State Department's Frank Rose Presses Case on Chinese ASAT Test

State Department official Frank Rose pressed the case yesterday that the Chinese conducted another antisatellite (ASAT) test on July 23.  This is only the second time the U.S. Government has accused China of conducting an ASAT test — other analysts insist there have been others — and Rose’s comments reemphasized a statement released by the State Department on July 25 perhaps to raise the visibility of the U.S. government’s concern.

The July 25 statement  from the State Department asserted that China conducted a non-destructive ASAT test on July 23 and called on China to “refrain from destabilizing actions.”   China announced it was a missile intercept test.

Rose said yesterday at U.S. Strategic Command’s Deterrence Symposium that “Despite China’s claims that this was not an ASAT test; let me assure you the United States has high confidence in its assessment, that the event was indeed an ASAT test.”  Russia also has ASAT weapons, he continued, citing congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  Rose, who is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said ASAT systems are “both destabilizing and threaten the long-term security and sustainability of the outer space environment.”

Rose’s remarks then returned to the familiar themes that space is congested and contested and in need of  voluntary, non-legally binding Transparency and Confidence Building Measures (TCBMs) such as those to which China and Russia agreed last year through the United Nations (U.N.) Group of Governmental Experts (GGE).  He also cited the “important multilateral initiative” being pursued through development of an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities as well as efforts within the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

The key point was his public, official insistence that China conducted another ASAT test.   There is no disagreement that China conducted an ASAT test in 2007, destroying one of its own satellites and earning international condemnation because of the resulting cloud of orbital debris that will imperil satellites in low Earth orbit indefinitely.  China conducted “missile intercept” tests in 2010 and 2013 that some Western analysts also assert were ASAT tests, but the U.S. Government has not publicly placed them in that category.   This is only the second time that the U.S. Government has accused China of an ASAT test.  Rose allowed that this was a “non-destructive” test even though the rest of his comments stressed the grave consequences of debris-generating ASAT systems.