By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger
    The New York Times

    Thursday 18 January 2007

    China successfully carried out its first test of an anti-satellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said Thursday.

    Only two nations - Russia and the United States - have previously destroyed spacecraft in anti-satellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid 1980s.

    Arms control experts called the test, in which a Chinese missile destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow either an anti-satellite arms race or, alternatively, a diplomatic push by China to force the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.

    "This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we've seen in 20 years," said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. "It ends a long period of restraint."

    White House officials said the United States and other nations, which they did not name, had "expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese." Despite its protest, the Bush administration has long resisted a global treaty banning such tests because it says it needs freedom of action in space.

    At a time when China is modernizing its nuclear weapons, expanding the reach of its navy and sending astronauts into orbit for the first time, the test appears to mark a new sphere of technical and military competition. American officials complained today that China made no public or private announcements about its test, despite repeated requests by American officials for more openness about their actions.

    The weather satellite hit by the missile circled the globe at an altitude of roughly 500 miles. In theory, the test means that China can now hit American spy satellites, which orbit closer to Earth than that. Experts said remnants of the destroyed satellite could threaten to damage or destroy other satellites for years or even decades to come.

    In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests and asserted the need for American "freedom of action in space."

    "It could be a shot across the bow," said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs. "For several years, the Russians and Chinese have been trying to push a treaty to ban space weapons. The concept of exhibiting a hard-power capability to bring somebody to the negotiating table is a classic cold war technique."

    Gary Samore, the director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a proliferation expert, said in an interview: "I think it makes perfect sense for the Chinese to do this both for deterrence and to hedge their bets. It puts pressure on the U.S. to negotiate agreements not to weaponize space."

    Ms. Hitchens and other critics have accused the Bush administration of conducting secret research on advanced anti-satellite weapons using lasers, which are considered a far speedier and more powerful way of destroying satellites than the cruder weapons of two decades ago.

    The White House statement, issued by the National Security Council, said China's "development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area."

    An administration official who had reviewed the intelligence about China's test said the Chinese missile launch was detected by the United States in the early evening of Jan. 11, which would have been early morning on Jan. 12 in China. American satellites tracked the launch of the medium-range ballistic missile, and later space radars saw the debris and noted that the old weather satellite had vanished.

    The anti-satellite test was first reported late Wednesday on the Web site of Aviation Week and Space Technology, an industry magazine. It said intelligence agencies had yet to "complete confirmation of the test."

    The Chinese test, the magazine said, appeared to employ a ground-based interceptor that used the sheer force of impact rather than an exploding warhead to shatter the satellite into a cloud of debris.

    Dr. McDowell of Harvard, who twice monthly publishes "Jonathan's Space Report," an e-mail newsletter, said the satellite is known as Feng Yun, or "wind and cloud." Launched in 1999, it was the third in a series. He said the satellite was a cube measuring 4.6 feet on a side, and that its solar panels extended about 28 feet. He added that it was due for retirement sometime soon but still appeared to be electronically alive - making it an ideal target.

    "If it stops working," he said, "you know you have a successful hit."

    David C. Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private group in Cambridge, Mass., said he calculated that the Chinese satellite shattered into 800 fragments that were 4 inches wide or larger, and millions of smaller pieces.

    Jianhua Li, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he had heard about the anti-satellite report but had no statement or information.

    The Soviet Union conducted roughly a dozen anti-satellite tests between 1968 and 1982, Dr. McDowell said, adding that the Reagan administration carried out its experiments in 1985 and 1986.

    The Bush administration has conducted laser research that critics say could produce a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

    The largely secret project, parts of which were made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress last year, appears to be part of a wide-ranging effort by the Bush administration to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.

    The administration's laser research is far more ambitious than a previous effort by the Clinton administration nearly a decade ago to develop an anti-satellite laser. It would take advantage of an optical technique that uses sensors, computers and flexible mirrors to counteract the atmospheric turbulence that seems to make stars twinkle. The weapon would essentially reverse that process, shooting focused beams of light upward with great clarity and force.

    Michael Krepon, cofounder of the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center, a private group that studies national security, called the Chinese test very un-Chinese.

    "There's nothing subtle about this," he said. "They've created a huge debris cloud that will last a quarter century or more. It's at a higher elevation than the test we did in 1985, and for that one the last trackable debris took 17 years to clear out."

    Mr. Krepon added that the administration has long argued that the world needs no space-weapons treaty because no such arms exist and because the last tests were two decades ago. "It seems," he said, "that argument is no longer operative."

    Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.