War Is Boring

X-37B. NASA photo.

It was a space launch to change the world. On January 11, 2007, a solid-fuelled rocket lifted off from Xichang Space Center in central China, a non-explosive “kill vehicle” fitted to its tip. Five hundred miles above the earth, the now-separated kill vehicle struck an 8-year-old Chinese weather satellite, pulverizing it and leaving behind a cloud of some 1,000 large pieces of debris.

The unannounced Chinese launch was the first full-scale test of an anti-satellite system since the U.S. Air Force’s 1985 demonstration of a satellite-killing missile launched by an F-15 fighter. And the global response to China’s move was swift and vociferous, with Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States condemning the intercept.

“China’s development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area,” said Gordon Johndroe from the U.S. National Security Council at the time.

A year later, the launch reverberated in the most important U.S. election in a generation, when presidential candidate Barack Obama made opposition to such weaponry part of his platform. “Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons,” his campaign asserted. “He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.”

Yet just two years into the Obama presidency and it’s clear that these noble sentiments aren’t being matched by U.S. deeds.

On April 22, the US.. Air Force launched into orbit the world’s most sophisticated robotic spacecraft, one whose design counters China’s anti-satellite capability — and goes a step further. The X-37B, built by Boeing, could also be used to spy on and even disable other nations’ satellites, all without them necessarily knowing that it’s even happening. With the X-37, the U.S. raised the stakes in the phase of the space race that China began three years ago.

Read the whole story at The Diplomat.

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