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China's military awaits new satellites
By Peter J Brown

China wants to become the next big player in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology. Zhang Xiaojin, director of the astronautics department at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, recently confirmed that China will complete its new Beidou 2 or "Compass" GNSS consisting of 30 more satellites before 2015, with 10 or more new Compass satellites scheduled for launch over the next two years.

Since the beginning of the decade, when China's first Beidou (the Chinese word for the Big Dipper constellation) navigation satellites (navsats) were launched, China has moved quickly to transform its small regional navsat system into a full GNSS constellation

 

capable of performing in much the same way as the United States's Global Positioning System (GPS), and Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). Compass should be available well ahead of the European Union's Galileo System in the coming decade, although China remains a partner in Galileo, too.

"In September of 2005, the State Council passed a regulation integrating the use of Beidou terminals into government communications, power, planning, mapping, standards and other government agencies, while at the same time issuing language guaranteeing long-term access to a continually upgraded Beidou system," said Gregory Kulacki, senior analyst and China Project Manager at the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. "This way they forced everybody to buy the equipment, pumping money and people into the system, while allowing people to continue using GPS, which is a far better system, obviously."

The United States's GPS system is operated and maintained by the US Department of Defense (DoD), while the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) executive committee manages it. The US Coast Guard acts as the civil interface to the public for GPS matters, and the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) GNSS program office develops GPS applications for the aviation industry.

A minimum of 24 GPS satellites constantly orbit the Earth at an altitude of approximately 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers). They provide users with accurate information on position, velocity and time anywhere in the world and in all weather conditions. Each satellite, positioned in one of six orbital planes, circles the Earth twice a day. GPS receivers using signals from two or three or more GPS satellites can determine a user's precise location by comparing the time of the signal transmissions with the actual time of reception. Once the differences are calculated, the GPS receiver fixes the position and displays the relevant data on the user's GPS device.

Given the enormous footprint of GPS, it is important to understand why China is undertaking this project. It goes well beyond a matter of national prestige.

"[China's Compass] GNSS program is driven by the same motives as the other GNSS systems: sovereign control over a critical infrastructure, security purposes, industrial policy [including] building expertise, manufacturing, and [global] markets, and demonstrating possession of another capability of a 'great power'," said Oregon-based Glen Gibbons, one of the world's leading experts on GNSS, and the editor and managing partner of the Inside GNSS website www.insidegnss.com. He has followed Compass closely for years.

"Both Galileo and Compass are motivated by other countries being uncomfortable with relying on a US military-owned GPS system upon which they have become heavily reliant in daily life. While the US has assured [everyone] that GPS would not be denied except in the most dire of circumstances, it cannot give the 100% guarantee that other countries seek," said Dr Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the National Security Decision Making Department at the US Naval War College.

"[China's] expansion or extension into Compass is not surprising. While Galileo is intentionally being developed toward global commercial use, full utilization plans for Compass are uncertain. Certainly navsats have been demonstrated as highly dual-use, so it can be anticipated that the Chinese military, and the navy in particular, will benefit from its availability," she added.

As China's PLA Navy (PLAN) transits the Straits of Malacca and enters the Indian Ocean on patrol, the naval operations support dimension of the Compass GNSS in particular warrants closer attention.

"A successful Compass constellation, combined with a fuller constellation of imaging and communication satellites, will serve as much a military enabler for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as it has for the US military. Compass is a key requirement for the PLA to eventually become a global military player," said Rick Fisher, senior fellow at the Washington DC-based International Assessment and Strategy Center. "Compass will enable the first form of PLA global power projection by guiding land-attack cruise missiles fired from PLAN ships and submarines."

Given that the US quickly fired submarine-launched, GPS-guided cruise missiles to retaliate against suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan after the 1998 US Embassy bombings, for example, and did so without any prior declaration of war, Fisher wonders if China might pursue the same course of action against some global supporters of Tibetan or Taiwanese freedom deemed "terrorists" by China.

"Might these individuals come to be on the receiving end of Chinese cruise missiles? Or should their state of residence become dependent on Chinese Compass services, would this then be used as political leverage?" asks Fisher. "This is not simply a 'natural and expected' power shift."

The emergence of Compass and the larger PLA-controlled space architecture is critical if China intends to construct competing strategic networks on Earth.

"Consider the China-allied 'axis of evil' states being able to access intimate imagery online combined with guaranteed Compass signals for their munitions. Iran’s desire to attack Israel with nuclear weapons may diminish, but with a corresponding increasing temptation to initiate strikes against Israel with a new variety of non-nuclear precision weapons," said Fisher.

Taiwan is well aware of the fact that Compass could be employed for short-range precision missiles - both ballistic and cruise.

"It will also provide China with far more reliable and effective navigation and positioning of force deployment," said Eric Hagt, China program director at the World Security Institute in Washington DC. "Greater maneuverability, battlefield awareness and the use of precision guidance, both short and long range, would have obvious impact for a regional conflict [such as one involving] Taiwan or over the South China Sea's energy resources or one that takes place far from China’s borders."

Fisher also predicts that as China's completion date for Compass draws near, pressure will mount for nations to launch competing GNSSs. For example, the first satellite for Japan’s Quasi Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) will be launched next year by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. QZSS is intended to augment or compliment the GPS system by offering better GPS service coverage in Japanese urban areas. India is also openly pursuing its own GNSS solution.

"Washington, which has in the past sought to oppose Galileo for both efficiency and political reasons, will be pressured to actually promote new navsat competitors to Compass, [and] to ensure new levels of redundancy which will offer the best passive defense against China’s potential control of navsat services," said Fisher.

China's deployment of Compass as an independent GNSS for commercial, civil and national security reasons comes at a time when China has been improving its overall transparency, and, "their policy principles are familiar and compatible with positions the US has supported for years", said Scott Pace, director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute.

Among other things, Pace expects China to create a GNSS which is completely interoperable with the large installed base of existing GPS users.

"This is not only good economic sense, but will increase incentives for other providers, such as Europe and Russia, to also be interoperable and use open interfaces as customers will be reluctant to adopt closed, proprietary systems," said Pace.

While he points to the December 2008 meeting at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as a good example of the multinational cooperative discussions about GNSS-related matters now that underway, his optimism is tempered somewhat. [1]

"I would, however, hope to see more commercial cooperation in non-military technologies between Chinese and US firms in order to ensure that China's entry benefits the millions if not billions of current GPS users, and does not [lead] to friction over spectrum, technical standards, or trade barriers," Pace said.

Gibbons reports that China's involvement in the Galileo project is very much on its own terms. China's Galileo project is overseen by the National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC), which signed a cooperation agreement with the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) in October 2003. All but about 10 million euros (US$12.8 million) of China's 200 million euro commitment to the Galileo program has

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