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Dwane Day has had enough of the Pentagon’s Chinese Military Power (CMP) and its slipshod accounting of Chinese military space programs:

The Pentagon report is sloppy, inconsistent, and of limited utility, and as an indicator of what China is planning with its military space program, it should be taken with more than a few grains of salt.

(Although as Noah Shachtman points out, this problem is by no means confined to CMP.)

Day’s insightful, damning and sometimes biting article in The Space Review demonstrates how DoD can try the patience of the serious analyst who dares to sort through the annual word salad on the People’s Republic. In particular, Day tackles something I find particularly vexing — the tendency in Chinese Military Power to make a fantastic claim one year, and then just drop it in subsequent editions with no explanation.

In some cases, DoD stoped making a claim as, I think, a tacit acceptance that the claim was unreliable. For example, CMP stopped mentioning the parasite microsatellite after Gregory Kulacki and David Wright hammered it, But in other cases — like the direct ascent ASAT — the Pentagon dropped the claim even though it had the most solid sort of evidence of a real ASAT capability.

That was particularly irritating during 2006, when the debate about whether the Chinese had lased a US satellite revealed that the intelligence community was focused on a different, unidentified threat that would turn out to be the then-ongoing direct ascent flight tests. I never liked trying to weigh plausible hints from credible colleagues with the official silence in an otherwise alarmist report (and other statements).

***

On a related note, Gregory and I have an article, “Understanding China’s Antisatellite Test,” in the current issue of The Nonproliferation Review (15:2, July 2008, abstract). It is similar to the talk we gave in November 2007. The key argument is:

Our sources also told us that the decision to flight-test the hit-to-kill interceptor was not determined by any particular external event or series of events, but by the maturity of the technology. The project managers were finally ready to test, and one source suggested that they felt pressure to show that they had produced something that worked. Moreover, Chinese scientists and engineers selected the testing mode — as an ASAT as opposed to a missile intercept — largely because it is much easier to hit a satellite than to intercept a missile.

Multiple sources confirm these managers did not make the decision to test by themselves. The decision was carefully vetted, with the full participation of other stakeholders, including representatives of the Foreign Ministry. An internal report laying out the pros and cons worked its way up the bureaucracy for review and comment before finally being put before the ultimate decision makers. Our sources would not say who had the authority to make that final decision or when it was made but indicated that it was not an exceptional process and that standard vetting procedures were followed. They also told us the decision was made relatively close to January 11, 2007, and that there was no dispute among any of the participants from the State, the Party, or the PLA about the legitimacy of the decision.

In the wake of the test many foreign governments criticized the Chinese government for authorizing the test, for not informing them beforehand, for failing to respond to requests for clarification, and for blithely dismissing the potential impacts on the future peaceful use of space. Chinese leaders in both the Foreign Ministry and Central Military Commission have struggled to cope with the intensity of the international reaction and the failure of their subordinates to anticipate and respond effectively to foreign inquiries and concerns, a dysfunction that continued for months. … In retrospect, the Party leadership maintains (and multiple sources confirm as accurate) that the relevant agencies, military and civilian, failed to coordinate well. Somewhere along the line the paper stopped flowing, and responsible individuals at the lower levels of the bureaucracy who had no prior knowledge of the program or the decision to go forward with the test — but who did have responsibility for crafting and delivering the post-test message — never got their instructions.

For more on our November 2007 talk, see my posts: Why’d They Do It?, November 6, 2007; Follow Up on the ASAT Talk, November 16, 2007; and Yes, Virginia, ASATs Are Threatening, November 19, 2007.

