The Trump administration has given new life to America’s military presence in space –standing up a new Space Force and US Space Command — as it seeks to dominate space. But US military officials believe China is hot on their heels. US foreign policy and defence correspondent Katrina Manson reports. See if you get the FT for free as a student ( or start a £1 trial:
Welcome to our first monthly installment of the ft’s new foreign policy and defense blog and i’m just back from a visit to u.s space command in colorado that’s the new combatant command that was re-established late last year after a 17-year hiatus and which now sees space according to a strategy document out last month as a distinct war fighting domain yeah that
Means war in space the new line of effort has even spawned a new branch of the military to match us space force for now it only has 90 people working for it but that’s set to rise to 2400 soon and with more to come it’s already been ridiculed by some there’s even a new tv sitcom sending up the whole enterprise and us military officials laugh openly about whether
People working for space force might one day become known as space warriors or even space men and space women but the militarization of space is deadly serious i caught up with brigadier general sean bratton who’s deputy director of operations at u.s space command he’s focused on everything including jammers and laser capabilities right the way up to the potential
For space on space weapons not only did he tell me he binge watched all of space force in one night but that he’s come to the conclusion that what china is up to in space what he calls ambiguity can mean only one thing i think china is is developing weapons in space they’re moving in that direction they see it as a as a area where they can compete with us and
Should we go to conflict where they would they would aggressively come after us i think for us space command our responsibility is to be able to defend against those threats u.s simulations of large-scale conflict already show battles quickly ascending into space and u.s space command is now working on what a definition of deterrence might look like the 1967
Outer space treaty bans nuclear weapons in space but it doesn’t mean that all weapons will be absent i asked professor joan johnson freeze a space expert at the naval war college just how aggressive us moves in space might look to china we worry about ambiguous chinese technology they worry about ambiguous us technology and that gets both countries into a classic
Security dilemma of continually ratcheting up their technology in potentially counterproductive terms dean cheng an expert in china’s space ambitions told me china’s real target is in the geosynchronous orbit way up high geosynchronous is where is the truly valuable real estate it’s where you have key weather satellites it’s where you have key communication
Satellites um and perhaps most worryingly it’s where you have a lot of the nuclear command and control uh missile launch detection nuclear detonation detection satellites those are all out at geosynthetics so the fact that the chinese tested a anti-satellite weapon designed to go all the way out there is notable if uh for a number of reasons not just because
Of the potential targets but because no other country not the united states not the soviet union not russia uh has tested a weapon designed for that part of the orbital regime despite america’s overwhelming dominance in and reliance on space he claims the u.s is now playing catch-up to china and russia when it comes to readying for the prospect of conflict in
Space the chinese created their version of a space force called the pla strategic support force at the end of 2015 the russians created the aerospace force also in 2015. so the russians and chinese have actually had a space service if you will in place for five years u.s space force had no input into the production of the netflix show space force but they told
Me that any program that opened up conversation about space force and its mission it saw as a worthwhile endeavor it’s only recently struck upon its new motto semper supra that means always above and that certainly shows you where u.s ambition in space is headed
Transcribed from video
China and the US: readying for war in space | FT By Financial Times
