U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2009)

U.S. Department of Defense
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs)

News Transcript

Presenter: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
September 16, 2009

Secretary Gates Question and Answer Session at the Air Force Association's Annual Conference, National Harbor, Md.

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MODERATOR: Thank you, sir.  And the next question has to do with our growing reliance on space.  And our services and certainly our nation and the world continue to rely heavily and even more so on our space capabilities.  Now, what we are doing to address the potential threat to our space assets that have been appearing over the past several years?

SEC. GATES: Well, this is a -- this is a worry for me, and especially once the Chinese demonstrated their anti-satellite capabilities.  They are working on them.  Clearly, the Russians have some capabilities in this area.  Others may have in the years ahead and maybe in the not-too-distant future.

So I think we have to look at it in a couple of ways.  How can we make what we do put in space more survivable?  But also, what kind of alternatives can we develop in the atmosphere to be able to provide us at least short-term substitutes for space assets should they be denied to us?  And I would tell you we're not -- we've made some good progress, but we've got a long way to go in this area.

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