Comment [4]

Geoff Forden sends along four questions that Congress should ask about the recent anti-satellite mission to destroy USA 193:

Spy Satellite Shoot-down: Four Questions for Congressional Oversight

Geoffrey Forden

Last week’s shoot-down of USA-193 appears to have eliminated whatever small chance existed of that errant satellite harming people on Earth. We will still, however, have to live with the consequences of that action for years to come. Already China and Russia have expressed concern that this was a thinly disguised test of a new space weapon. Increased transparency can minimize these consequences but it seems likely that will only come from Congressional oversight. Having spent much of my time since the shoot-down was announced trying to independently understand this anti-satellite engagement, I feel that I can make some useful suggestions to Congress about what it should ask. Here are the four most important questions Congress should try to answer:

1. What were the chances that the hydrazine tank would make it to the surface of the Earth intact? The White House and Pentagon were surprisingly silent on the extent of the danger this toxic substance presented to the world. The most concrete information we heard was that aerospace engineers felt that, since the tank was probably frozen after its 14 month sojourn in low Earth orbit, it stood a good chance striking the Earth intact. If we accept that, there was at most a 3.5% chance that the hydrazine would affect anyone on Earth. But just how likely was that the tank would experience a safe passage on its journey to the surface of the Earth? Even a little thought seems to indicate it was extremely slight. Besides the intense heat that would have been generated during its decent — seemingly enough to melt even a half ton of hydrazine— it would also have been subjected to enormous forces as the atmosphere slowed it down. In fact, it appears that it would have been subjected to forces fifty times its weight just caused by atmospheric braking. Resting a twenty-five ton weight on even a large ice cube should break it apart.
2. Why did the Pentagon shoot it down last Wednesday even though there were rough seas? It has been widely reported that the engagement cost up to $60 million dollars. It seems likely that $40 million of this was meant to be spent on collecting data about the engagement and rough seas would have degraded if not prevented much of that data from being taken. Of course, some of that money was used to determine if the hydrazine tank had been punctured, such as the spectrographic data taken by a flying observatory that looked for signs of hydrazine released into space. But most of the data would undoubtedly have contributed valuable data for improving the interceptor. It appears that the Pentagon gave up that information in order not to have a publicity disaster when reporters started asking if missile defense was only a “fair weather” defense.
3. Why wasn’t the tank equipped with a release valve? The United States has been put in a very awkward situation where even China, a mere year after its anti-satellite test, feels it can question our actions and motives in space. We could have avoided being placed in the very awkward position of having to choose between possibly endangering people on Earth or helping to legitimate China’s anti-satellite program by simply having a valve that would have vented the toxic gas into space if the spacecraft had not heard from its ground controllers within a month or so. This valve would probably have cost more than 50 cents but it would certainly have been worth while and it is clear that we need it on spy satellites from now on.
4. How much did this test contribute to legitimizing China’s anti-satellite program? Many of us who have followed this badly thought out program feel that it did. Russia and China, for instance, can point to the vast amounts of money spent of data collection as opposed to the core mission of shooting down the satellite and raise legitimate questions about our intent. Let us hear experts debate this issue in the open. Congress, by directly addressing this issue would increase the transparency of our actions and could lower their negative impact. The public would also feel that its interests were being better served if they could weigh the pros and cons of this action.

A friend of mine, who happens to be a big fan of the SM-3, writes to ask, “I want a 3 cheers for SM-3 from some people in the media, darnit!” So, perhaps Congress, in addition to Geoff’s 4 questions, might add the one I asked a few months ago about defending NATO with the SM-3:

I don’t get it. The Aegis system is clearly the most functional of our missile defense assets, yet the MDA seems to hate it. Why?

Comment [69]

In my post yesterday, Don’t Shoot Down USA 193, I voiced my “suspicion … that the expected risk to the ISS crew will be surprisingly competitive with the expected risk to persons on the ground” from the falling satellite.

My friend, the geographer Tim Gulden, did the math and it turns out my suspicion seems quite plausible.

Overall, Tim finds the chance that the debris will fall in an area with a population density of one or more persons per 1/4 hectare — about the size of the contamination zone — to be no more than one-half of one percent. That’s about 5 chances in 1,000. The probability that the debris will come down in an area with 3 or more persons per quarter hectare is about 2 chances in 1,000.

———— Original Message ————
Subject: Risk from Hydrazine onboard USA 193
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:06:58 -0500
From: Tim Gulden
To: Nancy Gallagher, Jeffrey Lewis

I have done some really simple calculations of the risk of the hydrazine tank onboard USA193 actually landing in a densely enough populated area that people might be exposed. These calculations are based on the LandScan 2005 data set (developed by Oak Ridge National Labs): http://www.ornl.gov/sci/landscan/

The method here is to choose a threshold of population density and then see what percentage of the earths surface under the satellites orbit (between 58.5 degrees north and 58.5 degrees south) has a population density that high or higher.

