Two events at the end of June involving members of the US Congress, playing up the alleged threat to US satellites from China and Russia, show that such scare-mongering is all the rage in Washington, DC. “We are so dependent on space for everything we do in our daily lives, we really have no idea. It’s not just our TV, our internet; it’s our ATMs, our banking, all forms of internet and communication,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) , chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said at The Hill’s “Future of Missile Defense'’ event on June 30. “Increasingly, rival nations are looking at ways of taking out our satellites. Hitherto, the space assets we have, have been unprotected and we didn’t fear for them at all. Now other nations are spending many billions of dollars to try to develop capabilities to destroy our satellites in that unfriendly domain,” Cooper said.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Cooper’s GOP opposite number on the same subcommittee, said the U.S. is taking steps to guard against any attempt to sabotage satellites. “We’re working diligently to both strengthen our space assets and to respond to what our adversaries are doing. It’s been widely publicized that Russia and China have both tested systems that would attack satellites and would destroy them. We need to make certain that we can sustain our space capabilities,” Turner said.
