Andrew S. Erickson

Dwayne A. Day, “This Space Intentionally Left Blank: The Limits of Chinese Military Power,” The Space Review, 23 August 2010.

… This past week the DoD released its annual report Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China. This is a new name for the report, which previously was called Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, but was euphemistically called “Chinese Military Power” by many, in a nod to a well-known series of bi-annual reports produced in the 1980s titled Soviet Military Power. …

Unlike Soviet Military Power in its heyday, there is apparently nothing in Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China concerning China’s space program that could not be obtained by open sources. … It would be possible, if someone is so inclined, to produce a fairly detailed annual report on Chinese space activities using open sources. However, there is at present nobody willing to sponsor such an effort. (NASA was encouraged by Congress to report on China’s space activities a few years ago, but instead of producing a report, the agency reportedly merely delivered a bundle of press clippings.)

There are a few people in the West who occasionally write about the subject of the Chinese space program. Perhaps most notably is Andrew Erickson, an associate professor at the Naval War College and a founding member of the China Maritime Studies Institute, who has written a few articles about China’s space activities. In the March 2010 issue of the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine Erickson described several of China’s recent developments of navigation, communications, and surveillance satellites. …

China has been engaged in a military buildup for a number of years now. One of China’s recent military developments that received a lot of attention was the country’s work on an anti-ship ballistic missile which could fly up to 1,500 kilometers before homing in on a target such as an American aircraft carrier. …

American military officials have commented that they do not believe that China has mastered the C4ISR required to usefully employ an anti-ship ballistic missile when they develop one. Admittedly, China has built some advanced radars for searching for ships, and made some general improvements in its maritime patrol aircraft.

But China has also stepped up its launching of surveillance satellites, launching its tenth Yaogan series satellite since 2006 on August 10. Rather remarkably, despite this substantial improvement in capability that indicates China is making a concerted effort to improve its space surveillance system, that subject received only one short paragraph in the Pentagon’s newly-released report. …