US weighs offensive space tactics as China satellite rivalry intensifies

The US is preparing offensive weapons to blind China’s military satellites in any future conflict, even as the two sides lack reliable channels to manage risks in an increasingly crowded orbit, defence analysts said on Tuesday.Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a former US deputy under secretary of defence for intelligence, said that Washington was openly debating how to “hold at risk” the satellites that underpin Chinese targeting of American forces in any Indo-Pacific conflict.“We’re now having to think … how do we, the United States, hold those assets at risk, so that they can’t use space to target us on the ground,” Bingen told the CSIS event. “That is really starting to spur this much more public conversation on offence, or our ability to deny the other side the use of space.”