Global Courant 2023-05-24 00:23:30
Since then, the United States has shot down a handful of Chinese balloons and other suspicious high-altitude objects, sometimes using advanced weaponry, and U.S. officials have even admitted that the balloon was able to gather some information about secret bases. military. But Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday that, in some ways, China’s use of balloons, which Beijing says are weather forecast balloons, is a distraction from larger issues.
“They have a very aggressive intelligence gathering program. Balloons are a very small and not very important part of their arsenal,” Mr. Kendall told reporters during a discussion with the Defense Writers’ Group in Washington.
Mr Kendall said he is more concerned about what is happening at a higher altitude.
“The space part of this program is very significant and very important”, he said. “They are linking their space-based capabilities to their operational forces on the ground.”
Other US officials have also warned about China’s advances in space.
“China sees space as a potential weakness of the United States,” Doug Wade, head of the China program at the Defense Department’s Intelligence Agency, said last March.
“There is a variety of space and anti-space equipment and capabilities in China that are of great concern to us,” Mr. Wade said, ranking Beijing’s space program “second (in the world) to that of the United States.”
The head of US space operations, General Chance Saltzman, also warned of Beijing’s growing capability, calling China “our biggest threat in space and from space”. Mr. Kendall said on Monday that China’s growing ability to use its satellites to track US troops and equipment is of particular concern.
“A large part of this operational capability is surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting of equipment such as aircraft carriers, mobile units, and other ground units of various types,” he said.
Despite calls by US officials for lawmakers to focus on China’s space capabilities, there have been moves by some lawmakers to address the potential threat from high-altitude balloons.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall called on lawmakers to pass a timely defense budget and support efforts to modernize the U.S. military, including increasing capabilities to better respond to China’s advances./ VOA
