US general calls China the most challenging threat in space race

Munich: A US general has named China and Russia as the "most challenging threats" in the space arms race. He said space as a contested domain has fundamentally changed. "Adversaries are leveraging space... targeting and extending the range of their weapons. That's really the change that happens inside the domain."

General Bradley Chance Saltzman, the US Chief of Space Operations, said space has fundamentally changed in a few years due to a growing arms race. "We are seeing a whole mix of weapons being produced by our strategic competitors. The most challenging threat is China but also Russia," reported AFP. "The character of how we operate in space has to shift, and that's mostly because of the weapons (China) and Russia have tested and in some cases operationalised," he added.

He was listing technologies including anti-satellite missiles, ground-based directed energy and orbit interception capacities on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Saltzman further said that the Ukraine war has reminded us that space is important to the modern fight. "You can attack space without going (into) space, through cyber networks or other vectors. We have to make sure we are defending all these capabilities. I am always going to make sure that I preserve capabilities to do the most critical functions, like national command and control, or nuclear command and control."

His remarks come after the tense exchange between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Beijing's top diplomat Wang Yi in Munich on Saturday over the suspected Chinese spy balloon. The space arms race is not new. In 1985, the US destroyed a satellite using a missile. China and India did it in 2007 and 2009. In February 2020, the US noticed that two Russian satellites were tracking a US spy satellite. In late 2021, Russia destroyed one of its own satellites.

He further noted that the space will become more and more congested. After meeting Norway's defence minister and participating in a panel, he said: "We talked about responsible behaviour. There is a proper way to behave in space, that is not debris-generating, that does not interfere, that has safe distances and safe trajectories, and we communicate when we have problems. If we can operate with a clear understanding of what the standards are, we are going to be a lot safer."