At the Space Foundation’s National Space Symposium held this week in Colorado Springs, Colorado, top U.S. military brass repeatedly brought up the January 11 Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test.

That ASAT activity took out China’s own but old weather satellite and created havoc in the heavens due to the huge amount of debris spread through space.

Interesting tidbits of news were that the direct ascent Chinese ASAT was done from a mobile ground platform and that the successful test followed three previous tries.

Some U.S. military brass dubbed China’s ASAT advance as a Sputnik-like event in terms of its implications.

General James Cartwright of the U.S. Marine Corps and Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command noted that the Chinese ASAT test was “not a surprise…we knew it was coming.”

“Should we be worried about it? Should we respond in space on this issue? Should we have a treaty about this? Personally, no”, Cartwright advised. He added that treaties in space are problematic.

Cartwright said that the ASAT test was a good wake-up call. Yes, it was important and significant, but a watershed moment and a requirement to go to an arms race?

“Not in my mind,” he added.

Update for April 14:

By the way, as of last Thursday morning, the U.S. Space Surveillance Network was tracking 1,715 debris from China’s ASAT destruction of the Fegnyun-1C weather satellite. A few cataloged pieces of junk have already decayed and reentered Earth’s atmosphere.

So far, there have been no anti-collision maneuvers by the International Space Station due to Fengyun-1C debris.