Why China’s reusable rocket breakthrough matters for the PLA’s ‘kill chain’

Defence experts say breaking reusability bottleneck could give Chinese military a combat edge through rapid satellite deployment

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst with the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s defence strategy programme, said space was the most crucial operational domain in modern warfare.

He said modern militaries relied heavily on space for everything from communications and battlespace awareness to positioning, navigation and timing using systems such as GPS.

Without those abilities, militaries could be left “effectively deaf, dumb and blind”, severely degrading their ability to communicate, understand what is happening on the battlefield and conduct operations, Davis added.