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| Beijing’s rush for antisatellite arms began 15 years ago. Now, it can threaten the orbital fleets that give the United States military its technological edge. Advanced weapons at China’s military bases can fire warheads that smash satellites and can shoot laser beams that have a potential to blind arrays of delicate sensors. |
| 北京在15年前开始加紧对反卫星武器的研究。现在，它已能够威胁为美国军方提供了技术优势的轨道舰队。中国军事基地的先进武器可以发射能摧毁卫星的弹头，也可以发射有可能扰乱精密传感器阵列的激光束。 |
| And China’s cyberattacks can, at least in theory, cut off the Pentagon from contact with fleets of satellites that track enemy movements, relay communications among troops and provide information for the precise targeting of smart weapons. |
| 至少在理论上，中国的网络攻击还可以切断五角大楼和追踪敌人行动的卫星群之间的联系，转播部队之间的通讯，并为小型武器的精确打击提供信息。 |
| Among the most important national security issues now facing President Biden is how to contend with the threat that China poses to the American military in space and, by extension, terrestrial forces that rely on the overhead platforms. |
| 当下，拜登总统面临的最重要的国家安全问题之一就是，如何应对中国对美国太空军队——以及在更广泛意义上，对依赖空中平台的地面部队——构成的威胁。 |
| The Biden administration has yet to indicate what it plans to do with President Donald J. Trump’s legacy in this area: the Space Force, a new branch of the military that has been criticized as an expensive and ill-advised escalation that could lead to a dangerous new arms race. |
| 拜登政府尚未表明将如何处理特朗普总统在这一领域留下的遗产：太空军。这个美国军队的新分支被指为一次代价高昂而不明智的扩张，有可能导致一场危险的新军备竞赛。 |
| Mr. Trump presented the initiative as his own, and it now suffers from an association with him and remains the brunt of jokes on television. But its creation was also the culmination of strategic choices by his predecessors, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, to counter an emboldened China that raised bipartisan alarm. |
| 特朗普将这个倡议说成是他自己的，太空军也因为和他的联系受到嘲弄，至今仍是电视上的笑柄。但它的诞生，也是他的前任乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)和贝拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)总统所做的战略选择推动的结果，那些战略选择是为了对抗咄咄逼人的中国，这一点曾让两党都感到警惕。 |
| “There’s been a dawning realization that our space systems are quite vulnerable,” said Greg Grant, a Pentagon official in the Obama administration who helped devise its response to China. “The Biden administration will see more funding — not less — going into space defense and dealing with these threats.” |
| “人们逐渐开始意识到，我们的太空系统相当脆弱，”奥巴马政府参与设计对华策略的五角大楼官员格雷格·格兰特(Greg Grant)表示。“拜登政府将看到更多——而非更少的资金——投入太空防务，以应对这些威胁。” |
| The protective goal is to create an American presence in orbit so resilient that, no matter how deadly the attacks, it will function well enough for the military to project power halfway around the globe in terrestrial reprisals and counterattacks. That could deter Beijing’s strikes in the first place. The hard question is how to achieve that kind of strong deterrence. |
| 保护目标是，让美国在轨道上建立起坚固的存在，无论攻击的严重程度，它都能运转良好，使得军方可以在地球的另一端投射力量，进行报复和反击行动。这可能从一开始就吓阻北京的打击。难题是，要如何实现这种强大的威慑力。 |
| Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired four-star Army general who was confirmed last week as Mr. Biden’s secretary of defense, told the Senate that he would keep a “laserlike focus” on sharpening the country’s “competitive edge” against China’s increasingly powerful military. Among other things, he called for new American strides in building “space-based platforms” and repeatedly referred to space as a war-fighting domain. |
| 上周，退役四星陆军上将劳埃德·J·奥斯汀三世(Lloyd J. Austin III)获得确认，成为拜登的国防部长。他对参议院表示，他将保持“激光般的专注”，提高美国对抗日益强大的中国军队的“竞争优势”。此外，他还呼吁美国在打造“天空平台”方面迈出新的步伐，并多次将太空称为作战领域。 |
| “Space is already an arena of great power competition,” Mr. Austin said, with China “the most significant threat going forward.” |
