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Galileo: Why the US is unhappy with China
The accuracy of the information that the new system will provide is superior to that currently assured by Washington's Global Positioning System (GPS), which means that Beijing's cruise and ballistic missiles, combat aircraft and navy will have highly effective navigation and target-finding instruments at their disposal.
Satellite navigation entered a new era at the end of 2005. On December 28, an experimental 600-kilogram spacecraft named Giove-A was launched into orbit on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Its mission: demonstrating the key technologies required by Galileo, the EU sat-nav system. Once fully deployed, the EU system will feature 30 satellites (27 operational plus three active spares), positioned on three circular medium earth orbit (MEO) planes - at an altitude of 23,616 kilometers above Earth - with an orbital plane inclination of 56 degrees with reference to the equatorial plane. Galileo will provide a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control, and assure interoperability with the other two global satellite navigation systems, the United States' GPS and Russia's GLONASS (Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System). This year, the EU plans to launch up to four operational satellites for the in-orbit validation (IOV) phase. It is hoped that the full operational capability (FOC) phase will be reached in 2008, thanks to the remaining satellites. Since Galileo will make its service available under all but the most extreme circumstances - and will inform users within seconds of a failure of any satellite - it will mark a significant improvement in sat-nav technology. It will thus be regarded as a priceless tool for applications in which safety is crucial, such as running trains, driving cars and landing aircraft. Because of the military nature of America's GPS system, Washington cannot in fact guarantee service continuity in the event of a major crisis. The EU countries, along with China and Israel, have therefore been insisting on the need to launch an independent, civilian-run system to overcome this drawback.
A quick look at how Washington has reacted to the EU's sat-nav ambitions since they were first expressed speaks volumes about Galileo's strategic potential. On December 1, 2001, then US deputy secretary of state Paul Wolfowitz sent a letter to EU defense ministers to "convey [his] concerns about security ramifications for future NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] operations if EU proceeds with Galileo satellite navigation services". Wolfowitz and the Pentagon were convinced the EU sat-nav infrastructure could hamper the ability of the US to deny GPS to enemies in times of military operations; moreover, he wrote, the US was concerned that Galileo's Public Regulated Service (PRS) would have "features of the GPS military signal", and that the "civil forum" used by the European Commission could not "provide the proper venue to fully assess" [2] Galileo's security implications.
Then, after the project had been officially launched in May 2003, China joined up a few months later, in September 2003, by investing US$259 million in the satellite tracking system. The US now had two main worries about Galileo: how to avoid possible malfunctions and useless duplications in the trans-Atlantic security system, and, above all, what to do about China's participation.
After four months of negotiations, the EU and the US reached an agreement on Galileo and GPS at the end of the summit held in Ireland on June 26, 2004: the two systems would "navigate side-by-side", avoiding interference with each other's signals. The deal stressed the commercial nature of Galileo, but its military potential remains obviously unaffected by such statements. In fact, after the United States' first vigorous reactions in 2001-02, the rise of the independent EU-sponsored sat-nav system has been proceeding consistently since 2003, along with a new phase in de facto Sino-European strategic relations. And it's not difficult to understand why China wants to take a ride on the EU's high-tech spacecraft: in today's strategic environment, space power is the decisive enabler of air power. "When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the first coalition assets to make their presence felt on the scene were not air, naval or land forces but rather the allied space systems already on orbit high above the gathering storm." The supporting role of GPS was pivotal in assuring strategic air dominance to the US in the Gulf War, and since then the world definitively discovered how the concept of air power - and of power itself - had changed thanks to space technology. Undoubtedly, "Galileo will improve the ability of armed forces to coordinate the movement of units in battle, increasing their effectiveness." But it will also "improve the precision of weapons-guidance systems so that bombs and missiles hit their targets more accurately". When Galileo is fully operative, it will not be difficult to take advantage of it for military purposes. China, no less than the EU and the US, is well aware that the potential for transforming civilian utilizations into military ones already exists in the project. By installing transmitting devices in bombs, the precision strike capabilities of the attacking side would be tremendously enhanced, thanks to signals sent by Galileo's satellites. No wonder, then, that Taiwan - and its security provider, the US - is not so terribly happy about Beijing's access to the EU's high-tech pearl. The very balance of power in China's maritime realm is at stake. In today's context of quickly changing geopolitical equilibria, the EU and US arms embargo on China is by right one of the hottest issues. And the interesting thing is that although the question of lifting this embargo is frequently debated at the highest political level in trans-Atlantic and European institutions, few seem to be aware that its strategic meaningfulness may already be waning - not only, or not primarily, because of Paris's increasing eagerness to end it, but because of three structural aspects. First and foremost, Europe's move to characterize its cutting-edge satellite system as civilian-only is driven by two main considerations. The first is its careful diplomatic stance in relation to Washington's worries. The second is that anything and everything of a declaredly military nature tends to be unpopular with European citizens, and thus becomes more difficult to fund. But in the end, few can doubt that the next generation of Chinese cruise missiles will be guided by Galileo's (civilian) signals.
Third, despite the EU's political cautiousness and its close partnership in trans-Atlantic security institutions, a Sino-European strategic relationship seems to be already in an early, but increasingly important, stage of development. And at a glance, its first effect on the global balance of power will be to strengthen Beijing's influence in the Pacific region. Posted by: Steve White 2006-02-13 |
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