U.S. Intelligence: China Could Put Laser Weapons in Space by 2030

A new United States intelligence report warns that China is developing energy weapons and spaceplanes that it could use for military operations in outer space, with the capability of using directed-energy weapons in orbit by the end of the 2020s. The US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, published on Sunday, includes a rare image of the newly developed reusable spaceplane. The DIA report, entitled Challenges to Security in Space, is the first time that the U.S. government has offered an estimated timeline for China’s development of space-based energy weapons. Beijing already has established earthbound energy weapons, which are capable of disrupting, degrading, and/or damaging satellites, and will also be stronger by the end of the 2020s, with the ability to impact satellites beyond low Earth orbit. These new space-based energy weapons would add an even more dangerous new disruptive capability to that arsenal.However, not all reports are as alarmist as the findings from the DIA. Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, told the South China Morning Post. “I would be very surprised if China fielded space-based laser weapons by the late 2020s,” she said.While China’s People’s Liberation Army has been secretive about the spaceplane it is developing, it has been less shy about its progress in developing directed-energy weapons. “In January 2021, PLA media asserted that laser weapons were entering a golden age; they cited dazzling (i.e., temporarily blinding a sensor) as one of the many operational uses of laser weapons,” states the DIA report.China, for its part, has blasted back at the United States’ report about Beijing’s military goals in space. This week, the state-run propaganda news site the Global Times released its own finger-pointing report entitled “US intelligence hypes Chinese, Russian space threats while accelerating its own military buildup in orbit.”“Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills he mistook for menacing giants, Washington appears to be sounding the alarm over alleged threats in outer space, even as it presses ahead with its own military buildup in orbit,” writes the propaganda outlet.The Chinese report is based in truth – the United States has been preparing for this development for some time now. “From the broadest perspective, maybe the most critical characteristic of the responsive and adaptive national security space architecture called for in the President’s Ensuring American Space Superiority executive order is that survivability matters at least as much as performance,” U.S. Space Force Gen. Stephen Whiting said in August at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. “In space, there is no safe harbor. You can’t dig a trench or build a shield,” Whiting continued. “Our satellites are consistently or predictably in an opponent’s weapons engagement zone. And we can build the most high-performing, exquisite satellites in human history, but if they depend on fragile, targetable supporting infrastructure, their performance will drop to zero on the first day of the next war.”At the beginning of this month, the Pentagon unveiled four of its own directed-energy weapons for deployment in a homeland counter-drone pilot. A press release from the Department of Defense named the four systems as: AeroVironment’s Palletized High-Energy Laser, Epirus’ Leonidas high-powered microwave, Kord’s Firefly high-energy laser and Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System.A buildout of a space-age defense system will be critical for the United States’ defense strategy, as the U.S. has more to lose as well as more to gain from a space-based offensive than China. “The US will be far more dependent on space than the PLA” in a potential future conflict, according to Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute. Based on the interview with Mulvaney, the South China Morning Post reports that, “Disrupting those satellites could therefore disproportionately affect US forces, potentially weakening their ability to intervene in a regional conflict, such as one over Taiwan.”By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.comJapan to Overtake China As World’s Top LNG Importer This YearGasoline Up 34% and Heating Oil Up 74% as Voters Head to the MidtermsDARPA Backs Project to Measure AI Energy Use at Every Stage of the Workflow