Pentagon Says China Is Working Toward Ability To Limit Use Of Space By Adversaries

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – China is developing the ability to limit or prevent the use of satellites by potential adversaries during times of crisis, the Pentagon said Monday in a report to Congress.

The report, the latest in a series of annual assessments of China's military power, says Beijing views its efforts in space warfare as not only a practical advance of military power but also a boost to national prestige.

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The Bush administration was highly critical of China's shootdown in January 2007 of one of its weather satellites, asserting that the orbiting debris created by the attack poses a danger to other assets in space.

Last month, when the Pentagon shot down a dead U.S. spy satellite, China expressed concern, although U.S. officials said the shootdown did not mean the United States had dropped its objections to possessing a permanent anti-satellite capability.

More broadly, the Pentagon report released Monday asserted that Beijing's reluctance to share details about its military buildup poses a risk to stability in Asia. It said the international community has limited knowledge of the motivations, decision-making and capabilities of China's military modernization. This includes a lack of clarity about China's defense spending. Washington contends that Beijing understates that spending program by the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars.



Read more: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20080303-1357-us-china.html

[Deja Q]

1. How much bleeping garbage is orbiting our planet anyway?

And can any of them project ads? I've got this car for sale...

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

3. Here's a 3-D look at what's currently on orbit

http://scisites.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html

[PDJane]

2. Does china get added to the Axis of Evil too?

Enemies! Enemies everywhere! Even the folks who make everything we buy!

[HuffleClaw]

4. well boo freakin' hoo

hilarious whining aint it?

[lovuian]

5. and we still give them boats loads of money

to get bigger

[Preston120]

6. More Propaganda!

Explain to me why it's terrible if China shoots down one of it's weather satellites, But the US is only looking out for the poor folks on the ground when they shoot down their spy satellite. Total Hypocrisy! Please don't bad mouth someone when your doing the same darn thing.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Well, this is what I feared. The State Department, CIA and Pentagon are very

ingenuous and unworldly.

I sure hope people make a real effort to keep that story about Hugo maybe trying to destabilise the government of Colombia from them, because I think they would be horrified. I don't think they realise that sort of thing's been going on all over the world (though mostly, for some reason, against left-wing governments).

In the same way, I think it must have come as a sickening shock to them that other countries like to keep as much of the build-up and composition of their military capacities, well... secret, I suppose you'd have to say. Worldling leaders in other countries have long known that secrecy is a formidable adjunct to power, not least for their own protection. But innocence must be encouraged wherever it is found, and it would be a flinty heart indeed that sought to educate the State Department, CIA and Pentagon in the ways of geopolitics, as practised elsewhere. I think quite a few of them still think Santa Claus lives at the South Pole.

So this revelation of their angst at the latest news re China must be regarded as a public service of the highest order. Well done to the mainsteam media! Not often they're prepared to depart from that fertile row of infotainment they customarily choose to hoe.

On a more serious note, vain as it is, it seems to be just a routine response they are required to make by the nature of their roles, and it's highly unlikely that they would expect the international community to join them in fiercely denouncing China for it, still less that China would take any notice of it. It's just media fodder, background noise.