China's Access Denial Strategy Is Real

Hopefully everyone is aware that in January China blew up one of its older weather satellites. At the time it was headlines, but after a week, the story faded away. At the time the good folks over at the MT-Milcom Monitoring Blog reported that "NORAD has only catalogued 32 of the objects so far."

Today the MT-Milcom Monitoring Blog has an update, and it doesn't look good.

The extent of the debris cloud created by the destruction of the Fengyun-1C meteorological satellite on January 11, 2024 as part of an ASAT test by a Chinese ballistic interceptor is becoming more apparent as routine and special radar observations of the fragments provide more data. By the end of June 2007 the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN) was tracking more than 2200 objects with a size of at least 5 cm.

I checked as of this morning and debris officially catalogued from the former Chinese Feng Yun 1C weather satellite and interceptor has reached 2015 pieces (1999-025CMD/SSC# 31926). This makes this Chinese ASAT test event by far the worst satellite fragmentation of the space age.

Read it all.

This is one weather satellite, their own even, and it is creating a nasty mess in space. Now imagine how nasty space is going to get when nations are forced to deploy anti-satellite weaponry against each other. Even worse, what if it isn't nations at all, but non-state actors? Sound impossible?

Information Week had an article back in June that covered how easily obtained free software can calculate intercept of Satellites. As a self appointed tech nerd, I decided to try it out myself, and I think they might be right (in other words, try it yourself if you are skeptical).

These developments reinforce a point that CDR Salamander made earlier this week:

At a time when the CNO states that the debunked theory of Diversity is a top priority, SES and NAVSEA junior Flag Officers send out Bu11sh1t Bingo laden Six-Sigma love letters of Homeric length, and SECNAV seems almost alone fighting against the fraud, waste, and abuse of LCS, DDG-1000, and LPD-17 - the PLAN is focused on what a once young and ambitious navy did in its rise to Maritime Dominance.

This is why I believe high tech satellite solutions are less important against China than lower tech alternatives, and why I believe exercises like Trident Warrior 07 may be more important to the future fleet than assets that rely on satellites to be effective:

Without FORCEnet, LCS will be as limited in value as previous small U.S. Navy ships.

If the Powerpoint says it, it must be true right? Looking for an update on the PLAN? New analysis here and here, and as always here.