WASHINGTON, 09 December 2021, (TON): The Ceres-1 launch vehicle of the Chinese aerospace company Galactic Energy has successfully launched five satellites into orbit for reconnaissance and scientific purposes.

The US fears that Beijing will overtake Washington in the space race, and this may have a military dimension.

Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum, US Deputy Chief of the US Space Force, General David Thompson, warned that by the end of the decade, China could “overtake the US in space capabilities.”

According to the general, the Chinese “on average create, deploy and upgrade their space capabilities twice as fast as the United States.”

The Director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries (ISAA) told “yes, China really pays a lot of attention to the development of its space program. In fact, they actively mix civilian and military launches. Over the past five years, China has dramatically increased them. All these facts give rise to concerns in the US.”

Maslov said “however, there is no exact answer to the question of how effective Chinese space technology can be in real combat conditions, since Beijing does not publish most of the technical parameters of what exactly it is launched into space.”