US faces biggest threat in space from China, Russia: American general

A top American general says the United States faces the "most challenging threat" in space from China followed by Russia.

General Bradley Chance Saltzman, the US Chief of Space Operations, told reporters on Saturday night that space has "fundamentally changed" in just a few years due to a growing arms race between great powers, AFP reported on Sunday.

Saltzman was speaking on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where he highlighted the importance of technologies including anti-satellite missiles, ground-based directed energy and orbit interception capacities.

"We are seeing a whole mix of weapons being produced by our strategic competitors," he said, adding, "The most challenging threat is China but also Russia.”

"We have to account for the fact that space as a contested domain has fundamentally changed. The character of how we operate in space has to shift, and that's mostly because of the weapons (China) and Russia have tested and in some cases operationalised," he said.

"Adversaries are leveraging space... targeting and extending the range of their weapons," noted Saltzman.

"That's really the change that happens inside the domain,” he stated.

The US general made the remarks amid surging US-China tensions over the US military shooting down a Chinese balloon, saying it was monitoring US military and nuclear facilities. China however has rejected the US allegations and said it was a weather balloon.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday that Washington's "hysterical" reaction had damaged US-China relations.

He called the US shooting down the Chinese weather balloon an "absurd" act that had violated international norms.

MG