| “太空已成大国竞争的舞台，”奥斯汀说，中国是“未来面临的最大威胁”。 |
| The new administration has shown interest in tapping the innovations of space entrepreneurs as a means of strengthening the military’s hand — what Mr. Austin in his Senate testimony called “partnerships with commercial space entities.” The Obama and Trump administrations both adopted that strategy as a uniquely American way of sharpening the military’s edge. |
| 奥斯丁在参议院作证时表示，新政府有兴趣利用太空创业者的创新，作为加强军力的手段，他称之为“与商业太空实体的伙伴关系”。奥巴马和特朗普政府都采取了这个策略，将其作为增强美国军事优势的独特方式。 |
| Experts clash on whether the United States is doing too little or too much. Defense hawks had lobbied for decades for the creation of a military Space Corps and called for more spending on weapons. |
| 对于美国究竟是做得太少还是太多，专家存在分歧。数十年来，国防鹰派一直在游说建立一支太空军，并呼吁增加武器开支。 |
| But arms controllers see the Space Force as raising global tensions and giving Beijing an excuse to accelerate its own threatening measures. Some go further and call it a precipitous move that will increase the likelihood of war. |
| 但军备控制人士认为，太空军会加剧全球紧张局势，并让北京获得借口，加速它的威胁性手段建设。还有一些人更是声称，这是一个鲁莽之举，会诱发战争。 |
| In decades past, especially during the “Star Wars” program of the Reagan administration, conflict in space was often portrayed as shootouts in orbit. That has changed. With few exceptions, the weapons are no longer seen as circling the planet but as being deployed from secure bases. So, too, the targets are no longer swarms of nuclear warheads but fleets of satellites, whose recurring, predictable paths while orbiting the Earth make them far easier to destroy. |
| 在过去的几十年里，尤其是在里根政府的“星球大战”计划期间，太空冲突经常被描绘成轨道上的交火。时过境迁。除了少数例外，这些武器不再环绕地球运行，而是部署在安全基地。所以，目标不再是一群核弹头，而是成群的卫星，它们绕地球轨道的重复性和可预测性，使得它们更容易摧毁。 |
| A main question is whether the antisatellite moves and countermoves will lower or raise the risks of miscalculation and war. That debate is just beginning. |
| 一个主要的问题是，反卫星行动和对抗措施究竟是会降低还是增加误判及战争风险。这场辩论才刚刚开始。 |
| Beijing’s Surge |
| 北京突飞猛进 |
| For years, the Chinese studied — with growing anxiety — the American military, especially its invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The battlefield successes were seen as rooted in space dominance. Planners noted that thousands of satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles had rained down with devastating precision on Taliban forces and Iraqi defenses. |
| 多年来，中国人一直在以越来越焦灼的态度研究美国军队，特别是2001年美军入侵阿富汗和2003年入侵伊拉克。美国在战场上的成功，据信源自它的太空优势。规划人士指出，数以千计的卫星制导炸弹和巡航导弹，以毁灭性的精确度对塔利班部队和伊拉克的防御力量施以打击。 |
| While the Pentagon’s edge in orbital assets was clearly a threat to China, planners argued that it might also represent a liability. |
| 虽然五角大楼在太空方面的优势显然对中国是一种威胁，但规划人士认为，这可能也是一种负担。 |
| “They saw how the U.S. projected power,” said Todd Harrison, a space analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “And they saw that it was largely undefended.” |
| “他们看到了美国是如何投射实力的，”华盛顿智库战略与国际研究中心(Center for Strategic and International Studies)的太空分析师托德·哈里森(Todd Harrison)说。“他们发现，它基本上没有防御手段。” |
| China began its antisatellite tests in 2005. It fired two missiles in two years and then made headlines in 2007 by shattering a derelict weather satellite. There was no explosion. The inert warhead simply smashed into the satellite at blinding speed. The successful test reverberated globally because it was the first such act of destruction since the Cold War. |
| 中国从2005年开始进行反卫星试验。它在两年内发射了两枚导弹，2007年击毁一颗被遗弃的气象卫星的行动更是轰动一时。没有发生爆炸，只是惰性弹头以惊人的速度撞上了卫星。这次成功的试验在全球引起了反响，因为这样的击毁行动是冷战以来的第一次。 |
