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GENERAL WHITING:
Now, as the United States combatant command responsible for the space area of responsibility – and we define that as starting at a hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface and moving upward from there – it’s important that we come out to Indo-Pacific and meet with U.S. forces here in the region, but also our allies. And like USINDOPACOM, we are seriously focused at U.S. Space Command on our pacing challenge, which is the People’s Republic of China. And we find that when we operate in a unified fashion with our allies and partners, that builds deterrence and ensures that there will never be a day without space for our militaries and for our national populations.
But frankly, the People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space, and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities, but they’re also using space to make their terrestrial forces – their army, their navy, their marine corps, their air force – more precise, more lethal, and more far-ranging.
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MODERATOR: The next question goes to David Rising, who put the question in the chat box here. Dave Rising with AP. “Do you have any specific examples of how you’ve addressed the pacing challenge of the PRC in your talks with Japanese and Korean counterparts?”
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for that question. I mentioned that I had the opportunity to visit the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Space Operations Group that they’ve established, and they have grown that partnership – sorry, they’ve grown that capability significantly over the last few years with future growth plans, and all I’ll leave it to them to describe those for you. But their focus on space domain awareness along with ours to keep track of those threats in space that we see – and many of those are emanating from China – has put an impetus on us developing improved space domain awareness capability.
So we are excited for the Japanese to bring on board their deep-space radar capability that they’ve been working for many years and that we’ve been partnering with them. And when that achieves initial operational capability, we expect that will provide both of our countries an enhanced understanding of what China is doing in space.
And then I also had a chance to visit a Mitsubishi satellite factory here in the greater Tokyo area, where the United States is partnering with Japan to fly hosted payloads that will also conduct space domain awareness missions on orbit, which will help us, again, to maintain awareness of what is happening.
And so those are two ways that we are partnering in response to the threats we now see on orbit.
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QUESTION: Hello. Yeah, thanks for this. I was wondering what your assessment is of China’s progress towards establishing an international lunar research station, and whether you see any military applications for that project. And secondly, whether you have anything to add on speculation about the Russians using nuclear weapons in space, perhaps as an anti-satellite weapon. Thanks.
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for that question. Obviously, we’ve seen the announcements of China’s ambitions to go to the Moon. And those appear to be exploratory and scientific on the surface, but the Chinese aren’t very transparent with what they do in space, and so we hope there’s not a military component to that, but we would certainly welcome more transparency.
And then your question about the reports of what Russia might be doing in space, I would just say that Russia’s a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty just like the United States and most of the international community, and that treaty was signed in 1967 and it prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons or weapons – other weapons of mass destruction on orbit. And we would certainly call on all nations to abide by the terms of those treaties. And we welcome the partnership the United States has made with Japan in submitting a United Nations Security Council resolution that essentially asks member states to endorse the Outer Space Treaty prohibitions against nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction on orbit, and we look forward to that being passed in the Security Council.
MODERATOR: All right, the next question will go to Seong Hyeon Choi from the South China Morning Post, who asks: “How does U.S. Space Command perceive Chinese space force advancements and the PLA’s latest structural changes to establish information support force that now its space force is under? What are some of the plans for cooperation with South Korea and Japan in space operation in response to advancing space challenges from China?”
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for the question. As I said my opening comments, the People’s Republic of China has moved breathtakingly fast in space. Over the last six years they have tripled the number of intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance satellites on orbit, and they have used their space capabilities to improve the lethality, the precision, and the range of their terrestrial forces. And so that obviously is a cause for concern and something that we are watching a very, very closely.
I have seen the reports of their recent organizational changes, as you noted, and those – the statements I’ve seen come out of the Chinese Government is that they’ve made those changes to further enhance the importance of space and information warfare and cyber operations in the People’s Liberation Army. And so, again, we’ll want to understand what that means long term and hopefully there’ll be some transparency there from the PRC.
I think I’ve already answered some of the ways that we’re partnering with our Japanese and Korean allies, but I think there’s a shared understanding of the threats that we now face and the importance of space to not only how we defend our nations, but also to enabling this modern way of life that we’ve become used to, and if we didn’t have space capabilities we would have to change how we live, our ways of life, and change our economies – and that’s something we certainly don’t want to do.
MODERATOR: Okay, we’re going to pivot a little bit and go to Ken Sasaki from Kyodo News based in Makati City, the Philippines: “How can the U.S., or at least your command, help the Philippines assert its sovereignty in the South China Sea using shared data or information gathered from space? Are there other concrete plans aside from the proposed General Security of Military Information Agreement that the Philippines and U.S. are embarking on in this regard? And what can the U.S. take from the Philippines under such data-sharing agreement?”
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for that question. I think one of the real lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the importance of commercial space capabilities. There’s such a robust international commercial space industry today that countries can often get the information that they need to support their defense requirements or their sovereignty requirements from commercial space. And so I think that information could be helpful to the Philippines Government as they think about – keep monitoring their islands and features in the waters near the Philippines.
I think the question also asked about what actions could we take to further improve our ability to use space. I would say from a U.S. perspective, every operation and exercise that we conduct with our U.S. Armed Forces is – includes space. Space enables all that we do, whether that’s providing satellite communications, which allow us to operate untethered from terrestrial networks; positioning, navigation, and timing through our global positioning system allows us to always know where we are and be synchronized in time. Space provides us so many advantages, and I know we’ve had some initial discussions with the Philippine armed forces about potential space collaboration, and we look forward to working that hand in hand with USINDOPACOM and the Philippine armed forces moving forward.
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MODERATOR: Okay, I think we have time for a few more questions. Janis Frayer with the NBC News has posted a question in the chat. I’m going to take the second part of that question because I think General Whiting has addressed a lot of the first part. “With China about to launch another Moon rover, is the U.S. actively pursuing access to the lunar rock samples that China returned from the Moon in 2020?”
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for the question. That’s probably better for NASA because NASA is our exploration arm in the United States. But I will say we’re here cooperating with our Japanese allies, and I’m excited about the recent announcement between JAXA, the Japanese space agency, and NASA that now NASA will take two Japanese astronauts to the lunar surface, and Japan is going to build a pressurized rover for the astronauts on the Moon. So I think we’re going to have access to a lot of our own space rocks going forward, and of course we have the space rocks that came back in the 1960s and 1970s during the Apollo mission. But any specifics about the Chinese rocks, I would have to ask you to refer that to NASA.
MODERATOR: Okay. We have a hand raised by Eleanor Olcott from FT, based in Beijing. Eleanor, if you would like to unmute and ask your question, please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi. Thank you, General Whiting. I just wanted to ask a question about China’s ambitions on the lunar south pole. Has there been any coordination with the U.S. on that and what is the U.S. response to this plan? Thank you.
GENERAL WHITING: Yeah, thank you for the question, Eleanor. Obviously, we’re interested in understanding what China’s plans are there, but that question is probably best for NASA. I can say from a military perspective, we’re interested in having space domain awareness in the lunar orbit – we call that cislunar regime – because we want to make sure that any activities that happen on the Moon are indeed for science purposes and exploration and that no one is going to the Moon for military purposes.
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Source: U.S. Department of State
Speaker: General Stephen N. Whiting, Commander of the U.S. Space Command
Format: Digital Press Briefing
China Policy Research 