Washington, Nov. 10 (CNA) Russia recently announced its plan to cooperate with Communist China on certain space projects, including helping oversee Beijing's first manned space flight, leading some American experts to worry that such a space alliance could pose a strategic threat to the United States and Western nations.
Recent launch failures in the flagging Russian space program may have prompted Moscow to strengthen its cooperation with Beijing not just for mutual commercial space development, but also for strategic military reasons, said the experts.
A NASA spokesman has confirmed that the PRC-Russia cooperative space effort will cover the areas of applied space research, long-term programs for manned space missions, and fundamental research connected with the manufacture of spacecraft.
Experts disagree on the implications of the new space alliance, with some seeing it as a purely commercial venture and others believing it poses a new space-based military threat to the US. Others are concerned that technology used in the International Space Station, in which Russia is participating, could eventually find its way to Beijing, according to a World Net Daily report Wednesday.
Gregrory May, assistant director for the Washington-based Nixon Center, is convinced that such an alliance could pose a strategic threat to the United States and Western nations. In addition to manned space missions, he stressed that there are larger concerns in the US that the recent PRC-Russian space agreements could include the development of technology capable of disabling US satellites in orbit.
"It would be very naive to assume Communist China was not actively developing an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons systems, especially since they know their embassy in Belgrade was destroyed with a weapon that was guided by a US satellite," said May.
The US House Cox Committee report on Communist Chinese espionage named Russia as a major supplier of space launch technology to the People's Republic of China, but also emphasized Beijing's quest to develop dominant space weaponry.
The report quoted People's Liberation Army Navy Senior Col. Shen Zhongchang as saying, "by the next century, as high-tech space technology develops, the deployment of space-based weapons systems will be a prerequisite to naval victory."
The Cox report also noted that "based on the significant level of PRC-Russian cooperation on weapons development, it is possible that the PRC will be able to use nuclear reactors to pump lasers with pulse energies high enough to destroy satellites. In addition, Russian cooperation could help the PRC develop an advanced radar system using lasers to track and image satellites." (By Nelson Chung)
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