| China also sought to diversify its antisatellite force. A warhead could take hours to reach a high orbit, potentially giving American forces time for evasive or retaliatory action. Moreover, the speeding debris from a successful attack might endanger Beijing’s own spacecraft. |
| 中国还寻求反卫星力量的多样化。一枚弹头可能需要数小时才能到达高轨道，这可能会给美国军队提供规避或报复行动的时间。此外，一次成功袭击所产生的高速碎片可能会危及北京自己的航天器。 |
| In tests, China began firing weak laser beams at satellites and studying other ways to strike at the speed of light. However, all the techniques were judged as requiring years and perhaps decades of development. |
| 在测试中，中国开始向卫星发射弱激光束，并研究其他以光速攻击的方法。然而，所有技术都被判断为需要几年甚至几十年的发展。 |
| Then came the new idea. Every aspect of American space power was controlled from the ground by powerful computers. If penetrated, the brains of Washington’s space fleets might be degraded or destroyed. Such attacks, compared with every other antisatellite move, were also remarkably inexpensive. |
| 然后他们有了新的想法。美国太空力量的各个方面都由强大的计算机从地面控制。一旦遭到渗透，华盛顿太空舰队的大脑可能会被压制或摧毁。与其他反卫星行动相比，这类攻击的成本也非常低。 |
| In 2005, China began to incorporate cyberattacks into its military exercises, primarily in first strikes against enemy networks. Increasingly, its military doctrine called for paralyzing early attacks. |
| 2005年，中国开始将网络攻击纳入军事演习，主要是针对敌人的网络进行首次打击。它的军事理论越来越要求进行早期的瘫痪性攻击。 |
| In 2008, hackers seized control of a civilian imaging satellite named Terra that orbited low, like the military’s reconnaissance craft. They did so twice — first in June and again in October — roaming control circuits with seeming impunity. Remarkably, in both cases, the hackers achieved all the necessary steps to command the spacecraft but refrained from doing so, apparently to reduce their fingerprints. |
| 2008年，黑客控制了一颗名为特拉(Terra)的民用成像卫星，该卫星与军方的侦察航空器一样在低轨道运行。他们两次在毫无阻碍的情况下进入控制装置——第一次是在6月，第二次是在10月。值得注意的是，在这两起事件中，黑客都完成了控制航天器的所有必要步骤，但他们没有这么做，显然是为了减少自己留下的痕迹。 |
| Space officials were troubled by more than China’s moves and weapons. The modern history of the American military centered on building global alliances. Beijing was rushing ahead as an aggressive loner, and many officers feared that Washington was too hidebound and burdened with the responsibilities of coalition-building and arms-control treaties to react quickly. |
| 太空官员们担心的不只是中国的行动和武器。美国军队的现代史以建立全球联盟为中心。北京则是一个咄咄逼人的独行者，正在匆忙向前冲，许多官员担心华盛顿过于墨守成规，肩负着建立联盟和军控条约的责任，无法迅速做出反应。 |
| “The Chinese are starting from scratch,” Paul S. Szymanski, a veteran analyst of space warfare, argued in an Air Force journal. They’re not, he added, “hindered by long space traditions.” |
| “中国人是从零开始的，”太空战资深分析人士保罗·S·西曼斯基(Paul S. Szymanski)在一份空军杂志上称。他还说，他们不会“受到长期太空传统的阻碍”。 |
| Washington’s Response |
| 华盛顿的反应 |
| In its second term, the Obama administration made public what it called an “offset strategy” to respond to China and other threats by capitalizing on America’s technological edge. |
| 奥巴马政府在第二个任期内公开了所谓“抵消战略”，利用美国的技术优势来应对中国和其他威胁。 |
| Just as the United States had developed, first, a vast nuclear arsenal and, second, smart weapons, this so-called third offset would seek an advantage by speeding the rise of robotics, high-speed arms and other breakthroughs that could empower the armed forces for decades. |
| 正如美国的第一次抵消战略是发展庞大的核武库，第二次是发展智能武器，这种所谓的第三次抵消将通过加速机器人、高速武器和其他突破性技术的崛起来寻求优势，这些突破可能会在未来几十年增强军队的力量。 |
| Unlike earlier offsets, officials said, the objective was to rely less on federal teams than the tech entrepreneurs who were fast transforming the civilian world. |
| 官员们表示，与之前的抵消战略不同，该计划的目标是减少对联邦团队的依赖，更多依赖正在迅速改变民用世界的科技创业者。 |
| “We must really capture the commercial sector,” Robert O. Work, a deputy secretary of defense, said in a 2015 speech explaining the new initiative. |
| “我们必须真正抓住商业领域，”国防部副部长罗伯特·O·沃克(Robert O. Work)在2015年解释这项新计划的演讲中表示。 |
