May 21, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 15, 1429

WASHINGTON, May 20: China is aggressively building a wide range of capabilities in space, including the ability to shoot down satellites, a commander of US space forces said on Tuesday.

Such know-how holds great implications for Beijing’s potential to curb access in the Taiwan Straits and beyond, said Army Brig Gen Jeffrey Horne of the US Strategic Command.

“China continues to aggressively develop a wide array of space and counter-space capabilities,” he said in prepared remarks to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally mandated advisory group.

Horne, deputy head of the Strategic Command’s joint component for space, said recent Chinese People’s Liberation Army writings suggested China might target an enemy’s spy satellites along with navigation and early-warning spacecraft “to blind and deafen.”

—Reuters

China’s unannounced shooting apart of one of its own defunct weather satellites in January 2007 “demonstrated the PLA’s ability to attack satellites operating in low Earth orbit,” he said.

In his written statement, Horne did not spell out the implications of China’s growing space clout on the US ability to respond to any Chinese attack on Taiwan.—Reuters