The PLAAF’s Increasing Interest in Space

A few air – and spacepower analysts have been increasingly frank in dis­cussing the future role of space orbital attacks as a means of seizing the ini­tiative and rapidly gaining air and space superiority, although the studies reviewed for this chapter also insist that China has an overall peaceful space policy. These analysts have outlined space orbital attacks as an important future means of disrupting, crippling, or destroying an adversary’s satellites and other space-based assets. Some also speculate about more futuristic attacks by space-based weapons. Writing in 2006, analysts Zhang Zhiwei and Feng Chuangjiang recognized the critical connection between control of space and seizing initiative, arguing that space would ultimately become “the true first battlefield” in modern war, with countries using the first wave of attacks to induce satellite paralysis and seize space supremacy.44 Chinese NDU Professor Yuan Jingwei has taken this analysis a step further, spotlight­ing three potential methods of carrying out these space orbital opera­tions: physically destroying satellites and other enemy targets, using lasers, bursts of electromagnetic energy, directed energy weapons, armed satel­lites, or antisatellite/antiballistic missiles; disabling the target’s ability to function, employing low-energy lasers, particle beams, or “space junk”; and even seizing (МЙ) an enemy space vehicle or other target, using one’s own space vehicles.45

Yuan has argued that this type of warfare represents the future of inte­grated air and space combat, and that Russia, the United States, and “every mil­itarily powerful country” are engaged in research on weapons systems for car­rying out space orbital attacks. He maintains that in the future “these attacks will be one of the principal methods of combat for seizing space supremacy.”46 Although Yuan stops short of voicing the obvious policy conclusion, his impli­cation almost certainly seems to be that China must also develop such weapons and capabilities if it is to avoid being left behind.