U.S. Space Force Says China Tested Fractional Orbital Weapon

In an attempt to fan away some of the fog generated by weeks of hair-raising but vague and sometimes contradictory public reports, a senior Space Force official has confirmed that Beijing’s weapons test earlier this year involved a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) that deployed a hypersonic glide vehicle, Theresa Hitchens reported for Breaking Defense recently.

Photo Insert: Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, deputy Space Force chief for operations

“I think the words that we use are important so that we understand exactly what we’re talking about here. I hear things like hypersonic missile, and I hear suborbital sometimes,” Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, deputy Space Force chief for operations, told the Mitchell Institute. It is neither of those things, he stressed.

“This is a categorically different system because a fractional orbit is different than suborbital. A fractional orbit means it can stay on orbit as long as the user determines and then it de-orbits it as a part of the flight path.”

Further, he added, it is a “very forward-edge technology capability” that Space Force quickly must figure out how to deter. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall first suggested that the test involved a FOBS in late September during the Air Force Association’s annual trade show.

A FOBS uses a rocket to boost its payload into Low Earth Orbit, which subsequently de-orbits through the atmosphere to its terrestrial target. The Soviet Union actually deployed a nuclear weapon carrying FOBS from 1969 to 1983.

The Chinese system is different, however, because it de-orbited a highly maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). Weapons systems that flirt with orbital trajectories also flirt with violating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty‘s prohibition on stationing nuclear weapons in orbit.

But during the Cold War, the Soviet Union argued the original FOBS was above board because the spacecraft carrying the warhead did not make an entire rotation of the Earth before dropping its deadly payload.

Washington then, as now, concurred with that hair-splitting interpretation — which also has been applied by both sides to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

However, Saltzman explained, a FOBS is not the same thing as a ballistic missile, the latter of which are easy to track because of their predictable trajectories. Because it is unclear where FOBS might release its payload to allow it to come back to Earth, it is difficult to predict where its weapon will impact.

And a FOBS/HGV hybrid presents even more tracking challenges because, unlike a nuclear re-entry vehicle, an HGV is highly maneuverable.

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