The Pentagon sizes up China’s military strength

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I consider one of my roles as a reporter to be, “I read this so you don’t have to,” and this instance features the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military and security developments. Coming in at a whopping 212 pages, the document represents the latest in-depth, albeit unclassified, view of China’s military ambitions.

A quick CTRL+F search reveals 105 references to “satellite” – suffice to say, space is a crucial part of China’s defense strategy. In other words:

“The PRC’s goal is to become a broad-based, fully capable space power. Its rapidly growing space program—second only to the United States in the number of operational satellites—is a source of national pride and part of Xi’s ‘China Dream’ to establish a powerful and prosperous China.”

The Pentagon highlighted that the space capabilities of the Chinese military, or PLA, are continuing to “mature rapidly” thanks to “significant economic and political resources to growing all aspects of its space program.” 

China’s PLA has a “Strategic Support Force,” or SSF, under which is the “Space Systems Department”, or SSD, that leads its military space operations. The country has five launch sites and last year conducted more than 60 successful launches – triple its cadence from five years prior, but still short of the 78 the U.S. launched in 2022.

Additionally, China’s 2022 launches carried more than 180 satellites into orbit – five times what it deployed five years ago. It also operates ground stations in Namibia, Pakistan, Argentina and Kenya, plus “a handful” of support ships to track satellite and missile launches.

China operates a fleet of over 290 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites, as of March 2022. The Pentagon emphasized that most of those Chinese satellites can “support monitoring, tracking, and targeting of U.S. and allied forces worldwide, especially throughout the Indo-Pacific region.”

As for communications satellites, China has over 60 in orbit, both for military and civilian use, and “is fielding advanced communications satellites capable of transmitting large amounts of data.”

Similar to the U.S. GPS system of 31 operational satellites, the Chinese completed their BeiDou constellation with 49 operational position, navigation and timing (PNT) satellites. Much like the vast economic benefits created by the U.S. system, China has predicted BeiDou’s “products and services will be worth $156 billion by 2025,” which the country plans to export “to more than 100 million users in 120 countries.”

And, lest we forget, China has an operational system of anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles for targeting and destroying satellites in low Earth orbit. The Pentagon believes the country “probably intends to pursue additional ASAT weapons capable of destroying satellites up to geosynchronous Earth orbit.”

Lastly, China’s broader space capabilities are in the same league as those of NASA and U.S. industry: The country has an independent, operational crewed space station, and has sent robotic landers and rovers successfully to the surfaces of the moon and Mars. Additionally, it’s launched “multiple satellites” to experiment with in-orbit servicing, including a satellite launched with a robotic arm “that could be used in a future system for grappling adversary satellites.”

For what it’s worth, there is some dialogue between U.S. and Chinese officials on the civil side of things: The Office of Space Commerce’s head Richard DalBello recently met with his “Chinese counterparts” during the astronautical congress in Baku.

None of this is new, nor should come as a surprise, but it represents a key reminder of the biggest U.S. rival in the space domain. China isn’t challenging the U.S. in one particular area of space tech – it rivals our capabilities in every area, in every way.

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