Folks I have to tell you my spidey senses are a tinglin’.
First we’ll start with what you’re likely to hear or have already heard elsewhere. From the Boston Globe via WaPo:
The Chinese military used a ground-based missile to hit and destroy one of its aging satellites orbiting more than 500 miles in space last week — a high-stakes test demonstrating China’s ability to target regions of space that are home to US spy satellites and space-based missile defense systems.
The test of anti satellite technology is believed to be the first of its kind in two decades by any nation and raised concerns about the vulnerability of US satellites and a possible arms race in space.
The situation seems to be that this “test” or whatever it was, happened last Thursday on January 11. Absolutely nobody reported on it (in the press) except for an American magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology.
Now, if this test were REAL, why in the world would the U.S. military either not be able to detect it (practically impossible) or not discuss this with the press? But we’ll get to that in a moment.
This is the reason why my spidey senses are tingling.
An anonymous American “National Security Council” person has supposedly confirmed the test. For sure a number of countries, including Australia and Canada etc., have lodged formal protests about this.
But is it really confirmed? Look at this, from a Russian news agency:
The Russian defense minister denied Friday allegations that China launched a ballistic missile January 11 that destroyed a satellite.
CNN, a U.S.-based global television network, earlier said that a U.S. National Security Council spokesman confirmed a report in the magazine American Aviation Week and Space Technology that China last week destroyed one of its old meteorological satellites with a medium-range ballistic missile.
“I have heard such rather unsubstantiated reports, and I am afraid they are unfounded,” Sergei Ivanov said. “There is nothing to comment on. The rumors are largely exaggerated.”
So either the Russian defense minister doesn’t know what’s going on or has some reason to “cover this up”. I don’t believe that for a second. Russia and China aren’t exactly allies but I cannot imagine Ivanov (equivalent to position the American Robert Gates) would not be informed, one way or another, about the facts surrounding this test.
So has China itself confirmed the test? Not anonymous American government officials and amateur American magazines? Well I did a Google News search for the words missile, China and confirmed and all I could find at the moment is this:
China has launched its first ever anti- satellite missile to destroy an ageing weather satellite in space, a Chinese civil service official confirmed to Deutsche-Presse Agentur dpa on Friday.
The missile test – the first of its kind by any nation in two decades – was reportedly carried out on January 12 and has drawn strong criticism from Japan and the US, where media reports first revealed the test on Thursday.
The White House later confirmed the reports and said it had logged a formal complaint with China, while Canada and Australia have also protested.
“We are concerned about it, and we’ve made it known,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
The test that destroyed the Fengyun-1C weather satellite, 850 kilometres away, was carried out from a launching pad in Xichang in Sichuan province, a civil service official at the launch site told dpa by telephone, without giving any further reasons for the launch.
The official referred to China’s central military command in Beijing, who he said was behind the launch.
So an anonymous civil Chinese government spoke by telephone to a German news agency about a test conducted by the Chinese military. Meanwhile this has been denied by the Russian Defense Minister on the record but confirmed by the American White House.
Do I know what happened? No I sure don’t. I do know there are lots of people, and not just military, watching satellites in space. There’s a whole Linux-based community which runs an excellent program called “Predict” that I’m familiar with and what it does is predict and plot where satellites are.
And one thing some of those non-weather satellites are designed to do is monitor the launching of ballistic missiles. When I see this confirmed by the Chinese government (on record, someone with a name) I will start to understand what’s going on. Until then, please don’t be victim to the hype.
Just on the face of it, shooting a missile 500 miles to hit a target moving at a relative speed of thousands of miles an hour is practically impossible. We all need more information on this.
Pax