The “contamination zone” for the hydrazine tank is stated as having a radius of about 27 meters — that is very nearly 1/4 of a hectare (which is an area 100 meters square).

The simplest thing to look at, then, is the percentage of the area under the orbit that has a density of 4 people per hectare or more. That corresponds to a very low density suburban type environment (one family every 100 meters on average). Approximately one half of one percent of the area under the orbit has this density or higher. That means that there are about five chances in 1000 that the tank lands in an area with this kind of density.

If we step the density up to a real urban density of 100 people per hectare, that is to say 25 people per contamination zone, this probability drops to about 0.02% or two chances in 10,000.

At 12 people per hectare, or 3 people per contamination zone, the probability is about 2 in 1000 — a risk of similar magnitude to the 1 in 1000 risk that NASA suggested for a debris strike from the interception hitting the International Space Station (and presumably killing its three crew members).

I am assuming that people stay where they live. The actual behavior of people toward this fallen object will matter a great deal more than it does with most falling debris. If people are inclined to move toward the tank, and stay near it, they could be killed even if it lands half a kilometer away. If, on the other hand, people are inclined to leave the area with the toxic smelling gas (apparently ammonia-like), then the people would not likely be killed even if they lived near enough to be exposed.

Another important caveat here is that these data are fine-grained, but not quite as fine-grained as would be ideal. The LandScan grid cells are 30 arc seconds square. At the equator, that translates to about 0.85 square kilometers. At the northern and southern extremes of the orbit it is about half a square kilometer. There are 100 hectares in a square kilometer and about 400 potential contamination zones in a kilometer. There are 100 hectares in a square kilometer and about 400 potential contamination zones in a kilometer. My calculations assume that people are evenly distributed within each cell — when in fact they are likely to be clustered. This would tend to drive the probability of hitting an occupied contamination zone downward. To the extent that low-density areas are typified by villages and extended family households, this could be really significant. I am guessing that clustering within cells could drive the probability of exposure down by a factor of 5 or more.

Of course, the error bars on both calculations are very large. The ISS estimate is extrapolated from Griffin’s comments about a NASA analysis that we cannot see for ourselves. Moreover, Tim did not model the probability that the tank remains intact — merely where it was likely to come down.

I continue to maintain that the Bush Administration should make public the real calculations of the risk. NASA published such estimates, by the way, for the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory — placing the probability that someone would be killed in an uncontrolled deorbit at 1 in 1,000. (Thanks to Yousaf Butt at the Union of Concerned Scientists for pointing this out.)

The unnecessary secrecy will feed the perception that Administration officials are being less than truthful about the President’s motivation for the intercept.

Comment [31]

After a getting multiple e-mails about my quotes in Global Security Newswire and the New York Times, let me make my advice to the Bush Administration, who decided to shoot down USA 193, explicit: DON’T FREAKING DO IT.

This is bad policymaking. Take this explanation of the rationale for the decision to intercept the falling satellite:

At the end of this, just from my perspective, what to me was compelling as we reviewed the data is that if we fire at the satellite, the worst is that we miss, and then we have a known situation, which is where we are today.

This logic — “hey, why not?” — is always suspect. It reverses the burden of proof, placing the emphasis on those who oppose the intercept.

Yet, this is an “extraordinary” measure (General Cartwright’s phrase) against a “small” risk (his phrase again). Justifying it requires demonstrating not just that one risk is greater than another, but that we have high confidence that estimates of the risks are accurate and complete.

Holding aside my general worry that this Administration is not to be trusted with sharp objects, there are specific reasons to be skeptical of both the accuracy and the completeness of this Administration’s calculations. I strongly suspect that they are systematically discounting two types of hard-to-quantify risks — the possibility of error within the estimates and the political costs to conducting an anti-satellite intercept.

