China Aerospace Studies Institute September 2023
The PLA’s New Base for Space Situational Awareness—
Opportunities and Challenges for the U.S.
Kristin Burke
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) has established a
new base tailored for the military’s space situational awareness (SSA) needs.
i
While the SSF’s
Base 26 called the Xi’an Satellite Tracking and Control Center
and the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center will continue to
perform satellite telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C)
functions for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) national
satellites and astronaut communications, Base 37 will be in
charge of foreign space object identification, tracking, and
analysis, to include improving the accuracy of the PRC’s
domestic space object catalog.
1,2,3
Base 37 is probably most
similar to a mix of the U.S. Space Force’s Delta 2 and Delta 4,
and Base 37 also has a role in determining if PLA satellites
supporting warfighters are experiencing natural or human-made
interference from space. The new base will improve the PLA’s
ability to provide early warning of incoming ballistic missiles to
joint forces, and track and identify space objects’ location,
maneuvers, and operating environment.
Base 37 is composed of select units from under the
Central Military Commission’s former general departments,
PLA services, and new civilian recruits, indicating that the base
will merge and seek to better integrate existing ground and
probably space-based SSA capabilities, as well as build new
systems. Starting as early as 2018, reputable PRC netizens
discussed Base 37 as absorbing some of Base 26’s experimental
technology departments, and recent evidence indicates that some
of those departments may design ground antennas.
4,5
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The PLA’s Science of Military Strategy in 2020 defined SSA as, “capabilities [that enable] long-term tracking,
monitoring, cataloging and forecasting of targets in the entire space, especially small
space targets, providing environmental information for spacecraft launching, measurement and control, and
providing intelligence support for command and control.” (See:
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/CASI/Display/Article/2913216/in-their-own-words-2020-science-of-military-
strategy/)
Authoritative PLA literature and
media continues to use SSA when
referring to the PLA’s related
plans and capabilities, even
though the U.S. military shifted to
using the term space domain
awareness (SDA) in 2019. PLA
literature currently uses SDA only
when quoting U.S. news or
discussing U.S. plans.
If the PLA adopts the terminology
change, which it usually does, it
would probably take at least five
years (2025). The PLA first used
the word “domain” to refer to
space in the 2015 defense white
paper. The document referred to
space as a “security domain,” not
a “warfighting domain,” and
stated that the PLA would begin
making “overall planning” in all
new security domains. This
change came at least five years
after official U.S. usage of
“warfighting domain” when
referring to space.
