China accelerating testing of new missiles: US intelligence report

NEW YORK: China is accelerating the testing of new medium and long-range ballistic missiles, according to new US intelligence reports.

The new Chinese missile development could affect Taiwan and US strategy toward China, especially if China were ever to attack Taiwan, the Aviation Week and Space Technology (AW and ST) reports citing the intelligence reports.

The Chinese tests indicate that China is gaining a much more powerful ability to militarily deter the US or attack US soil or assets such as aircraft carriers at sea, the report said.

The Asian giant is also demonstrating a wide range of new tactics with those missiles.

Much of this information, the report says, comes from several US Air Force Defense Support Programme (DSP) missile warning spacecraft watching China from geostationary orbit, 22,300 miles above the Earth.

The report quotes Edward Tagliaferri, a longtime independent consultant to the Air Force and Northrop Grumman on use of the spacecraft, as saying, "both the Chinese and Iranians have very vigorous test programmes. The number of (ballistic missile launch) events we are seeing with DSP are increasing."

"China's missile testing is surpassing anything since the Soviet Union's missile buildup of the 1960s," John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, says in the Aviation Week report.

"It is as if China was in near war-time production of missiles ... in what amounts to the largest missile production and test rate seen since the Cold War with the Soviet Union," Pike adds.

China, the report says, is beginning an unprecedented surge in the flight test of new ballistic missiles at the same time that the US is starting a lengthy transition of missile-warning satellite systems, critical for providing intelligence on this test activity.

The current DSP missile-warning spacecraft and new Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) spacecraft, just starting to be launched, have a primary job of attack warning.

But the powerful infrared telescopes on the DSPs are especially providing vital intelligence on new Chinese, as well as Iranian, missiles and tactics.

DSP development is managed by the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles AFB, Calif.

While recent media focus has been on Iranian missiles, "there is much more going on inside the Chinese missile programmes than is generally known to the public," according to another analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. China's January anti-satellite weapons test was only the most spectacular manifestation of this new strategic push by China, he says.

And with new Chinese flight-test activity to monitor, the DSP programme has major initiatives underway to extract more intelligence- and warning-related information out of the infrared data stream from each of the spacecraft, USAF Lt Col Joe Coniligio, DSP programme director at SMC is quoted as saying.