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Outer space becomes
multipolar
By Jamie Miyazaki
The scheduled October 30 signing by China and
the European Union to open the way for China to take a
substantial financial role in Europe's nearly US$4
billion Galileo navigation-satellite project could be
interpreted as a direct shot across the bow of the
United States as the world's sole, undisputed military
and economic superpower in outer space. Nor is it going
to be the last.
The French, the Chinese and the
Russians are all pushing for the emergence of a
multipolar world to counter the United States' supremacy
as a so-called hyperpower. The EU, spurred primarily by
French efforts, for decades has actively challenged US
dominance in the strategically important aerospace
industry through Airbus Industrie and the Ariane
space-rocket program. The EU's next serious challenge to
US supremacy looks set to be the lucrative
navigation-satellite industry currently monopolized by
the United States-based Global Positioning System (GPS).
But in order to attain this, the EU has had to rely on
help from Beijing.
The joint EU-China agreement,
scheduled to be signed at the summit between China and
the European Union, provides for cooperation on
satellite navigation over a wide range of scientific and
technological sectors, industrial manufacturing, service
and market development and other issues. What it really
does, however, is go into deep Chinese pockets for
substantial financial help through a stakeholding in the
project.
If all goes as scheduled, Galileo would
loft a constellation of 30 stationary satellites 23,000
kilometers into the sky as a counterweight to GPS, the
current state of play in satellite location technology.
Planned to be operational by 2008 at a cost of 3.3
billion euros ($3.85 billion), Galileo is designed to
counter the effective US monopoly on navigation
satellite technology with improved accuracy that, as a
civilian system, won't be subject to government
blocking.
Originally developed as a military
application to pinpoint and target objects from space,
GPS has become one of the world's true whiz-bang
technologies. The satellite system allows both military
and commercial surveying to pinpoint the location of
vehicles, aircraft, ships or even herds of cattle
anywhere on Earth.
Since its inception the US
system has also been expanded to cover civilian
applications, something US officials have repeatedly
pointed out in their questioning why Galileo has to be
established at all.
However, its civilian
applications are deliberately low-precision to maintain
the US military advantage in pinpointing objects. To
counter one of the arguments of the EU's rival Galileo
system, the US government recently fine-tuned the
accuracy of its civilian-use system, although in the
past the United States has selectively blocked access
when it has felt national security was in danger of
being compromised, as it did during the campaign in
Afghanistan.
The United States has stressed
space systems as key "strategic enablers" for conducting
command, control and intelligence functions in military
operations, all part of the Pentagon's much-touted
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). The National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is in the process of
drafting a comprehensive strategy to ensure US dominance
of space. As General Lance Lord of the US Air Force
Space Command put it in April, "The pursuit of
asymmetric advantage is not new. In the 20th century,
air power emerged as just such an advantage. Today, at
the outset of the 21st century, we are realizing the
same sort of advantage through space power."
This broadened sense of the importance of space
capabilities as instruments of military, political and
economic interests has not gone unnoticed, either by
Beijing or by Brussels. French President Jacques Chirac
has previously stated that Europe's failure to develop
an independent space capability would make Europe a
"vassal" of the United States. Unsurprisingly, France
has been one of the most vocal backers of Galileo,
viewing it as an important step in the evolution of a
separate European defense identity.
China's
leadership feels likewise and has made improving
space-based surveillance capabilities, the exploitation
of space and acquisition of related technologies high
priorities. The Pentagon's July report on Chinese
military power phrased it more directly: "Publicly,
China opposes the militarization of space and seeks to
prevent the development of US anti-satellites systems
and space-based missile defenses. Privately, however,
China's leaders view [moves to militarize space] ... as
inevitabilities."
Initially a lot of China's
space programs were motivated by political prestige, but
military dominance of most of its current projects is
expected to yield significant amounts of dual-use
technology. China already has a basic indigenous
navigation satellite system called Beidou in place, but
its surveillance capabilities are in effect limited to
China and are of questionable quality.
Next
month also sees the launch of China's first manned space
mission - Shenzhou V ("divine vessel") - just the first
step in a much larger program. By 2010 it is predicted
that China's space program will be a significant
contributor to its military prowess.
In
Beijing's quest to secure a favorable strategic
configuration of power it too has pinpointed space as
the "new commanding heights for combat". Central to its
strategy of a weaker military power (read China)
defeating a superior one (read the US) is an attack on
an enemy's space-based communication and surveillance
systems. With this in mind Beijing is known to be
developing systems that could jam GPS.
China is
already of one of the biggest players in the global
satellite launch industry and has been busily
cooperating with a number of countries to improve its
space capabilities. These include Ukraine, Russia and
Brazil, but the September 18 signing of a deal with the
EU for joint cooperation in the development of Galileo
is easily the most significant. Crucially, the Chinese
government and corporations will be involved in research
and development activities, including satellite
launching and radio transmission.
Galileo has
obvious market applications for the Chinese, but it is
its military applications that are the most significant.
Despite being initially developed as a civilian
application, unlike Russia's Glosnass system or
America's GPS, Galileo has a military dimension in its
premium Public Regulated Service (PRS) capacity,
intended for military and government use.
PRS
functions on a separate frequency from America's GPS
military frequencies and, combined with systems capable
of disabling GPS, this would give a Galileo-based nation
a strategic advantage in any outbreak of hostilities. In
the long run China could decide to base some of its
military hardware on Galileo technology. This has also
gotten European defense companies very excited, even
though a European arms embargo imposed on China after
the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 is still in place.
Needless to say, Washington has not been
particularly impressed by this incident of
Beijing-Brussels diplomacy. Further worries for
Washington were expressions of interest in Galileo last
week by India and Israel. With the Chinese on board,
Galileo now looks set to become a major competitor to
GPS in the race to dominate space.
Moreover,
Beijing's attempts to reach for the heavens next month
with the launch of Shenzhou V have managed to ruffle
quite a few feathers, and not just in Washington. In
reaction to Beijing's ambitions in outer space, the
Japanese decided to merge their three space agencies
into a more focused outfit.
It would appear that
despite Washington's best efforts to maintain its
dominance on Earth by its technological advantage in
outer space, the proponents of multipolarity are set to
take the battle to the heavens. After China and the EU
formally ink their cooperation deal at the end of next
month, we can expect to see Galileo and Shenzhou V
charting their quiet trajectories to create a multipolar
world in the starry skies above us.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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