\u201cIt has gotten everyone to the point where they\u2019re super suspicious of anything China does,\u201d he stressed. \u201cAnd so, when a sliver of intel comes out like this people are prone to view it in the worst possible way because of the way China has been acting.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Report, A Denial And Few Clues<\/strong><\/p>\n On Saturday the UK-based Financial Times\u00a0reported<\/a>, citing five anonymous sources, that in August the Chinese had tested a \u201cnuclear-capable hypersonic missile that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n The report came on the heels of a startling claim in a speech by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall that same month that China had developed the capacity for \u201cpotential global strikes, strikes from space.\u201d He suggested to reporters later that the Chinese system was based on the old Soviet-era\u00a0Fractional Orbit Bombardment System<\/a>, or FOBS, which put a re-entry vehicle carrying a nuclear warhead into orbit, then de-orbited it before completely circumnavigating the globe. (At the time of the speech, one source with knowledge of the issue\u00a0told Breaking Defense<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m surprised he got clearance to mention it, frankly.\u201d)<\/p>\n On Monday,<\/a>\u00a0the Chinese government pushed back on the FT report, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian calling it \u201cinaccurate.\u201d He claimed Beijing had instead performed a \u201croutine test\u201d of a new, reusable \u201csuborbital space vehicle,\u201d believed to be a US\u00a0X-37B<\/a>\u00a0doppelganger. Later, however, the foreign ministry\u00a0told the BBC<\/a>\u00a0that test\u00a0happened<\/a>\u00a0in July, not in August.<\/p>\n And even though the Pentagon source told Breaking Defense that the weapon referenced in the FT report is the one mentioned by Kendall in his August speech, SecAF intimated in a speech on Monday that his comments weren\u2019t about anything specific.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you get lucky. People have been interpreting my remarks as telegraphing something,\u201d he told the annual National Defense Transportation Association meeting. \u201cThe point I was trying to make, I think, was there are a lot of things that are in the realms of feasibility and [\u2026] we need to worry about that.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kendall\u2019s vagueness has been accompanied by official US silence on the issue. \u201cWe will not comment about the specifics of these reports,\u201d John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement. Likewise, NRO would not comment in response to a request from Breaking Defense.<\/p>\n Unknown Unknowns Absent concrete answers about what happened, or didn\u2019t happen, above the Earth in August, a closer reading of Kendall\u2019s remarks Monday might be the most remarkable takeaway from all this in the short term. Specifically his imperative that the US worry \u2014 and by implication work to counter \u2014 about all the things China\u00a0might do<\/em>\u00a0with hypersonic weapons or even nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can conceive of it, if it makes operational sense, if it\u2019s within the realms of current technology, then you\u2019ve got to be worried that they\u2019re going to do something like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Coincidentally, Brig. Gen. Christopher Niemi, a top Pacific Air Forces officer, expounded on a similar idea the same day Kendall spoke, pushing what he considered a shift in the way the US military should think about China altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past we\u2019ve put a lot of confidence in our assessment of what an adversary like China will do in the future, and we use that to inform how we want to make our investments. And one of the lessons that I\u2019ve taken from my own experience is perhaps we should look at what is possible from a physics perspective, as opposed to what we think they\u2019re going to do,\u201d Niemi, PACAF\u2019s director of strategy, plans, programs, and requirements, said in a Monday\u00a0talk<\/a>\u00a0hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. \u201cBecause China, again and again, has proven that if it is possible within physics, and it will surface another hole in our swings, that they will do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Dean Cheng, a Breaking Defense contributor and an expert on the Chinese military, said assuming the launch was a test of a hypersonic weapons system based in space, the \u201cscary part\u201d is what that might mean for how the Chinese are planning to use space \u2014 and potentially exponentially complicating the US ability to defend itself.<\/p>\n \u201cICBM warheads do not normally go into orbit,\u201d he said in an email. \u201cHow would we know if a satellite carried a nuclear weapon aboard? We\u2019d have to assume that ALL satellites launched by China are now potential nuclear weapons carriers.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, former DoD head of space policy Doug Loverro said in an email that a FOBS hybrid carrying a nuclear armed hypersonic glide vehicle through orbit would be \u201cquite concerning\u201d because\u00a0it would be \u201chard to distinguish such a weapon from a typical space launch if an adversary wanted to disguise the true intent.\u201d<\/p>\n Some Problems With The Space-Based Hypersonic Weapons Theory<\/strong><\/p>\n Those assumption are in part fueled by the lack of information, especially in the unclassified space. But by looking at what\u2019s available, some experts said they\u2019re skeptical.<\/p>\n Harrison suggested it\u2019s possible the test was of a FOBS system, but not one using a hypersonic glide vehicle. Instead, he said, there likely was miscommunication involved.