US must be able to ‘turn around and punch’ in space as China boosts satellites: general
Head of US Space Force Combat Forces Command also highlights spaceplanes as area of increasing competition with China
According to the US military news website The War Zone, Lieutenant General Gregory Gagnon said China had built “the second-best remote sensing architecture in the world from outer space”.
He said China had expanded from fewer than 100 satellites in 2013, when Chinese President Xi Jinping first came to power, to 1,900 today.
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“Over 500 of those satellites are remote sensing satellites, which are purposely designed and networked to track mobile forces such as US carriers, destroyers and cruisers in the Pacific, as well as aircraft that deploy around the Pacific,” Gagnon said during a round table on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association warfare symposium on Wednesday.
“Those have been built with a purpose. The purpose is to cue their long-range fire weapons.”
Gagnon is the head of US Space Force Combat Forces Command, which was established in November as part of the unit’s emphasis on its warfighting functions for anti-satellite warfare, in contrast to its previous roles that mainly focused on surveillance missions.
Responding to a question about how his command was responding to threats to US orbital assets, Gagnon said protective measures on satellites were “just like thinking about protective measures on aircraft”, although he did not specify what action the command was taking, saying he did not “want to tell Beijing and Moscow what I’ve done”.
“But protecting and defending satellites can’t simply be done by protect and defend. You can’t run away from a bully forever. Sometimes you got to turn around and punch,” Gagnon said.