China Aims High

Chinese men look at a satellite built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight.

Quick clarity. One of the most important elements of the surveillance system is accidental—an 8-inch telescope strapped onto the side of an otherwise dead experimental missile-defense satellite launched a decade ago. Using this vestige alone, Air Force officials found that they can look deep into space and track a third of the satellites in geostationary orbit. Currently, it takes a few weeks to build up a complete picture, but the Air Force is planning to launch the next-generation surveillance system starting in 2009.

For now, the Air Force says it can currently detect a missile launch anywhere in the world, but it cannot track satellites all the way up into orbit in real time. "It's one thing to bear witness to what is going on in that environment," says Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, director of space and nuclear operations for the Air Force. "It's another thing to be immediately able to attribute what happened to someone. We've got a ways to go to have that kind of clarity as quickly as we need it."

Another way to deter countries from using antisatellite weapons is to be able to quickly replace satellites that are lost. But today, nothing is quick about how the U.S. military or intelligence agencies do business in space. The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds the nation's spy satellites, takes years to complete a system and runs perennially over budget. "The cost of building, launching, and operating a replacement for one of today's photo-reconnaissance satellites would be in the vicinity of $1 billion," says Loren Thompson, a space expert at the Lexington Institute. Moving toward a faster, more dynamic kind of satellite design would be revolutionary for the U.S. government—and expensive. "Would we be able to get funded so that we could be able to build satellites to follow on to something that we just launched?" says Rick Oborn, a spokesman for the NRO. "That's just not the way it works right now."

Good enough to win. The Air Force is running an experimental effort called Operationally Responsive Space, which is testing the feasibility of building a fleet of smaller but less capable satellites. "The reason that space has taken so long in the past is that every time we build a new system, we build a new infrastructure that goes with the system to deliver the best capability that we can for the tremendous investment the taxpayers are making," says General Hyten. "The piece you have to go at is what is good enough to win the conflict." The goal, adds Payton, is to build a common launch infrastructure and design satellites "more like a laptop computer" with ready-made parts that can be assembled and launched "in a couple of weeks rather than a couple of years."

Replacements for a lost satellite would not necessarily have to be based in space. The Air Force is working on a classified research effort to design an airplane that would be, in effect, a successor to the U-2 spy plane. The plane—which would fly fast enough (as much as six times the speed of sound) and high enough to evade most air-defense systems—would not be operational before 2020 at the earliest. More immediately, there are a growing number of commercial companies providing imagery, as well as communications and other functions, from their own satellites, which could serve as an emergency backup for military ones. Already, civilian satellites carry classified military communications, for example.

At the same time, there is nothing inevitable about a space arms race. For one thing, the Chinese themselves were surprised by the international backlash from the test, particularly over the debris issue. Bruce MacDonald, who worked on national security issues in the Clinton White House science adviser's office, points out that diplomatic pressure, or U.S. military planning, could still push Beijing in one direction or the other. "We have to find some middle ground between not responding at all," he says, "and responding in such a way that brings about a self-fulfilling prophecy."