Military expert urges to accelerate China's space early warning capacity building

The "Myanmar military plane incident" in December 2012 caused quite a stir on the Internet. Reports in February 2013 on "America's decision to deploy X-band radar in Japan" frequented headlines of various newspapers, a move aimed at monitoring China and Russia according to the analysis of some experts. With all that coming, people couldn't help but wonder: How is China's air defense early warning system? Can the system ensure early warning of threats to the national security?

To this end, Xiong Jiajun, professor of the Air Force Early Warning Academy of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), said that China's air defense early warning system is sound and complete. At present, its radar technology keeps pace with the world's highest level, and it even surpasses the best of foreign countries in some technical fields. When it came to the gossip resulted from the "December incident" about a weak air defense early warning system in China, Professor Xiong said that the conclusion is absolutely incorrect.

As regards the report from Japanese media on February 25, saying the U.S. government and the Japanese government reached initial consensus on deploying X-band radars in Japan, Xiong Jiajun revealed that China has also grasped the X-band radar technology. However, since China implements a strategy defensive in nature, it will never deploy such radars on its doorstep as some other countries do.

The Air Force Radar Academy changed its name to Air Force Early Warning Academy in 2011. What changes will it bring about? This change echoed the needs for systematic combat of China's military, Professor Xiong Jiajun explained. "The early warning covers a much broader area than radar detection does. We need to systematically categorize various kinds of equipment, hence the change to Early Warning Academy. From the perspective of China's military, more military colleges and universities need to formulate systematic combat factors. In terms of the concept of early warning, it requires the building of a three-dimensional and integrated early warning system that covers multiple services and arms of land, navy, air and second artillery force in order to unite all early warning forces and bring them into a better play."

On his first trip to the session as PLA deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC) this year, Professor Xiong Jiajun came up with proposal on enhancing China's strategic early warning system construction. He said that China is already strong in issuing early warnings against normal targets. It should focus on developing and discovering a new combat weaponry system from now on. For example, in America, it has orbiters and space weapons, which pose a great challenge to us in China. Therefore, China will improve its early warning system step by step and build one that monitors down from up in the outer space.

He also proposed that China should accelerate space early warning capacity building. Under the guidance of the national strategy defensive in nature, China has no military base abroad. Therefore, consolidating our capacity of early warning and detection in the outer space is of special imminence for China. Otherwise, it will face new security problems.

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