4.04.2025

The Space Force chief doesn’t like the “curves” of how China is progressing vs the U.S.—and says he doesn’t have the funding to reverse it.

China is rapidly building out its arsenal of counterspace weapons: everything from ground-based lasers to satellites that can grab other satellites, all of which pose a “grave threat” to the U.S., according to Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. 

The People’s Liberation Army is developing missiles and ground-based lasers to hit satellites from the ground—systems that could be deployed before the end of the decade, Saltzman said in written testimony ahead of his appearance before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Thursday. The chief’s testimony painted one of his most detailed and concerning assessments of China’s growing space threat.

“Aside from missiles, the PLA has fielded multiple ground-based laser weapons able to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellite sensors. By the mid-to-late 2020s, we expect them to deploy systems high enough in power that they can physically damage satellite structures,” he said. 

Further, China’s military routinely employs jammers that can target space-based communications, radars, and navigation systems, including the Pentagon’s extremely-high-frequency (EHF) systems.

Saltzman also mentioned China’s kinetic counterspace operations—including satellites that can “dogfight” or physically pull other satellites out of orbit.

One of China’s most aggressive initiatives is building a “kill web” that uses hundreds of satellites to find, track, and target forces on Earth, Saltzman told the commission on Thursday.

That means it’s no longer sufficient to only focus on protecting U.S. satellites, he said. The U.S. needs to develop systems that can deny China’s use of its space assets, he said, which is central to the service’s new mission of “space superiority.”

“That's a new mission set and really rounds out what we say it means to have space superiority, to use space control: protect ours, but also deny theirs, and that's what we're trying to invest more in,” Saltzman said. 

But the Space Force doesn’t have enough money to do it. Saltzman said his service is “critically unfunded.” 

“I will tell you that I believe we have more left unfunded than we have funded. I think the new missions that have been given to the Space Force, we still haven’t developed the size and set of capabilities necessary to perform those new missions,” he said. 

Saltzman said counterspace weapons come in six categories: ground-based jammers, kinetic weapons, and directed energy weapons, and space-based versions of all three. He said China is investing in all six, while the U.S. is not.

For now, the service is concentrating on ground-based counterspace weapons, he said, which require less new technology than orbiting weapons. But the service will need to field weapons in all six areas, he said, arguing that targets in different orbits will require different kinds of weapons. 

Saltzman also said the service is prioritizing jamming and other non-kinetic effects first—and would only resort to physically destroying another satellite if there was no other option. 

“Destroying something on orbit, as we've seen with the Chinese in 2007 and the Russians in 2021, the debris that's generated by a destructive force on orbit can be catastrophic for all of the users of the space domain. And so I feel the last resort—and something that we don't want to create—this long-lasting, hazardous debris field that can start to make the domain far less sustainable,” he said.

Quelle: Defense One