Worst Case Scenarios

The Administration, according to General Cartwright, compared the “worst downside” of intercepting. But read carefully, and the “wost” case appears to be that they miss — not that they are wrong about the debris estimates or how much debris would reenter with a successful intercept.

The real worst case is that they are wrong about those risks. Yet the possibility of that error is difficult to capture in models.

On the other hand, the Administration did consider the worst case for hydrazine: that the tank remains in tact, that it comes down in a populated area, that people don’t evacuate:

The worst scenario is that you have a person who either is not mobile or does not, for whatever reason, sense that they’re in danger, and therefore doesn’t take any action. But those variables are very difficult to put minutes or time to.

The comparison here is apples-to-oranges: worst case on the human health risks, median-case on the debris risk. The deck is stacked.

The Hydrazine Story

Yet, there are reasons to wonder whether we know, or are simply concerned, that the hydrazine tank will remain intact. Administrator Griffin indicated that the “analysis that we’ve done is as certain as any analysis of this type can be” that the tank “will survive intact” and the “hydrazine will vent.”

Well, one might ask how certain can one be in this business? “I mean, one can never be certain,” Griffin said elsewhere.

It is worth noting that, on January 30, 2008, General Gene Reneurt, Commander of NORTHCOM, discounted the risk from the hydrazine.

The satellite includes some small engines that contain a toxic chemical called hydrazine which is rocket fuel. But Renuart said they are not large booster engines with substantial amounts of fuel.

Guess he didn’t get the talking points.

The idea that the hydrazine might survive apparently comes largely from the experience of the Columbia. That experience featured heavily in the presentation by Jeffrey, Cartwright and Griffin, as well as a story by Craig Covault indicating that data from the Columbia “are now being used operationally for the first time by Pentagon, NASA and NRO analysts to calculate better how much debris will survive…”

Whatever the probability that the hydrazine will survive and vent, it is less than 1. That probability must then be discounted by the probability that the tank will land near enough a person (let alone an immobile one) to cause human harm.

What About the Debris Risk?

We’ve had a great discussion in the comments about the risk from debris. Simple models suggests a very large amount of debris, much of which comes down within a few orbits.

We’ve seen, however, that the NASA model pretty seriously underestimated the amount of debris created by the Chinese ASAT intercept. Most of the debris will be very short lived, but the risk to space assets may be higher, at least in the very short term, than NASA imagines.

Those risks are not negligible — Administrator Griffin stated that “risks to shuttle and station … are at least a factor of 10 smaller than risks we take just being in space anyway…”

That, to my mind, is strange way of looking at the problem — we take many risks to be in space. Yet astronauts chose those risks freely for their own reasons. The folks sitting on the space station — and to a lesser extent those who have paid for it — are do not have a choice about the risk they will now incur.

We haven’t seen hard numbers yet, but my suspicion — and it is just a suspicion — is that the expected risk to the ISS crew will be surprisingly competitive with the expected risk to persons on the ground even without considering the possibility that our debris estimates might be low.

Of course, that’s because they both round to zero.

The Politics of this Suck

I don’t know how to express the political risk. Not knowing the risk, however, is different from it being “zero” — which is how the Bush Administration, at best, seems to count it. At worst, some members seem to assign a positive value to conducting an ASAT test.

The Chinese will use this to excuse their January 2007 test and, perhaps, future ones. The Russians seem interested in playing along, too. I’d like to be able to argue that they’re wrong; That this is different.

I have argued, in the past, that we have a strong interest in constraining the development of debris-creating anti-satellite weapons. Sadly, our intercept will make that outcome harder to achieve, not easier.

Given the extremely small risk to people on the ground, as well as the three people in orbit, these risks — though difficult to quantify — almost certainly should dominate the discussion.

But what loser is going to go to bat for confidence building measures in outer space when there is a giant tank of hydrazine bearing down on a Cub Scout Jamboree and one really awesome, heroic chance to blow it out of the sky? Hell, I bet the thing explodes into fireworks with red, white and blue stars and streamers like over the Mall on the Fourth of July.

