China’s Space Stations in Africa Come With a Military Shadow
China is planting antennas across Africa, and while the official press says “science and development,” the reality is more complicated. Beijing has spent years funding satellites, training engineers, and building ground stations across the continent. On paper, these facilities help African nations track weather, monitor crops, and manage disasters. In practice, they also give China something every modern military wants: global reach into space.
Reuters reporting shows China has built or financed a growing network of space partnerships in Africa, including satellite ground stations that collect and process imagery and telemetry. Chinese technicians often remain involved long after ribbon-cuttings, and agreements frequently allow Beijing access to the data gathered. That access is not inherently sinister. It is also not purely academic. Space infrastructure is dual-use by design. The same ground antenna that downloads crop imagery can support satellite command-and-control or help track objects in orbit.
The newest example came this month, when China handed over a satellite data-receiving station to Namibia. Officially, the site improves Namibia’s ability to process remote-sensing satellite data for environmental and economic planning. It also adds another node to China’s global space network in the Southern Hemisphere, a region where tracking coverage is valuable for monitoring satellites and maintaining contact with spacecraft. Chinese engineers will continue to support operations while local staff are trained, a common feature of these partnerships.
None of this proves Beijing is building covert military bases under the guise of science. It does, however, fit squarely within China’s broader “civil-military fusion” strategy, which treats civilian infrastructure as a potential military asset when needed. U.S. and allied analysts have warned for years that overseas tracking stations can provide strategic advantages, from improved space situational awareness to potential intelligence collection opportunities. At minimum, they expand China’s ability to monitor satellites, manage its own spacecraft, and maintain a global technical footprint that can support military operations in a crisis.
African governments, for their part, want access to space technology and investment. China is offering both with relatively few political strings attached. That makes the deals attractive and, in many cases, mutually beneficial. But the cumulative effect is a slowly expanding network of facilities that strengthen Beijing’s reach well beyond its borders.
Space competition is no longer just about rockets and astronauts. It is about who owns the ground stations that keep satellites talking.
China is making sure it has plenty of places to plug in.
Unknown Drones Keep Showing Up Over U.S. Bases — and It’s Happening a Lot
They are not theoretical. They are not rare. And they are not going away.
Small, unidentified drones keep appearing over U.S. military installations and sensitive infrastructure, often enough that the Pentagon now treats them as a routine homeland security problem rather than an occasional nuisance.
Senior U.S. military leaders say incursions over Department of Defense facilities occur roughly one or two times per day across the enterprise. That includes training bases, weapons ranges, and other sensitive sites. The incidents range from obvious hobbyist flights to more sophisticated drones that appear to be conducting surveillance and then disappear without being identified. Defense officials have acknowledged that many of these aircraft are never traced back to an operator.
The problem has grown persistent enough that the Pentagon recently expanded authorities for base commanders to respond. New guidance allows installations greater latitude to detect, track, and in some cases disable drones that stray into restricted airspace. The shift reflects what defense leaders describe as a complex and evolving unmanned threat environment, one that existing laws and jurisdictional boundaries were never designed to handle.
A recent episode in Texas shows how quickly these encounters can escalate. In February, the Army deployed a directed-energy counter-drone system near Fort Bliss after suspected drone activity in the area. The presence of the system and the uncertainty around nearby airspace led the FAA to shut down operations at El Paso International Airport for several hours while officials sorted out the situation. It was a reminder that unidentified drones near military sites do not stay neatly inside base fences. They spill into civilian life.
Along the southern border, the numbers are even more striking. Pentagon officials have cited more than a thousand drone incursions per month tied to smuggling and surveillance activity. Some are linked to criminal networks. Others remain unattributed. All of them add to a growing sense that low-cost drones have become a persistent feature of the domestic security landscape.
No one is suggesting that every unidentified drone represents a foreign intelligence operation. But the volume of incidents has forced the military to invest heavily in new sensors, jammers, and even laser-based defenses. The airspace over American bases used to be quiet and controlled. Now it is contested, crowded, and often anonymous.
The drones are real. They are current. And they are showing up often enough that the Pentagon has stopped pretending this is a temporary problem.
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