« Return to China Shoots Down a Second Satellite

no shootdown

The premise of this post comes from the linked China Daily article.  The China Daily article  misinterprets a Foreign Policy blog about the January 2010 Chinese BMD test.  

The Foreign Policy blog entry (presumably http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/blog/5630) did not imply that the January 2010 test was against a satellite.  There's been no evidence that the test was against an orbital object (a satellite) rather than a suborbital object, as China stated.  I haven't seen any accounts of the persistent debris one would expect nor any official challenge to the stated version of events.

Rather, the FP blogger mused whether the January interception was part of an ASAT program or a ballistic missile defense program, as the technology for those programs is very similar.  

Whether the test was indeed part of the ASAT development program is an interesting question. Whatever the answer, though, the above reports certainly aren't an indication that China is "shooting down further satellites."

It's more a demonstration of persistent miscommunications. A game of telephone, if you will: a US blog post about a Chinese paper's misinterpretation of a US blog post!  


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