After the establishment of the PLA's military space forces was made public, more and more foreign countries have made comparative analyses of Chinese and US aerospace forces. Foreign researchers have commented that both countries are actively using commercial companies to deploy Earth observation satellites, competing to see who launches more and who launches faster. Whoever can win this competition will be able to gain an advantage in the future information war. The reason why American researchers care about China's military spaceflight, rather than Russia, Iran, or India, is that only China can compete with the United States in the deployment of space systems in the world today. Other countries are already out of reach. And the competitiveness of the United States, in fact, is only reflected in Musk alone. Let's start by talking about what the Americans want to do. The U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are currently asking Musk to launch a constellation called the "Mobile Target Designation System." The so-called "moving target" refers to mobile missile launchers in China, Russia and other countries. The intention of indicating these targets is, of course, to strike first, either to give early warning and prepare for missile defense operations, or to take action in advance to wipe out the mobile nuclear strike forces of China and Russia. Of course, other military targets of China and Russia will also move, but the threat to the US military is not so terrible.
During the Gulf War, mobile missile launchers were a major problem for the US military. Iraq's Scud missiles can only hit an approximate shot, but they make the US military tremble. During the so-called war on terror, Iraq did not have many "Scuds", and the Taliban in Afghanistan did not even have "Scuds", but the United States came up with appropriate "moving target" designation and strike equipment, that is, long-endurance reconnaissance and combat drones, including the "Predator" and "Global Hawk", which became the signature equipment of the anti-terrorist operation. However, the experience of the battlefield in Ukraine proves that such slow drones can only be used against irregular forces. As long as the opponent has a certain air defense capability, this expensive medium-speed drone with no stealth ability is a target. The Turkish-made TB-2 drone was repeatedly shot down by Russia and withdrew from the battlefield. The Predator has also been shot down several times by Iran and the Houthis. Moreover, flying drones into the airspace of China and Russia is tantamount to taking the initiative to declare war. As a result, "moving target designation" had to find another way.
Satellites fly at an altitude of several hundred kilometers from the Earth. Military reconnaissance satellites are generally at an altitude of about 200 km, and civilian remote sensing satellites are often in orbits between 500 and 800 km above the ground. The vast majority of countries do not have missiles that can hit such a high level, so satellites have become the new darling of "moving target designation". As early as 2021, Musk's newly established "Star Shield" business unit received $1.8 billion from the National Reconnaissance Office to develop a constellation system that can cover the globe and find "moving targets". It is said that the US Special Operations Command has a similar plan, but the details are highly classified. China also has its own needs for "moving target designation", the United States does not have a land-based mobile ICBM launch system, and the "moving target" we are aiming at is, of course, an American aircraft carrier. Although the US military wants to deploy land-based Tomahawk missiles in the Philippines and is considering deploying "Dark Hawk" hypersonic missiles in the future, these missiles can only be deployed on islands in the western Pacific and cannot be moved anywhere, and it is relatively easy to monitor and destroy, and they do not pose any threat to China.
The aircraft carrier is different, although it cannot do without the support of the base group, but after leaving the port, the battle group can maneuver at high speed in a large area. If you go to war, you can do it without calling at the port for several months. In the vast Indian and Pacific Oceans, satellites are the most suitable to indicate such moving targets. Of course, the PLA will not announce whether it has used satellites to spy on US aircraft carriers. But the Americans believe that since 2015, the number of Chinese satellites in orbit has increased by 5.5 times. In the past two years alone, China has launched more than 400 satellites. In fact, most of these satellites are launched by commercial remote sensing companies, and are mainly used in the fields of agriculture and forestry, urban management, environmental protection, and land planning, but they have high resolution and clear images, and several Chinese commercial satellite companies have released satellite images of US military ports. Could these commercial satellites be used to spy on U.S. aircraft carriers scurrying around? Americans can guess for themselves.
Another point may be told to the Americans that the performance data of Chinese enterprise satellite constellations is much better than that of the United States. At present, there are two leading companies in the United States engaged in satellite earth observation, one is relatively old, called Digital Global Company; A relatively new one is called Planetary Laboratories. The former has a total of 6 satellites, all of which have relatively high resolution, and the best one reaches 0.31 meters. Planetary Lab has more than 200 satellites, but most of them are "pigeon" satellites with a resolution of only two meters, and only 20 "sky stars" with a resolution of 0.5 meters. In China, there are more than 100 satellites in the Jilin-1 constellation alone, all with a resolution of 0.5 meters or 0.75 meters. Other satellite companies have smaller constellations, but they have reached the same level of resolution. In addition, the resolution of China's satellites is not that it cannot catch up with that of the United States, but that China's Bureau of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense stipulates that it is not allowed to sell images with higher resolution, so as not to allow foreign users to take them for military use without authorization. Therefore, the resolution of the commercially available Chinese commercial satellite photos is only 0.5 meters, and the Americans can guess how much they can actually reach.
The "moving target designation system" that Musk is developing and the radar satellite remote sensing technology that he intends to use have long been launched into the sky by Chinese companies. With satellites, you also need to have the ability to launch into space. Musk is now counting on almost all rocket launches in the United States, and other rocket companies have launched less than a fraction of his number. And the number of commercial rocket companies in China is already greater than that of the United States, and these rocket companies, together with the national team, constitute a strong lineup. No matter what orbit we want to launch on, how much we want to launch, we can do it. Although Chinese companies have not yet made a breakthrough in recycling and reuse technology, as long as there are major customers who put forward demand, we can come up with more varieties and quantities of rockets than Musk. Therefore, if the United States really wants to engage in an arms race in space, China will surely win.