FPI / March 28, 2025

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

For decades it has been the fervent dream of Western Liberals that mankind keep wars on Earth, and that for the benefit of humanity, only pursue peaceful cooperation in space.

China’s SJ-25 refueling satellite with grappling arms, revealed at the 2022 Zhuhai Airshow and launched in January 2025, could form the basis of Chinese satellites observed practicing active combat operations in space. / Chinese internet

From the 1990s onward, many of these liberals, especially in the Obama Administration, thought that cooperation with China in space would offer the best chance for reducing or avoiding wars with China on Earth.

But China’s behavior in space, such as its Jan. 11, 2007 use of a ground-based interceptor to destroy a defunct weather satellite in a Polar Earth Orbit, repeatedly has proven that peace with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Earth must precede any hope of working peacefully with China in space.

China’s space program is controlled by the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has been designed to conduct dual use, civil and military operations in space, and in an April 2024 reorganization, formed the PLA Aerospace Force to plan and conduct military operations in Outer Space and in Near Space, or below Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Now it can be stated that China has begun the era of active combat in space; on March 18 at the annual McAlesse Defense Conference, Vice Chief of Space Operations of the U.S. Space Force, Gen. Michael Guetlein, offered a startling revelation of Chinese behavior in space:

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchrony and in control. That’s what we call dog fighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques, and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

If the United States has similar capabilities they are classified and unrevealed, but so far, this the first time that any government source has revealed the practice or conduct of active combat maneuvers in space.

Russia has performed ground-to-LEO and ground-launched co-orbital satellite interceptions, that involve entering the target’s orbit and pursuing until within attack range, and the U.S. has performed two ground-launched ASAT interceptions.

This is the latest evolution in China’s longstanding militarization of space, beginning on Jan. 11, 2007, when China demonstrated its ground-launched Anti Satellite (ASAT) capability by using a much-modified DF-21 based ASAT interceptor to destroy an old Chinese weather satellite.

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  China spotted conducting ‘active combat maneuvers in space’, WorldTribune.com