WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is mounting a serious effort to challenge U.S. military superiority in air and space, forcing the Pentagon to seek new technologies and systems to stay ahead of its rapidly developing rival, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Monday. 
 
 The Pentagon’s chief operating officer, speaking to a group of military and civilian aerospace experts, said China was “quickly closing the technological gaps,” developing radar-evading aircraft, advanced reconnaissance planes, sophisticated missiles and top-notch electronic warfare equipment. 
 
 While hoping for a constructive relationship with China, the Pentagon “cannot overlook the competitive aspects of our relationship, especially in the realm of military capabilities, an area in which China continues to improve at a very impressive rate,” he said. 
 
 China’s state-run news agency Xinhua late on Monday cited Xu Qiliang, a vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, as saying China must innovate even more. 
 
 “Our military’s equipment construction is shifting from catch-up research to independent innovations,” Xu said. 
 
 Work made his remarks to the inaugural conference of the China Aerospace Studies Initiative, a partnership of the U.S. Air Force and the RAND Corporation think tank. The initiative aims to boost U.S. research on China’s aerospace ambitions. 
 
 The conference came as hundreds of Chinese officials were in Washington for the three-day U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, wide-ranging talks that look at areas of mutual cooperation and address points of friction. 
 
 Asked about the timing of the military conference, Work said U.S. and Chinese leaders both see the bilateral relationship as one in which there are “measures of cooperation and measures of competition.” 
 
 “We’re hoping over time that the cooperative aspects outweigh competitive aspects,” Work added. “As the Department of Defense, we’re the hedge force. ... We say, ‘Look, here are capabilities that we see that the Chinese are developing and it’s important for us to be able to counter those.” 
 
 Work, citing a Harvard study on rising powers confronting established powers, told the conference that interactions between the two often result in war. As a result, the Defense Department must “hedge against this international competition turning more heated.” 
 
 The United States has generally felt the best hedge is a strong nuclear and conventional deterrence capable of overmatching any rival, he added. 
 
 Work said the United States has relied on technological superiority for the past 25 years, but now “the margin of technological superiority upon which we have become so accustomed ... is steadily eroding.” 
 
 To adjust, he said, the Pentagon is working to develop new technologies to maintain its edge and lower the cost of responding to attacks. Directed energy weapons, for example, might be able to shoot down missiles that cost a hundred times the price of a jolt of energy. ||||| But the Pentagon report describes something far more sophisticated: a China that has now leapt into the first ranks of offensive cybertechnologies. It is investing in electronic warfare capabilities in an effort to blind American satellites and other space assets, and hopes to use electronic and traditional weapons systems to gradually push the United States military presence into the mid-Pacific nearly 2,000 miles from China’s coast. 
 
 The report argues that China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, commissioned last September, is the first of several carriers the country plans to deploy over the next 15 years. It said the carrier would not reach “operational effectiveness” for three or four years, but is already set to operate in the East and South China Seas, the site of China’s territorial disputes with several neighbors, including Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The report notes a new carrier base under construction in Yuchi. 
 
 The report also detailed China’s progress in developing its stealth aircraft, first tested in January 2011. 
 
 Three months ago the Obama administration would not officially confirm reports in The New York Times, based in large part on a detailed study by the computer security firm Mandiant, that identified P.L.A. Unit 61398 near Shanghai as the likely source of many of the biggest thefts of data from American companies and some government institutions. 
 
 Until Monday, the strongest critique of China had come from Thomas E. Donilon, the president’s national security adviser, who said in a speech at the Asia Society in March that American companies were increasingly concerned about “cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” and that “the international community cannot tolerate such activity from any country.” He stopped short of blaming the Chinese government for the espionage. 
 
 But government officials said the overall issue of cyberintrusions would move to the center of the United States-China relationship, and it was raised on recent trips to Beijing by Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. 
 
 To bolster its case, the report argues that cyberweapons have become integral to Chinese military strategy. It cites two major public works of military doctrine, “Science of Strategy” and “Science of Campaigns,” saying they identify “information warfare (I.W.) as integral to achieving information superiority and an effective means for countering a stronger foe.” But it notes that neither document “identifies the specific criteria for employing a computer network attack against an adversary,” though they “advocate developing capabilities to compete in this medium.”
– The Pentagon is digging deeper in its push for new air and space technologies as China threatens to unseat the US as king of the skies. Speaking with aerospace experts at the China Aerospace Studies Initiative, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work says the US' rival is "quickly closing the technological gaps," per Reuters. Specifically, China is developing highly advanced radar-evading aircraft, reconnaissance planes, missiles, and electronic warfare equipment, Work says, suggesting the US needs to step up its game. That’s becoming increasingly difficult, however, as "the margin of technological superiority upon which we have become so accustomed ... is steadily eroding," Work says. "As the Department of Defense, we're the hedge force," he says. "We say, 'Look, here are capabilities that we see that the Chinese are developing and it's important for us to be able to counter those.'" Though he doesn’t exactly dive into what technologies the Pentagon is working on, he says one way we might do that is with directed energy weapons that can shoot down pricey missiles at a low cost. Interestingly, Work’s comments were quickly followed by a Xinhua report noting Chinese military officials are also boosting development of national defense technology. "The whole of the society should be encouraged to take part in the innovation cause," a Chinese official is quoted as saying. (Tension with China is clear at sea as well as in the skies.)