{"id":625424,"date":"2026-04-23T09:31:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T09:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625424\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T09:31:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T09:31:21","slug":"space-race-is-the-next-frontier-of-us-china-military-rivalry-says-commander-of-us-space-force-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/625424\/","title":{"rendered":"Space race is the next frontier of US-China military rivalry, says commander of US Space Force"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matthew<\/p>\n

April 23, 2026 \u2014 11:32am<\/p>\n

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China is making dramatic advances in outer space military technology that the emerging superpower could use against the United States and allies like Australia in a potential war, a visiting US military leader has warned.<\/p>\n

Gregory Gagnon, commander of the US Space Force\u2019s combat forces, said Beijing had developed the largest space force in the world, three times as large as America\u2019s, making it a formidable adversary in a new frontier of military competition.<\/p>\n

\"SpaceSpace has become a crucial domain in military competition between the United States and China.AP<\/p>\n

\u201cI would tell you that the United States and the United States military are the most effective space force in the world, but the rapid acceleration of the Chinese space program is concerning,\u201d Lieutenant-General Gagnon told reporters in Canberra.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not moving out slowly. They are moving out like a world-class sprinter, and they are making gains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gagnon said that China had around 70 satellites in space when Xi Jinping consolidated power in 2013, a figure that has risen to 1400 today.<\/p>\n

\"LieutenantLieutenant general Gregory J Gagnon\u200b.<\/p>\n

Gagnon, who is visiting Australia to meet with his military counterparts, said the world had reached a new \u201cdynamic point in the history of warfare where the air is no longer the high ground – space is the high ground\u201d.<\/p>\n

He warned that a \u201cprofound change in military dynamics\u201d was under way and could allow China to gain a decisive military advantage over its adversaries and change the rules of the game in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have slowly developed leverage with security and military forces in the South China Sea. I would not want them to have that leverage from outer space,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI try to remind people that space is a war-fighting domain today not because we want it to be, but because the [People\u2019s Liberation Army] has made it so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have built the weapons to attack us in space. They have practised using those weapons to attack us in space.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Gagnon added that while Russia is not the space superpower it was during the Cold War, it was still a major player and liked to position its satellites near US satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWarfare will extend to space if it\u2019s warfare against the Chinese or Russians, because they have built military forces to do this. They didn\u2019t do that just because they had nothing else to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gagnon said China\u2019s advanced remote sensing systems in space allowed its military to track the movement of Australian and US troops, which it could then attack with long-range missiles.<\/p>\n

While a war between the superpowers was not inevitable, he said the US and Australia needed to be prepared to fight China in space and go on the offensive, rather than simply defend their assets.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe launch of the Long March-5 Rocket in Wenchang, China in 2020Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must be prepared to protect, defend and, as a joint force, attack the PLA space capabilities so that they can no longer track our ships, so that they can no longer track forces,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump created the Space Force as a new branch of the military during his first term as president in 2019.<\/p>\n

A report released by the United States Studies Centre last week<\/a> found that Australia \u201clags behind its partners and allies\u201d in space and that it \u201clacks a clear strategic direction for its space priorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Drones\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia risks being left behind unless it is willing to stand on its own two feet in space,\u201d the report\u2019s authors, Kathryn Robinson and Isobel Haddow, warned as they called for a boost in funding and a new space strategy.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s new 10-year spending plan for the Australian Defence Force, released last week, said it planned between $9 billion and $12 billion on space capabilities over the next decade.<\/p>\n

This includes the delivery of a new multi-orbit defence satellite communications system designed to be used in operations in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"MatthewMatthew Knott<\/a> is the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a>, Facebook<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 23, 2026 \u2014 11:32am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-625424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}