On the Edge of Earth by Steven Lambakis

Author:Steven Lambakis [Lambakis, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Aeronautics & Astronautics, vl-nfspace
ISBN: 9780813121987
Google: 3WxHAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0813121981
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2001-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

What Is Being Said Abroad about Space and Warfare?

One might get the impression that much of the above discussion is academic in nature, only tenuously connected to the real world. In fact, U.S. policy and defense officials, analysts, and scholars are not alone in considering questions having to do with possible asymmetric relationships involving space and war. Indeed, the very insights presented to us by Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Corbett, and Liddell-Hart may be discerned today in the plans and dissertations of military thinkers around the world.

Considerable time and energy are spent in foreign military headquarters, academies, and defense universities thinking about the newest “revolution” in military affairs, to include examinations of the strategic and doctrinal implications of spacecraft and information warfare techniques, among other advances in military technology. Let us consider here primarily the examples of China and Russia, whose military writers and analysts have provided us with a trove of strategic analysis concerning the meaning of warfare in the space age.

China

Chinese analysts believe that while the land frontier will continue to be the focal point for warfare, outer space is becoming a new arena for competition. The military uses of space have not gone unacclaimed among China’s political leaders, military officials, economic planners, defense science and technology researchers, academics, and journalists. Twenty-first-century China has the facilities to research, design, develop, produce, and test satellites and launch vehicles, all of which have allowed the country to develop a strong communications industry. China has longterm cooperative programs with advanced countries such as Germany, the United States, Russia, Canada, France, and Brazil, and is seeking to extend those international ties to other countries. These relations have helped provide China with reliable meteorological and remote-sensing capabilities (including Landsat receiving stations, which China has used for intelligence and military purposes), which could be put to military use.27 Consider the following passage written by Chou Kwan-wu:

Although China’s reconnaissance satellites cannot “see the whiskers,” they still have irreplaceable and decisive military value. Saddam Husayn was almost utterly routed during the Gulf War partly because he did not have any means of strategic reconnaissance China may be poor, but it is a big country nonetheless and possesses satellite reconnaissance capability that even developed countries like Japan, Germany and Britain does [sic] not possess. If the Americans tried to interfere with China’s internal affairs, such as over the Taiwan question, by military means, they will discover that the Chinese can read their global military moves like the back of their hand. Dealing with China is a lot harder than dealing with most other countries.28

China established in 1997 the first space tracking installation outside its national territory in Kiribati, Tarawa. Kiribati, located directly on the equator near the International Date Line in the South Pacific, is a prime location for satellite management and launching. The center will not only have useful commercial applications, but also a range of militarily strategic uses, from satellite control, data downlinks, to data intercepts. According to one industry expert, “China has done a careful

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.