China plans to launch more than 10 spaceships and satellites this year, Agence France Presse has reported. This will be a record number of spacecraft for China, coming after 16 launches over the past two years. The announcement, made by China Academy of Space Technology chief Yang Baohua, comes at a time when tension is high over the military use of space.

The United States announced late last week that it was preparing to shoot down a defunct reconnaissance satellite using a ship-based weapon. Beijing has criticized Washington for the planned operation. Liu Jianchao, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Washington should fulfill its international obligations and avoid threatening security in space and the security of other countries, Xinhua reported.

“Relevant departments of China are closely watching the situation and working out preventative measures,” Liu added.

Apparently Liu avoided discussing China’s own satellite shoot, which occurred a little more than a year ago when Beijing destroyed one of its weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Only the United States and the former Soviet Union had previously accomplished such a feat.

For its part, Moscow joined with Beijing to denounce the upcoming American endeavor, with Russia’s Defense Ministry saying it has fears the U.S. plan is a veiled weapons test and an “attempt to move the arms race into space.” Russia and China last week announced new plans for a ban on space weapons in an attempt to get an edge on the U.S. Russia is at odds with America over U.S. plans to install a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.

The significance of developing space technology, including the ability to shoot down satellites, is not lost on Beijing or Washington (International Herald Tribune,February 18):

For the Chinese military, the capacity to destroy U.S. navigation and communications satellites could undermine the overwhelming technological dominance that U.S. forces have enjoyed in recent conflicts, according to U.S. and Chinese security experts. …In academic papers, books and magazine articles, Chinese strategic thinkers have identified U.S. dependence on satellites for battlefield communications, guiding smart weapons, reconnaissance and weather forecasting as a potential weakness that could be exploited.Senior U.S. military commanders have acknowledged that without the advantage of satellites, U.S. forces could be forced to fight as they did decades ago, without detailed information about the battlefield and enemy movements.The successful destruction of the ailing U.S. spy satellite would send a reminder to Beijing that China’s space assets would also be at risk in a conflict, experts said.But China is also increasingly vulnerable to this kind of warfare as it deploys high-technology weaponry. China has been devoting considerable resources to building and deploying its own communication, navigation and weather satellites in recent years.Some analysts have suggested that Beijing ultimately wants to deploy an independent navigation satellite constellation with similar capabilities as the Global Positioning System network.

The New York Post’s Ralph Peters exposes how relying on satellites makes America vulnerable in “A Maginot Line in the Sky.”

Watch as China attempts to gain military supremacy on land, by sea, in the air and beyond. For more on this subject, read “America’s Achilles Heel,” by editor in chief Gerald Flurry.