| The advances in space were to be defensive: swarms of small, relatively cheap satellites and fleets of recycled launchers that would overwhelm Beijing with countless targets. For Mr. Obama, innovative leaps were to do for American space forces what Steve Jobs did for terrestrial gadgets, running circles around the calcified ministries of authoritarian states. |
| 太空领域的进步原本是防御性的：成群相对廉价的小型卫星，以及大批回收的发射装置，它们将用不计其数的目标来令北京应接不暇。对奥巴马来说，创新的飞跃对美国空间部队的作用，就像史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)对地球上那些小工具的作用，是在围绕专制国家僵化的部门打转。 |
| After decades in which adversaries — from stateless terrorists to those with traditional militaries — sought to exploit narrow advantages over the more powerful United States, the Pentagon was now finding an unconventional edge all its own. |
| 几十年来，从无国家的恐怖分子到拥有传统军事力量的对手，都试图利用有限的优势来战胜更加强大的美国，现在，五角大楼正在寻找属于自己的非常规优势。 |
| The Obama administration was already applying the commercial philosophy to NASA, turning the space agency into a major funder of entrepreneurial strides. It was pumping billions of dollars into the development of private rockets and capsules meant to carry astronauts into orbit. |
| 奥巴马政府将这种商业理念应用于NASA，将这个航天机构变成了创业进步的主要资助者，为开发旨在将宇航员送入轨道的私人火箭和太空舱注入了数十亿美元。 |
| The military joined in. The beneficiaries included Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Their space companies — Mr. Musk’s SpaceX and Mr. Bezos’s Blue Origin — sought to turn rocket launchers from throwaways into recyclables, slashing their cost. |
| 军方也加入进来。受益者包括特斯拉(Tesla)创始人埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)和亚马逊(Amazon)创始人杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)。他们的太空公司——马斯克的SpaceX和贝佐斯的蓝色起源(Blue Origin)——试图将火箭发射器从废弃物变成可回收物，从而降低成本。 |
| Military officials believed that the new system would make it possible to quickly replace satellites in times of war. |
| 军方官员认为，新的系统可以在战时迅速更换卫星。 |
| The third offset also sought to shrink the size of satellites. Over decades, the big ones had grown into behemoths. Some cost $1 billion or more to design, construct, outfit, launch and keep in service. One type unfurled an antenna nearly as large as a football field. But civilians, inspired by the iPhone revolution, were building spacecraft as small as loaves of bread. |
| 第三次抵消战略还试图缩小卫星的规模。过去的几十年里，大的卫星发展为庞然巨兽。有些卫星的设计、建造、装备、发射和维护费用高达10亿美元乃至更多。其中一种卫星展开的天线几乎有一个足球场那么大。但是，受到iPhone革命的启发，民用公司建造了面包大小的航天器。 |
| Military planners saw smaller, cheaper, more numerous craft as making antisatellite targeting vastly more difficult — in some cases impossible — for an adversary. |
| 军事规划者认为，更小、更便宜、数量更多的飞行器，使反卫星工具瞄准对手的难度大大增加——在某些情况下根本不可能瞄准。 |
| By the end of the Obama administration, SpaceX was firing payloads into space and successfully returning booster rockets to Earth in soft landings. |
| 到奥巴马政府任期结束时，SpaceX已经在将载荷送入太空，并成功将助推火箭软着陆返回地球。 |
| Mr. Obama tweeted his congratulations in April 2016 when, for the first time, a SpaceX booster landed successfully on a platform at sea. |
| 2016年4月，SpaceX的一架助推器首次在海上平台上成功着陆，奥巴马发推表示祝贺。 |
| Two years later, Mr. Trump unveiled the Space Force, prompting jokes on Twitter and late-night television and even a Netflix sitcom. But in March, the unit said it had taken possession of its first offensive weapon, calling the event historic. Based on land, the system fires energy beams to disrupt spacecraft. Lt. Col. Steve Brogan, a space combat specialist, said the acquisition “puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for space as a war-fighting domain.” |
| 两年后，特朗普下令成立太空军，成了Twitter和深夜电视节目甚至是Netflix情景喜剧中的笑料。 但当年3月，该部门表示已经拥有了第一件攻击性武器，并称之为历史性事件。该系统在陆地上发射能量束，以破坏航天器。太空战斗专家史蒂夫·布罗根(Steve Brogan)中校说，此次升级为“太空军注入了‘力量’，对作为战争领域的太空至关重要”。 |
