NEW DELHI: The opening lines in MIT’s prestigious journal ‘Technology Review’ (Feb 21, 2021) are about a massive landslide in south China’s Hunan province in June last year that swept away houses and cattle. There was minimal or no loss of human lives in this area of 33 villages, all because of a constellation of satellites positioned 21,000 km above in space that detected subtle shifts in the land surface. Subsequent alerts warned of accelerated surface sliding because of heavy rain, ensuring timely evacuation of the villages.
In July last year, China declared operational the BeiDou navigation satellite system comprising 35 satellites (27 in medium earth orbit, five in geostationary orbit, three in inclined geosynchronous orbit). Various reports (some of them of Chinese origin) say BeiDou is more “visible” than the U.S. GPS, Europe’s Galileo or Russia’s Glonass, and that over 100 countries have already signed onto it.
What is becoming increasingly obvious is the military implication of BeiDou. That as commercial space technologies get militarized, China will use this constellation to test and refine “counter space missions”. While outwardly claiming that it is committed to ensuring peace and stability in outer space, Beijing is building its space capabilities with the aim of ensuring other countries cannot interfere or intervene in the Indo-Pacific where it deems its interests are paramount.
BeiDou will help the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) target fixed enemy positions with missiles while also ensuring that navigation services do not get affected. Missiles can also be directed at enemy ships operating in the South China Sea or the Pacific Ocean, it can track and guide its own forces towards target areas and is thus able to counter any U.S. or adversarial move. The BeiDou system is 5G capable, which means China can bring to bear seamless military command and control acting in real time.
Most important, BeiDou frees China from the ‘tyranny’ of GPS. Dependence on the latter made China vulnerable and circumscribed its freedom of manoeuvre. Now it has the flexibility to carry out reconnaissance, gather intelligence of every kind including imagery in real time, coordinate and calibrate its response to whatever threat is emerging and strike at the time it deems most opportune.
BeiDou is backed by a sophisticated network operating from deep within China and also on Antarctica, the icy continent where it is setting up Great Wall Station. The station violates the Antarctica Treaty of 1958 that sought to demilitarize the continent and ensure it is used only for scientific purposes. But China has pushed on regardless.
The Great Wall Station is intended to improve the accuracy of the BeiDou network. So the station operates high tech equipment including receivers that will home in on a user’s signals to within 30-odd feet and that too within seconds. This is a significant capability especially in the event of hostilities. Incidentally, this station acting in concert with BeiDou networks in China and elsewhere, can communicate with the PLA’s submarine fleet anywhere in the world, issue instructions and order execution of multiple tasks. This could extend to the operation of underwater drones and sub-surface vessels.
China could be developing the capability to knock out enemy satellite signals or even jam or disrupt them. Of course, whether it can disable so many satellites as to render the enemy ‘blind’ is not clear. The sheer number of satellites up in space may militate against that. Nevertheless, China is working to strengthen its capability by tying up with the Russian Glonass and also the European Galileo. It has also developed anti-satellite capabilities, knocking out an old satellite some years ago. This capability is held by other space faring nations including the U.S., Russia and India, so China cannot use this without triggering retaliation.
BeiDou is a critical part of China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Beijing is incentivizing and encouraging the use of BeiDou in all the countries that join the BRI. Pakistan is a crucial cog here with a BeiDou network coming up there since 2013. Important to note that Pakistan has access to the military signals of BeiDou, the only country so far, allowing it to precisely guide its missiles, ships and aircraft.
Last word on the economics of the BeiDou network. It is being offered free of cost to the world and there are a reported 300 million users in 200 countries. Private tech companies are climbing on board the BeiDou wagon with Qualcomm among the leaders. It’s said that electric vehicle makers and aircraft companies are also on board BeiDou.
The China network presents itself as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated GPS, claiming to be more accurate and, therefore, offering better technology and internet experience. But from a strategic point of view, BeiDou is basically challenging the U.S. dominance in setting international standards, whether in IT, 5G, IoT, mobile devices and so on. China hopes to evolve an ecosystem where its tech companies (acting on the directions of the Communist Party) become the main drivers in the tech sphere, to a point where they can supplant the United States.
[/vc_column][/vc_row][/tdc_zone]
