How China's Aerospace Force Is Taking Shape A Year After It's Formation

On 24 January this year, Xi Jinping conducted his annual Lunar New Year inspection of China’s armed forces. Units from across the country appeared on his screen.

Then the feed cut to a station of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Aerospace Force, less than a year old at that time, having been formed in April 2024. A tall structure, nearly six storeys high, filled the frame, with its octagonal face lined with dozens of antennas.

Standing before it, the troops delivered a message to Xi: “We will strictly monitor the battlefield to ensure that if there is any situation, we respond immediately.”

The installation was a P-band phased array radar, similar in appearance to US PAVE PAWS radars developed during the Cold War to detect a missile launched from as far away as 5,000 km. It is part of China’s growing ballistic missile early warning system, and it had only recently been assigned to the Aerospace Force.

The broadcast was the first close-up of the Aerospace Force in action, offering an early glimpse of how the PLA’s newest branch is taking shape.

Origin and Rationale

The Aerospace Force was born out of both ambition and necessity. On paper, its creation in April 2024 was presented as another milestone in Xi Jinping’s sweeping effort to refashion the Chinese military. The Central Military Commission (CMC) announced that the Strategic Support Force (SSF), a hybrid organisation cobbled together during the 2016 reforms, was being dissolved and replaced with three distinct services: the Aerospace Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Information Support Force.

Unlike the army, navy, or air force, these new branches bypass the theatre commands entirely and report straight to the CMC, a signal that their missions are national, strategic, and inseparable from planning at the highest level.

The official announcements described the change as a natural evolution. In truth, however, the PLA had long struggled to bring order to its space portfolio.

For decades, responsibilities were scattered across different bodies. Launch sites and bases were run by the now-defunct General Armaments Department, missile and rocket technologies belonged to the Second Artillery Corps (later reborn as the Rocket Force), and air surveillance radars sat with the Air Force. No single organisation held the reins.

The 2016 reforms tried to solve this problem by creating a space systems department inside the SSF. On paper, this was supposed to consolidate all of the PLA’s aerospace activities. In reality, it controlled little more than back-end remote sensing and communication links.

The satellite bases remained elsewhere, the key radars and early warning systems were still owned by the Air Force, and the rocket technologies continued under the Rocket Force. The space department’s leader was only a corps-level major general, a mid-tier officer in a system where the service chiefs all carried full general rank. That meant that when disputes arose, the space side had little clout to impose order.

By 2024, the experiment had run its course. The SSF was quietly dissolved, and its space department was elevated into the Aerospace Force, now led by an officer of theatre deputy commander grade, senior enough to command attention from the other services.

The reorganisation, in both structure and symbolism, mirrored the creation of the US Space Force a few years earlier. What Beijing once treated as a sub-department buried inside a support force was now a full-fledged service, standing alongside the army, navy, air force, and rocket force as an equal pillar of China’s military.

Organisation and Structure

The PLA Aerospace Force is organised very differently from a regional command or a typical army unit. It is strategic and functional in scope, not tied to any single theatre. It consists of a headquarters directly under the CMC and a constellation of specialised “space bases” around China that carry out specific missions.

In total, seven primary bases were identified after the reorganisation, each with a distinct focus. One of these, Base 35, the “Battlefield Environment Support” centre, was reassigned to the new Information Support Force.

Rather than having subordinate theatre commands, the Aerospace Force’s bases all report directly to its headquarters. In wartime, these units would provide satellite navigation, communications, reconnaissance, early warning, and other support to all theatre commands, while also carrying out centrally directed strategic space missions.

This flat, high-level structure contrasts with the more regionally distributed Army or Air Force, allowing the CMC to integrate space effects rapidly into PLA operations nationwide.

The Seven Space Bases

Key to understanding the Aerospace Force are its seven space bases, dispersed across China. Each is roughly corps-level in size and has a distinct mission.

