美国太空战争网站3月9日报道

法国航天司令部自3月8日始，开展首次太空军事演习，主要模拟监视太空潜在危险目标以及对法卫星可能构成的威胁，演习命名为“紫苑X”，将持续至3月12日，美国航天部队和德国航天局也参加了这次演习。法国航天司令部司令米歇尔·弗雷德林对媒体公布，这是一次“压力测试”，也是法国历史乃至欧洲历史上的第一次太空军事演习。她称，为了缩小与中国、俄罗斯和美国的差距，法国要发展激光反卫星武器和太空监视能力。法国航天司令部2019年正式组建，2019至2025年航天项目计划投资50亿美元，到2025年，航天部队人数达500人。

France conducts first military drills in space

by AFP Staff Writers  Paris (AFP) March 9, 2021

France has begun its first military exercises in space to test its ability to defend its satellites, in a sign of the growing competition between world powers in Earth’s orbit.

Michel Friedling, the head of France’s newly created Space Command, called the exercises a “stress test of our systems” and said they “were a first for the French army and even a first in Europe.”

Codenamed “AsterX” in a nod to the first French satellite Asterix from 1965, the drills will simulate the monitoring of a potentially dangerous space object, as well as a threat to a satellite.

“A series of events appear and create crisis situations or threats against our space infrastructure, but not only this,” Friedling told reporters from the Space Command headquarters in Toulouse in southwest France.

The new US Space Force and German space agencies are taking part in the French exercises, which began on Monday and will run until Friday.

France’s Space Command was announced in 2019 and is set to number 500 people by 2025.

“Our allies and adversaries are militarising space… we need to act,” Defence Minister Florence Parly said at the time.

She said that France planned to develop anti-satellite laser weapons and new surveillance capabilities to close the gap with rivals China, Russia and the United States.

Investments in the space programme are set to reach 4.3 billion euros ($5 billion) over the 2019-2025 budget period — a fraction of the amount spent by the United States or China.

In 2018, France accused Russia of trying to intercept transmissions from a Franco-Italian satellite used by both nations’ armies for secure communications.

The Russian satellite Louch-Olymp allegedly approached the Athena-Fidus satellite in what French authorities called “an act of espionage.”

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