Could Chinas broad space programme and military modernisation lead to a “space war”?
The US military is concerned about this scenario, since the American use of space technology is considered to give them an enormous leverage in conflicts on earth. The Americans, having become accustomed to a robust space-based command and control system, have a lot to lose in such a conflict. Any opponent has little to lose, and a lot to gain, by attacking American space assets. This can be done from the ground, using high powered lasers or directed-radio energy weapons to disable rather than destroy American satellites. Use of direct space-to-space interceptors is expensive and unlikely. But as Soviet fielding of their rather unthreatening IS-A anti-satellite system showed, just the idea of such a system is enough to send the United States into fits of asymmetrically expensive countermeasures • Why is the Shenzhou 6 mission getting less attention than Shenzhou 5 from the community of space enthusiasts? Perhaps one reason is that the Chinese have released a tremendous amount of public