<\/p>\n The US military \u201cobviously tracked the trajectory of this mission that China was launching, and it was something that they weren\u2019t expecting,\u201d Harrison said. \u201cThen after the fact, they were trying to make sense of it, and somewhere along the way, I will bet \u2014 either intel analysts who aren\u2019t familiar with orbital dynamics, or policy-makers who were being briefed by the intel analysts \u2014 someone made this leap in logic that: \u2018Oh, this must be a hypersonic weapon,\u2019 and then it must have just taken off from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, a number of non-DoD experts, including physicists and astrodynamicists, have taken to Twitter to explain that it makes little sense from a technical or operational perspective for anyone to put a hypersonic missile in orbit, then de-orbit it to a target. There are similar questions about any kind of FOBS \u2014 after all the Soviet\u2019s abandoned their system \u2014 but there even more about why Beijing would marry the two. Thus, the test was more likely of one or the other, these experts suggest.<\/p>\n First, hypersonic missiles use their super-high speed and maneuvering abilities to make them hard to both track and intercept \u2014 flying low, so as to avoid current US missile defense radar. This is the very reason why DoD\u2019s Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency are pursuing\u00a0a new \u201cTracking Layer\u201d of missile warning satellites<\/a>. So why, several physicists asked, would China want to take on the extra costs of putting them in space where they could more easily be seen by radar and telescopes, including those used by the US military\u2019s\u00a0Space Surveillance Network?<\/a><\/p>\n James Acton, a physicist at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,\u00a0said in a Twitter thread<\/a>\u00a0that a hypersonic glide vehicle launched from the ground \u201con the southern route\u201d over the South Pole to the US Pacific Coast \u201cwould be every bit as effective\u201d as one based on orbit \u201cat evading missile defenses. Perhaps marginally more so.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, he said, maybe China doesn\u2019t have the technical ability to build a ground-launched boost-glide hypersonic missile that can reach the United States, due to the enormous heat build up such a missile body would have to take even flying through the thin air of the upper atmosphere on the border of space.<\/p>\n Hypersonic missiles are also designed to strike far-away targets quickly, but it takes 90 minutes to make one orbit around the Earth, Harrison pointed out.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you put a hypersonic missile into orbit it defeats the point,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n Less Scary Spaceplanes?<\/strong><\/p>\n By contrast, objects in orbit \u2014 including highly maneuverable spaceplanes \u2014 are by and large much more easily detected and tracked.<\/p>\n It is true that the US has issues with keeping tabs on space objects that can maneuver, especially if they do so while in orbit\u00a0over the Southern Hemisphere<\/a>\u00a0where sensor coverage is light. But orbits are orbits, under the laws of physics, and ultimately things in space can usually be found.<\/p>\n If a country wanted to use a spaceplane as a weapon, Harrison explained, it actually would make a better co-orbital weapon to attack other satellites rather than a space-to-ground platform.<\/p>\n \u201cI would see it as something that either carries something non-kinetic effects, like an electromagnetic pulse weapon, a laser jammer, something like that. Or, it could have a physical weapon that\u2019s like an obscurant that you could spray on lenses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Of course, that is exactly what the Chinese and Russians have accused the US of doing with the\u00a0X-37B<\/a>, which the US argues isn\u2019t a weapon at all but a test platform.<\/p>\n As far as China\u2019s claim to have launched a spaceplane in July, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell wrote on his\u00a0blog<\/a>\u00a0that the US military did not report a new, unidentified spacecraft in orbit from mid-July to mid-August in their public catalog of space objects. And while one might think that US missile warning satellites, such as DoD\u2019s\u00a0Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS)<\/a>\u00a0would have picked up any Chinese launch during that time frame, McDowell noted on Twitter that SBIRS is not optimized for watching trajectories over the Pacific.<\/p>\n McDowell, who works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Breaking Defense that it would\u2019ve been possible for independent space watchers to catch a glimpse of the spaceplane if it stayed in orbit, but not if it was suborbital. Or perhaps if it took only one turn or almost turn around the Earth they just missed it.<\/p>\n But, a number of other analysts have pointed out, if the test was of a \u201csuborbital space vehicle\u201d as described by the Foreign Ministry, it wouldn\u2019t really be a spaceplane. Hypersonic weapons, of course, normally fly at suborbital altitudes.<\/p>\n \u2018Don\u2019t Jump To Conclusions\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Until more information is available, the most important lesson so far from all the hullabaloo may be \u201cdon\u2019t jump to conclusions,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve got to do a better job, as policy community of maintaining our rationality. Despite what China may be doing that\u2019s provocative and other areas, we\u2019ve got to be rational and the level headed, and look at things for what they really are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn short, public hysteria can lead to overreaction by political leaders,\u201d tweeted Aaron Bateman, a space policy expert at John Hopkins University.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on China\u2019s nuclear and space policies at Monterrey Institute\u2019s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), does not doubt the FT report that the PLA tested a FOBS, but also said in a Twitter feed the US must check its reaction.<\/p>\n \u201cI keep seeing people describe China\u2019s FOBS test as a \u2018Sputnik moment.\u2019 I think this is a lot more like 9\/11 where we collectively panic and do a bunch dumb, self-destructive shit that exceeds even the hopes of our worst enemies,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/X-37B-Boeing-300x200-1.jpeg\")
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