1) Base 23 – Maritime Tracking and Control: Base 23 serves as the PLA’s only ocean-based telemetry, tracking, and control formation. Operating the Yuanwang-class space tracking ships along with their shore support facilities, it extends China’s ability to provide mobile tracking and relay coverage for satellite launches and intercontinental missile tests across the world’s oceans.

2) Base 25 – Polar-Orbit Launches: The Taiyuan launch complex is primarily tasked with placing satellites into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, supporting missions ranging from weather monitoring to military reconnaissance. Its inland location also makes it suitable for testing medium-range ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missile systems. Under the Aerospace Force, it has retained these roles and is believed to work closely with China’s missile forces in the development of kinetic interceptor technologies.

3) Base 26 – Satellite Control: Base 26 acts as the ground backbone of China’s space operations. It runs the nationwide network of tracking stations and control centres, most prominently the Xi’an centre and Beijing’s Aerospace Flight Control Centre, which oversees crewed Shenzhou flights. Its duties cover satellite command, telemetry reception, and management of overseas tracking facilities. By combining these responsibilities with Base 37’s role in monitoring objects in orbit, the Aerospace Force has brought routine satellite control and space surveillance under one command structure.

5) Base 35 – Battlefield Environment Support: Base 35, the Battlefield Environment Support Base, is a corps leader–grade unit located in Wuhan. Its primary role is to deliver positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) support to the PLA, ensuring reliable geolocation and synchronisation for military operations. In addition, it manages the use of satellite imagery for geospatial intelligence. By centralising these functions, the Aerospace Force has created a dedicated hub for space-based battlefield support.

6) Base 36 – Research and Testing: Base 36 is a newly established formation tasked with testing and evaluating space systems. Officially, its mission is to carry out demonstrations, trials, and assessments for new weapons and equipment. In practice, it serves as the PLA’s proving ground for satellite technologies, anti-satellite weapons, and launch hardware, and has taken part in exercises involving electronic warfare and space-based information confrontation with other branches of the military.

7) Base 37 – Early Warning: Base 37 is dedicated to space situational awareness and missile early warning. Its mission is to detect, track, and catalogue satellites and orbital debris while providing alerts on threats to Chinese spacecraft or incoming missile launches. Built from a mix of tracking units, radar elements, and new sensors, it operates multiple large phased-array radar sites across China.

By integrating these assets, the Aerospace Force gains a unified surveillance network capable of monitoring adversary satellites, spotting missile launches in real time, and supporting both defence and offence, whether by distinguishing natural disruptions from hostile interference or cueing anti-satellite operations.

Together, these bases give the Aerospace Force the ability to launch, operate, and defend satellites on a scale China has never had before. The US Defence Department notes that the ASF now runs a global network of tracking and control stations and has assumed responsibility for virtually all of the PLA’s space missions, from routine satellite management to space surveillance and even space warfare. In effect, Beijing has rewired its once-fragmented space apparatus into a single, unified command.

Aerospace Force’s Arsenal

Counterspace capabilities remain Beijing’s most closely guarded project, rarely acknowledged in public, and are now likely to be consolidated under the Aerospace Force. Officially, Beijing has admitted to only one anti-satellite test, the 2007 strike that shattered a weather satellite and scattered debris across low Earth orbit.

But the past two decades have produced mounting evidence, including unexplained missile launches, suspicious satellite manoeuvres, and academic papers on directed-energy weapons, that China has been quietly assembling a full suite of counterspace tools.

The most visible leg of this arsenal is the development of direct-ascent ASAT missiles, essentially modified ballistic missiles armed with hit-to-kill interceptors. In 2007, the SC-19 destroyed a weather satellite in low Earth orbit, roughly 860 kilometres up.

Subsequent tests, including in 2010, 2013, and 2018, involved variants such as the DN-2 and DN-3, believed capable of reaching medium-Earth orbit or even geostationary orbit. US officials have stated that these systems demonstrate “the most advanced direct-ascent ASAT capability outside the United States.”

