Sure Shot at Sea

By Dale McFeatters

Scripps Howard News Service

The U.S. Navy's downing of an out-of-control spy satellite on the first shot was an impressive tour de force of skill and technology. Among those most impressed ― perhaps ``alarmed" is a better word ― is the Chinese government.

A three-stage SM-3 missile, reconfigured on the fly for this particular mission, was launched from a Navy cruiser far out in the Pacific Wednesday night and, a few minutes later and 130 miles up, slammed into the 5,000-pound satellite at closing speeds of 22,000 mph.

The worry was that, left to itself, the big satellite might fall on an inhabited area with its 1,000-pound tank of toxic rocket fuel intact. A slightly lesser worry was that enough of the highly secret satellite might fall intact into the wrong hands. But the preliminary reports are that the missile hit incinerated the fuel and shattered the satellite into parts small enough to burn up in the atmosphere.

The technical road to a successful interceptor-missile system has been long, frustrating and expensive ― $12 billion a year currently ― but this successful test showed that the Pentagon has achieved a significant threshold of performance. While the test was done for benign purposes, it still has strategic implications that were not lost on the Chinese.

The Chinese government has urged the United States to share ``all the necessary information and relevant data" we learned from the test with ``the international community," meaning China and perhaps Russia.

China said this was a dangerous first step toward the militarization of space. China and Russia have been trying to convince us to sign a ban on weapons in space that would effectively limit our right to deploy missile-defense systems.

Note that the U.S. government disclosed the problem of the runaway satellite well in advance, and that the plan to shoot it down was widely and publicly discussed. Almost immediately after the intercept, the Pentagon had a detailed briefing ― with video.

Recall last year when China tested an anti-satellite weapon against one of its old weather satellites. The test was not announced and the Chinese refused to say right away what they had done.

The interception was done in much higher orbit, leaving a debris field to endanger other spacecraft. And they have not shared ``all the necessary information and relevant data."

But they were right to be impressed. Go, Navy!

Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).