Let’s face it, supporting the shot is the “safe” thing to do. After all, the debris risk will probably work out ok, while we’ll never know if the satellite would have hit a populated area. The cost, in terms of space security, is so difficult to identify, that one can simply explain it away with facile counterfactuals. “Oh, the Russian’s were just looking for an excuse, they would have done it anyway.”

Can Cowboys Do Math?

But the safe decision isn’t always the wise one. My sense on this was captured by my friend Jonathan McDowell, who called the decision regrettable and, in a moment of frustration, added:

Clearly someone in the administration who has the instincts of a cowboy has decided this is the perfect excuse to rattle our sabres and show the Chinese that we have the same capabilities.

Of course, Jonathan could be all wrong. The way for the Bush Administration to dispel his skepticism, and mine, would be to publish the risk estimates — both of the debris risk to the ISS and the hydrazine risk to the population on the ground.

Let independent observers check the homework.

Comment [24]

That’s what Ambassador James Jeffrey’s called the decision to use an an Aegis SM-3 to try to shoot down USA 193 in the next 3-12 days. (Transcript should be posted here ; video at the Pentagon Channel.)

Holding the aside the politics of this — which are terrible — the briefing on debris risk left me cold. I have to say that I am very, very uneasy about this decision — our missile defense tests have been heavily scripted to minimize debris creation and modeling of debris creation isn’t an exact science.

The burden of proof really should be on these guys to demonstrate that the risks to the ISS and other objects in space are minimal.

General Carwright, to his credit, provided enough technical information to model the intercept. David Wright is working on that right now — for those of you who can’t wait, the important numbers are:

1. The intercept will occur at 240 kilometers (130 nautical miles)
2. The mass of the satellite is 2,300 kg (5,000 pounds)
3. The mass of the interceptor is 20 kg. (From CBO)
4. The closing velocity will be 9.8 km/s (22,000 mph), suggesting a virtually head-on collision.

Other pertinent observations. At 240 km, the satellite should be traveling 7.8 km/s; the SM-3 has a burnout velocity of 3 km/s.

I am very worried about the debris creation — particularly the debris that the light-weight interceptor will kick into higher orbits when it hits the massive (bus-sized) satellite. Thnk, as Geoff Forden suggested, of a ping pong ball hitting a superball.

Virtually all the debris should come down quickly. Cartwright said 50 percent would come down within two orbits, with the rest coming down in weeks and months. That seems plausible, at first blush.

But those two orbits could be hairy and some of the debris will remain in orbit. Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, said there are “good times and bad times” to conduct the intercept, based on the position of the ISS but that “bad times are not all that bad” comparing the risk to an order of magnitude lower than flying the shuttle.

Last I checked, the PRAN for the shuttle was 1 in 100. Extrapolating, there would be only a 1 in 1000 chance of wiping out the ISS.

Great.

Anyway, we should be able to get some real numbers in the next 24 hours.

Comment [83]

Gregory Kulacki and I are doin’ the China ASAT talk again at the New America Foundation, Space Race with China?, on Tuesday at 12:15.

Here is a short version of the invite; the whole thing is on the NAF website. (While you are at it, check out our spiffy, new website.)

Space Race With China?
The Chinese Anti-Satellite Test and U.S.-China Relations in Space

Start: 02/12/2008 – 12:15pm
End: 02/12/2008 – 1:45pm

New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW 7th Floor
Washington, 20009
United States

It will be an updated version of the talk we gave at Carnegie in November (For a review of that talk, see my posts, Why’d They Do It? and Follow Up on the ASAT Talk).

Comment [1]

Greetings from … Belgium, I think. I am in Europe this week — Den Haag, Bruxelle, Paris and London. Four cities in seven days.

I came back from my meetings today to discover, according to A-bomb, that “Iran has joined the world’s top 11 countries possessing space technology to build satellites, and launch rockets into space” by launching a missile, opening a space center and donning a pair of bitchin’ 3-D glasses. (The Lede really outdid itself with the picture (above) and the rundown on the press coverage.)

As far as I can tell, the missile is a Shahab-3 and the “Space Center” is co-located with Iran’s Shahab-3 test site. But, hey, did you see those specs?