| Gravity’s Pull |
| 地心引力 |
| The stars of the current space age include not only famous entrepreneurs but a new generation of unknown dreamers and doers. |
| 当前太空时代的明星不仅包括著名企业家，还包括新一代不为人知的梦想家和行动者。 |
| Developing states, small companies and even high schools are now lofting spacecraft into orbit. New Zealand hosts a spaceport. Turkey and Peru have their own spy satellites. Tiny Luxembourg runs more satellites than Spain, Italy or Germany. India in 2019 fired an antisatellite weapon into orbit. Last year, Iran launched its first military satellite. |
| 发展中国家、小公司甚至高中都在把航天器送上轨道。新西兰拥有一个太空港。土耳其和秘鲁拥有自己的间谍卫星。弹丸之地卢森堡拥有的卫星比西班牙、意大利或德国都要多。2019年，印度向轨道上发射了反卫星武器。去年，伊朗发射了第一颗军事卫星。 |
| The United States leads in satellite tallies, mainly because of its space-age legacies and its many entrepreneurs, including those now aiding the military. The Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Cambridge, Mass., currently lists 1,425 for the United States, 382 for China and 172 for Russia. |
| 美国在卫星数量上居于领先地位，这主要是由于其太空时代的遗产以及它有许多企业家，包括资助军方的企业家。位于马萨诸塞州剑桥的忧思科学家联盟(The Union of Concerned Scientists)目前列出了美国卫星1425个，中国382个、俄罗斯172个。 |
| But China is pushing hard. For three years in a row, it has fired more rockets into space than any other country. It is now a dominating force, analysts say. The rush includes not only antisatellite weapons but many other military and scientific projects, as suggested by its recent retrieval of moon rocks. |
| 但是中国正在努力。连续三年来，它向太空发射的火箭比任何其他国家都要多。分析人士说，它现在是一支主导力量。密集的努力不仅包括反卫星武器，还包括许多其他军事和科学项目，正如最近携月球岩石返回所暗示的那样。 |
| In June, Chinese scientists reported new progress in using quantum physics to build what appeared to be the world’s first unbreakable information link between an orbiting craft and its controllers. Laser beams carried the messages. The test raised the prospect that Beijing might one day possess a super-secure network for global communications. |
| 今年6月，中国科学家报告了一项新进展，他们利用量子物理学，在轨道飞行器与其控制者之间建立了不可中断的信息链，这应该是世界首次。该技术以激光束传达信息。测试提出了这样的前景，即北京有一天可能拥有一个超安全全球通信网络。 |
| That same month, China finished deploying the last of 35 navigation satellites, the completion of a third-generation network intended to give its military new precision in conducting terrestrial strikes. |
| 同月，中国完成了35颗导航卫星的最后部署，意味着赋予其军事力量新的精度以进行地面打击的第三代网络建成。 |
| A rugged area of mountains and deserts in northwestern China hosts a tidy complex of buildings with large roofs that can open to the sky. Recently, analysts identified the site in the Xinjiang region as one of five military bases whose lasers can fire beams of concentrated light at American reconnaissance satellites, blinding or disabling their fragile optic sensors. |
| 中国西北部崎岖的山脉和沙漠地区中，有一个整齐的建筑群，这些建筑的大型屋顶可以向天空敞开。最近，分析人士将这个在新疆地区的基地确定为可以向美国侦察卫星发射激光的五个基地之一，这些激光可以使脆弱的光学传感器失去画面或失效。 |
| Mr. Biden is inheriting a range of responses to Beijing’s antisatellite moves, including arms both offensive and defensive, initiatives both federal and commercial, and orbital acts both conspicuous and subtle. Analysts call the situation increasingly delicate. |
| 拜登继承了对北京反卫星行动的一系列回应，包括进攻性和防御性武器，联邦和商业性举措以及明显和细微的发射行为。分析师称情况越来越微妙。 |
| Mr. Work, the third-offset official from the Obama era, and Mr. Grant, his former Pentagon colleague, warned in a report that Beijing might eventually beat Washington at its own game. |
| 奥巴马时代的第三次抵消战略官员沃克和他的前五角大楼同事格兰特在一份报告中警告说，北京最终可能会在华盛顿最拿手的领域击败华盛顿。 |
| “The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America’s technological superiority,” they wrote. “The same may not be true for China.” |
| “苏联人始终没能跟上，更不用说超越美国的技术优势了。”他们写道。“对于中国而言，情况可能并非如此。” |
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