FPI / January 5, 2025
Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
In Dec. 2024 China has revealed that it is making advances that could enable its domination of “Near Space,” which could go far to ensure that China can dominate military conflicts on Earth.
Like the United States, China has long viewed the region known as “Near Space,” or the zone from the altitude of 50 kilometers to just below 100 kilometers, or the beginning of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), as a future area of military competition.
Since the 2000s, the U.S. has considered (but not developed) platforms such as large stratospheric altitude capable airships as possible “psudosatellites” to perform communication and surveillance missions, in the event that an enemy should disable or destroy critical military satellites in orbit.
In the mid-2010s China was revealing concepts for similarly capable airships.
In addition, both have considered hypersonic speed aircraft that could operate in near space to perform surveillance and combat missions.
From these altitudes it would be much easier to attack LEO satellites with laser weapons, to deploy hypersonic bombers, or hypersonic speed surveillance aircraft that are very difficult to shoot down.
While the U.S. has invested heavily in hypersonic engine technology, it has so far only applied this to future cruise missiles and has yet to develop large hypersonic speed capable aircraft that could perform military missions.
But China is now making progress in the areas of organization and technology for combat in Near Space.
On Nov. 23, 2023, the undeclared state media South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that during the 11th China Command And Control Conference from the previous October, that researchers from National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) had revealed that a new “Command” was being created by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to conduct Near Space combat.
According to the SCMP the NUDT experts noted:
“The near-space combat force is in the process of rapid development. The establishment of relevant units is not yet mature, and combat operations have not been standardised. The understanding of near-space combat command needs to be deepened…It is necessary to adjust the hierarchy of command and control powers, selection of command methods, implementation of executive orders and support for command communication.”
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