Looks Like a Shahab-3

David Wright sent a note to the Space Sanctuary working group noting that, working from the picture provided by ISNA (below), the missile appears to be a Shahab-3 — which would not capable of placing a payload into orbit:

The url that Brian sent has a picture of a group of people standing around the base of a missile. If that missile is similar to the one that was launched (the coloring is different, but the structure seems to be the same), you can get a rough length scale. Applying that to the missile in the launch video on the Reuters site, I find a diameter of something over 1 m and a length of roughly 13 m. This is consistent with a missile the size of a Nodong/Shahab 3, with a range of 1,000-1,300 km with a 700 -1,000 kg payload. That range corresponds to a burnout speed of about 3 km/s, which is well under orbital speed for LEO.

This isn’t surprising — Iranian officials, in the past, have described the Shahab-3 in terms of the country’s space aspirations although the missile itself isn’t a space launcher:

“We are on the threshold of entering the international space club,” Nasser Maliki, Iran’s deputy defence minister for space affairs and deputy director of the state-run Aerospace Industry Organisation, declared in Tehran on 7 October 2004. “Until 1998 we were producing short-range missiles and today we are into the production of long-range surface-to-surface missiles like Shahab 1 and 2 which deter the enemy. Very certainly we are going to improve our Shahab 3 missile and all our other missiles.”

Ed Blanche, “Iran claims Shahab 3 range now 2000 km,” Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, 2004.

Space Center in Semnan Province

According to ISNA, the new Space Center is located in Semnan Province. (At least that is what AFP says; I can’t read the original in Farsi.)

Semnan Province is also the location of the test facility for the Shahab-3. Various articles in Jane’s locate at least five Shahab-3 flight tests (Numbers 3, 5-8 in 2000, 2002-2003) at Semnan. So, the location of the Space Center there makes sense with the visual identification of the missile as a Shahab-3.

I (and others) even found a suspect site — though we were not the first. Someone seems to have ordered a massive number of commercial satellite images of this spot near 35.238 N, 53.951 E (with many revetted buildings to the West) over the past few years.

If I had to guess, this is a pretty good candidate.

Comment [18]

© John Locker

AP’s Eileen Sullivan quotes government officials stating that a US spy satellite “has lost power and could hit the Earth in late February or early March…”

The satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret. It was not clear how long ago the satellite lost power, or under what circumstances.

Speculation among visual satellite observers centers on USA 193 — a US Radarsat that malfunctioned shortly after it was launched in December 2006. (Friend of Wonk Jonathan McDowell has a couple of choice quotes in the New York Times about USA 193.)

Reuters’ Andrea Shalal-Esa had a pretty decent story on USA 193 in March 2007:

The experimental L-21 classified satellite, built for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched successfully on Dec. 14 but has been out of touch since reaching its low-earth orbit.

Limited data received from the satellite indicated that its on-board computer tried rebooting several times, but those efforts failed, said one official, who is knowledgeable about the program and spoke on condition of anonymity.

John Locker has been watching this sucker steadily lose altitude, posting images of the satellite like the one adorning this post. “193 has come down about 30 km in the last 3 months, so by spring we should be able to get even better resolution,” Locker noted in December 2007, “but it begs the question , will the operators let it continue to fall …”?

For more on NRO’s troubles, I recommend the links my posts FIA joins Misty on SpySat Budget Scaffold, FIA Autopsy and Sayonara, Misty, especially:

• Robert Kohler (One Officer’s Perspective: The Decline of the National Reconnaissance Office Studies in Intelligence 46:2, 2002) warns that “the NRO today is a shadow of its former self. Its once outstanding expertise in system engineering has drastically eroded.”

• Jeffrey Richelson (The Satellite Gap, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59:1, January/February 2003 pp. 48-54) predicted a major gap that could develop in our all-weather radar imagery coverage if the FIA Radarsat was delayed, and

• Philip Taubman (In Death of Spy Satellite Program, Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids, New York Times, November 11, 2007) noted that the failure of USA 193 has delayed the FIA’s radar satellite.

The fact that USA 193 is coming down is not a surprise; but it reminds us of the real problems that have plagued NRO for too long now.

