Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
South Korea will launch its first satellite with a synthetic aperture radar by year-end, with another observation spacecraft using an electro-optical sensor due to follow about six months later. Together they will bring the number of launches of locally built satellites to five, helping develop the country's nascent space technology. It has two domestically built satellites in orbit now.
How far is China's military reach? The answer depends on what it wants to do. A Chinese warship deployed to the Mediterranean this year, so, by that yardstick, global reach is at hand. But the isolated ship only supported civilian evacuations from Libya, and had no real military potential.
