China's military is exploring new space-based weapons, a senior Pentagon expert said.
Lt. Col. Mark Stokes, a key China specialist, told a conference that China's military plans to use space weapons in any conflict involving Taiwan.
Stokes said the Chinese military studied U.S. military operations in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the NATO war in Yugoslavia and recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. They have learned how the U.S. military uses space, Stokes said.
China is covertly developing space weapons and military systems while publicly advocating a treaty to ban the "militarization" of space. The propaganda effort is aimed at limiting the capabilities of the United States, U.S. officials said.
The Washington Times' Ring Column reported today that this week's first manned space launch by China also deployed a spy satellite.
"Space assets will play a major role in any future use of force against Taiwan and in preventing foreign intervention in a Taiwan scenario," Stokes said.
Space assets are "important force multipliers that can help to even the playing field when you go up against a technologically superior adversary," Stokes said.
He said the deployment of aircraft carrier battle groups near Taiwan in 1996, following Beijing's test firing of short-range missiles near the island, "removed any doubt in Beijing that the PLA would require the ability to deter or complicate U.S. intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict."
China's military is developing space-based command and control systems, Stokes said. Its dual-use space and missile industry is "striving to achieve ballistic missile accuracies of less than 50 meters."
China has some 450 short-range missile targeted on Taiwan. "Beijing is making substantial advancements in its long-range precision strike capability based on an arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal conventional and land-attack cruise missiles," he said.
China also is working on technical countermeasures aimed at defeating U.S. missile defense programs and is developing a new generation of solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles, he added.