Comment [44]

Apparently Space News — I haven’t seen a copy yet — has a write up of Gregory and my talk, with a very misleading headline:

Upcoming story in Space News: Nov. 19, 2007 issue

SCHOLARS: NO PROOF CHINESE A-SAT TEST A THREAT TO U.S.

By TURNER BRINTON, WASHINGTON

In the latest volley in the ongoing debate over the meaning of
China’s anti-satellite test early this year, scholars from a pair of
Washington think tanks said there is no conclusive evidence that the demonstration represents a growing threat to the United States.

Speaking at a Nov. 13 event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here, Greg Kulacki and Jeffrey Lewis challenged assertions that the Jan. 11 test is part of a Chinese effort to counter U.S. military satellite capabilities. Kulacki, a senior analyst and China project manager in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Lewis, director of the New America Foundation’s Nuclear Strategy Initiative, based their findings on discussions with Chinese technical experts.

Kulacki and Lewis dispute claims made in two recent reports that the test, in which China destroyed one of its own satellites with a ground-based missile, is part of a larger goal to defeat superior U.S. defenses that are too reliant on space-based systems.

“Punching the U.S. Military’s ‘Soft Ribs’: China’s Anti-satellite Weapon Test in Strategic Perspective,” is an analysis of Chinese counterspace programs since the early 1990s written by Ashley J. Tellis and published in June 2007 by the Carnegie Endowment.

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Space Warfare,” written by Larry Wortzel based on analysis of Chinese military literature, was published by the American Enterprise Institute in October 2007.

Gee, if I said that you could accuse me of lewder acts than just hugging pandas.

That is absolutely, positively not what we said. What we argued was that Chinese participants all describe the decision-making process as driven by technology, not operational requirements (or a negotiation strategy). The important thing — the headline, as it were — was that the Chinese leadership was surprised at the strength of the international reaction and might be willing to back off the program as part of a broader dialogue on civil space cooperation.

We did not say that ASAT technology was not a threat. I think ASATs are quite threatening, which is precisely why I support rules to constrain their development.

If I had to guess — and I haven’t looked at the video yet — I think the author was responding to Gregory explaining the official Chinese statement that the test was “not targeted at any nation.” Gregory might have paraphrased, saying “threaten” instead of “targeted”. “Any nation,” however, is the important phrase that suggests the failure of the Chinese leadership to understand how the test would be perceived.

So, how about “SCHOLARS: CHINESE LEADERS MISCALCULATED REACTION TO A-SAT TEST.”

On a related note, Gregory recommended the Wortzel paper, he didn’t disagree with it. I am sure, because he’s been a royal pain in my ass, telling me to read it. I haven’t, so I can’t either recommend or disagree.

Comment [15]

Greetings from Dubai. Were I ever involved in a clandestine proliferation network I’d have meetings here too.

The Carnegie Endowment has a nice summary of Gregory and my talk — which is pretty amazing since I ramble and neither of us saw it or provided a draft of the paper:

Lewis then turned to the two dominant narratives of China’s ASAT test that have been popularized in the US. The first is that the ASAT test was part of an effort to optimize Chinese defense capabilities vis-à-vis the U.S. by “hitting the US where it hurts,” he said. But Lewis and Kulacki said that the people they’ve talked to have not discussed the test in those terms. Kulacki noted that the so-called “soft ribs” arguments rely on many of the same low-quality sources, published by graduate students in fringe journals. Others have speculated that the ASAT test was intended to force the U.S. into negotiations over the military use of space. Both of these explanations rely on the premise that China had accurately predicted the response of the US to the tests. The unpreparedness of Chinese officials in the aftermath of the ASAT test is not inconsistent with the statements of technocrats, who framed the development of the ASAT as part of a general drive to improve China’s military capabilities in space, not as an effort to provoke the U.S.

Also, Elaine Grossman wrote up the talk for Global Security Newswire.

Gregory and I are still finishing the paper, but you get the flavor of what we said. A few minor points of emphasis here or there are different — we didn’t put the Bush Administration at the center of the narrative at all, for example — but its close enough to start the discussion.

Comment [12]