China has not repeated a debris-creating intercept since 2007, likely out of concern for the diplomatic backlash. But it has continued to test missile interceptors in ways that look indistinguishable from ASAT development. A missile designed to destroy a satellite looks much like a missile designed to shoot down an incoming ballistic warhead, and China has been developing both. The dual-use nature of these systems makes it easier for Beijing to deny intent, even as the technology matures.

More ambiguous, but potentially more dangerous, are China’s experiments in co-orbital ASAT operations. Starting in 2010, Chinese satellites were observed manoeuvring unusually close to one another. By 2013, one satellite released a smaller sub-satellite that appeared to approach and grapple it. These were explained as peaceful “rendezvous and proximity operations,” the same skills needed for refuelling or repairing satellites. Yet they are also the exact skills required to disable or shove an adversary’s satellite out of orbit.

In 2024, a series of five experimental satellites conducted manoeuvres that US officials described as “dogfighting practice” in low Earth orbit. One reportedly shadowed a foreign commercial satellite for several days. Analysts interpreted this as a rehearsal of co-orbital ASAT tactics, sidling up close, waiting for the right geometry, then interfering physically or electronically. A weaponised version could carry a robotic arm, a grappling device, or even a small explosive charge.

Perhaps more worrisome are the non-kinetic counterspace tools that leave little debris and provide plausible deniability. Chinese researchers openly publish on the use of high-powered lasers to dazzle or blind the sensors of imaging satellites. Several ground-based laser sites are believed to be operational, capable of interfering with satellites in low Earth orbit.

Electronic jamming is another line of effort. Open-source reporting suggests that China has deployed both ground-based and satellite-borne jammers designed to disrupt communications and GPS signals. In one case, analysts identified a Chinese satellite in geostationary orbit suspected of carrying a jamming payload, a sign that Beijing is exploring how to interfere with enemy satellites over vast areas.

Cyber operations round out this toolkit. PLA writings describe offensive cyber measures aimed at penetrating satellite command networks or spoofing ground-station signals. In practice, such attacks could allow China to seize control of an enemy satellite without ever firing a missile, the ultimate bloodless kill.

However, the Aerospace Force’s mission is not only to deny others the use of space. Equally central is the task of ensuring that China’s own space-enabled operations remain uninterrupted. At the heart of this lies Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT), the invisible infrastructure that keeps modern militaries, economies, and digital networks in sync.

Every missile strike, drone flight, and encrypted message depends on precise location and time data. That dependence is also a vulnerability. Satellite signals are faint, easy to jam, and deceptively simple to spoof. Western forces, deeply reliant on GPS, are exposed to precisely the kinds of disruptions that China has demonstrated it can cause.

Beijing’s answer has been to build layers of redundancy into its own PNT system, with Base 35 ensuring reliable access for the PLA, making it far harder to cripple. The BeiDou constellation already outnumbers GPS satellites and mixes orbits to provide denser coverage, while new low-Earth orbit PNT satellites promise even stronger, jam-resistant signals. On the ground, an extensive fibre-linked timing grid and a national eLoran network provide independent backups, broadcasting signals millions of times stronger than those from space.

Taken together, these overlapping systems create a “PNT triad”: satellites, terrestrial transmitters, and fibre, designed to survive attacks that might cripple foreign forces. In a Taiwan crisis, the asymmetry could be decisive. US and allied units would find their navigation degraded, while Chinese forces continued to move and fight with precision.

For now, however, it remains unclear which branch of the PLA controls these systems. Historically, direct-ascent ASATs were tied to the Rocket Force, lasers and jammers to the Air Force, and cyber operations scattered across various technical departments. Even the co-orbital satellites may have been developed under China’s civilian space programme, providing yet another layer of deniability.

But the creation of the Aerospace Force points to an inevitable centralisation. Just as the US Space Force consolidated America’s military space functions, the Chinese leadership has signalled that space warfare needs a single home. If the Aerospace Force does not already command China’s ASAT arsenal, it almost certainly will.

As one Chinese analyst put it, “several drivers in one carriage” is no way to fight.