China “has rapidly advanced in space in a way that few people can appreciate,” Space Force official says.
BY: AUDREY DECKER, STAFF WRITER FOR DEFENSE ONE
The U.S. military has long held a key advantage over China’s: it can hit mobile targets at extremely long distances. But that “monopoly is over,” the Space Force’s intel chief said Thursday.
China is building a massive architecture of remote-sensing satellites to help target U.S. forces if they move to defend Taiwan in a conflict, said Maj. Gen. Greg Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “It’s to provide indications and warnings of sailors, Marines, airmen, trying to move west, if directed, to defend freedom. They will now—in a way that we’re not comfortable talking about in America—they will be inside a rapidly expanding weapons engagement zone,” Gagnon said Thursday at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
