Issue 92

24 Feb: Kevin Pollpeter of the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) released his latest report on China’s space policies and operations. Mr Pollpeter concludes that “People’s Liberation Army (PLA) researchers have assessed space capabilities as playing an outsized role in strategic coercive efforts.” Furthermore, “PRC researchers state that coercive activities can occur in both peacetime and wartime and can involve demonstrations of space power, tests of space capabilities, and the use of force.” Excerpts below.

– The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is developing space technologies, in part, to deter and

compel the United States from taking actions that Beijing deems counter to its national security interests.

-(PLA) researchers have assessed space capabilities as playing an outsized role in strategic coercive efforts…and perceive space capabilities as a more usable and effective method of influencing an adversary than nuclear weapons.

– PRC researchers state that coercive activities can occur in both peacetime and wartime…and argue that increased space power allows militaries to strengthen their coercive space capabilities for use against potential adversaries.

-PLA researchers discuss eight types of coercive activities that provide an escalatory ladder

from least to most escalatory: 1) Enhancing conventional force capabilities; 2) Deterrence by denial; 3) Deterrence by detection; 4) Deterrence by punishment; 5) Displays of space power; 6) Space warfare exercises; 7) Space power deployments; and 8) Coercive space strikes.

– Space and counterspace capabilities can not only deter adversaries from attacking PRC satellites but can also form one element of an overall coercive campaign intended to influence an adversary from taking military action in other domains.

– PLA writings state that space coercion may be the first type of coercive measure used in a conflict…and describe coercive measures as being conducted first in space

-PRC development of a wide range of counterspace capabilities, including cyber, direct-ascent, co-orbital, directed-energy, and electronic warfare technologies, suggests that it is taking a combined arms approach to space warfare to threaten U.S. satellites from the ground to geosynchronous orbit…<such an approach would> allow the PRC to tailor its responses to particular situations.

– China’s Space-based C4ISR capabilities can enable the PLA to detect U.S. military deployments before a conflict begins <and> improve the PLA’s ability to achieve a more transparent operational environment and facilitate the use of capabilities to degrade U.S. forces. While Counterspace capabilities could be used to threaten U.S. space-based C4ISR capabilities that have allowed it to overmatch conventional adversaries.

-Space coercion can be used to threaten critical economic functions that space enables…and could degrade the US economy.

– Between 2018 and 2022, the PRC nearly doubled its number of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites to more than 250, “most of which could support monitoring, tracking, and targeting of U.S. and allied forces worldwide, especially throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

The PLA is developing space technologies, in part, to prevent or mitigate foreign interference in its stated national security interests…<and is> shifting from a force focused on nuclear deterrence to one more capable of achieving a variety of coercive effects in, from, and to space.