology reports on its web site
Aviationnow.com.

If the test is verified it will signify a major new Chinese military
capability.

Neither the Office of the U. S. Secretary of Defense nor Air Force
Space Command would comment on the attack, which followed by several
months the alleged illumination of a U. S. military spacecraft by a
Chinese ground based laser.

China's growing military space capability is one major reason the Bush
Administration last year formed the nation's first new National Space
Policy in ten years, Aviation Week will report in its Jan. 22 issue.

"The policy is designed to ensure that our space capabilities are
protected in a time of increasing challenges and threats," says Robert
G. Joseph, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security
at the U. S. State Dept.

"This is imperative because space capabilities are vital to our
national security and to our economic well being," Joseph said in an
address on the new space policy at the National Press Club in
Washington D. C.

Details emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun
1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked
by an asat system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center.

The attack is believed to have occurred as the weather satellite flew
at 530 mi. altitude 4 deg. west of Xichang located in Sichuan province.
Xichang is a major Chinese space launch center.

Although intelligence agencies must complete confirmation of the test,
the attack is believed to have occurred at about 5:28 p.m. EST Jan.
11. U. S. intelligence agencies had been expecting some sort of test
that day, sources said.

U. S. Air Force Defense Support Program missile warning satellites in
geosynchronous orbit would have detected the Xichang launch of the asat
kill vehicle and U. S. Air Force Space Command monitored the FY-1C
orbit both before and after the exercise.

The test, if it occurred as envisioned by intelligence source, could
also have left considerable space debris in an orbit used by many
different satellites.

USAF radar reports on the Chinese FY-1C spacecraft have been posted
once or twice daily for years, but those reports jumped to about 4
times per day just before the alleged test.

The USAF radar reports then ceased Jan. 11, but then appeared for a
day showing "signs of orbital distress". The reports were then halted
again. The Air Force radars may well be busy cataloging many pieces of
debris, sources said.

Although more of a "policy weapon" at this time, the test shows that
the Chinese military can threaten the imaging reconnaissance satellites
operated by the U. S., Japan, Russia, Israel and Europe.

The Republic of China also operates a small imaging spacecraft that can
photograph objects as small as about 10 ft. in size, a capability good
enough to count cruise missiles pointed at Taiwan from the Chinese
mainland. The Taiwanese in the past have also leased capability on an
Israeli reconnaissance satellite

The working relationships that this administration seems to have with
its "enemies" is really remarkable. If we say al Qaeda is the major
threat to the world, bin Laden drops a video saying just the same
thing; if we rip Iran for their once and future nuke, they come back
with a nyah-nyah we're going to bomb you. Now the Chinese are building
up their really awful satellite intercept so the administration can
pump for a giant laser.

January 19, 2007
Flexing Muscle, China Destroys Satellite in Test
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite
weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in
military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from
Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.

Only two nations - the Soviet Union and the United States - have
previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently
the United States in the mid-1980s.

Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an
aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could
foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some
experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China
to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.

White House officials said the United States and other nations, which
they did not identify, had "expressed our concern regarding this
action to the Chinese." Despite its protest, the Bush administration
has long resisted a global treaty banning such tests because it says it
needs freedom of action in space.

The weather satellite hit by the weapon had circled the globe at an
altitude of roughly 500 miles. In theory, the test means that China can
now hit American spy satellites, which orbit closer to Earth. The
satellites presumably in range of the Chinese missile include most of
the imagery satellites used for basic military reconnaissance, which
are essentially the eyes of the American intelligence community for
military movements, potential nuclear tests and even some
counterterrorism, and commercial satellites.

Experts said the weather satellite's speeding remnants could pose a
threat to other satellites for years or even decades.

In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy
that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy
said the United States would "preserve its rights, capabilities, and
freedom of action in space" and "dissuade or deter others from
either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do
so." It declared the United States would "deny, if necessary,
adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national
interests."

The Chinese test "could be a shot across the bow," said Theresa
Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private
group in Washington that tracks military programs. "For several
years, the Russians and Chinese have been trying to push a treaty to
ban space weapons. The concept of exhibiting a hard-power capability to
bring somebody to the negotiating table is a classic cold war
technique."

The White House statement, issued by the National Security Council,
said China's "development and testing of such weapons is
inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire
to in the civil space area."

An administration official who had reviewed the intelligence about
China's test said the launching was detected by the United States in
the early evening of Jan. 11, which would have been early morning on
Jan. 12 in China. American satellites tracked the launching of the
medium-range ballistic missile, and later space radars saw the debris.

The antisatellite test was first reported late Wednesday on the Web
site of Aviation Week and Space Technology, an industry magazine. It
said intelligence agencies had yet to "complete confirmation of the
test."

The test, the magazine said, appeared to employ a ground-based
interceptor that used the sheer force of impact rather than an
exploding warhead to shatter the satellite.

The Bush administration has conducted research that critics say could
produce a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would be used against
enemy satellites.

The largely secret project, parts of which were made public through Air
Force budget documents submitted to Congress last year, appears to be
part of a wide-ranging administration effort to develop space weapons,
both defensive and offensive.

The administration's laser research is far more ambitious than a
previous effort by the Clinton administration to develop an
antisatellite laser, though the administration denies that it is an
attempt to build a laser weapon.

"There's nothing subtle about this," he said. "They've
created a huge debris cloud that will last a quarter century or more.
It's at a higher elevation than the test we did in 1985, and for that
one the last trackable debris took 17 years to clear out."

Mr. Krepon added that the administration had long argued that the world
needed no space-weapons treaty because no such arms existed and because
the last tests were two decades ago. "It seems," he said, "that
argument is no longer operative."