Chinese Announce Successful Missile Intercept Test

From China today comes news today of a successful missile intercept test:

“BEIJING (AP) — China announced that its military intercepted a missile in mid-flight Monday in a test of new technology that comes amid heightened tensions over Taiwan and increased willingness by the Asian giant to show off its advanced military capabilities. The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Monday that ”ground-based midcourse missile interception technology” was tested within Chinese territory.  ”The test has achieved the expected objective,” the three-sentence report said. ”The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country.” Monday’s report follows repeated complaints in recent days by Beijing over the sale by the U.S. of weaponry to Taiwan, including PAC-3 air defense missiles. These sales are driven by threats from China to use force to bring the island under its control, backed up by an estimated 1,300 Chinese ballistic missiles positioned along the Taiwan Strait.”

Of course China doesn’t do anything without some express purpose, and to that end we would note that today is the 3rd anniversary of the infamous ASAT test, conducted on 11 January 2007.  Infamous, because of the on-orbit debris field it generated and near universal condemnation it engendered.  So find ourselves three years later and coincident with that date and the announcement by the US of plans to go ahead with the sale of PAC-3 batteries to Taiwan as a (small) partial counter to the hundreds of SRBMs China has deployed.

Interesting times, eh?