SPACE NEEDS PACE

India is playing catchup in the military exploitation of space in a fragile global security environment

- AIR VICE MARSHAL ARJUN SUBRAMANIAM (RETD)

Though an emerging leader in leveraging the potential of space for peaceful use such as remote sensing and unmanned exploration, and possessing significant launch capability, India surprisingly lags behind even Israel and Japan in exploiting space for military use and is constantly playing catchup in a fragile global security environment.

Contrary to what most people think, militarisation of space is as old as exploration of space. The US and Soviet Union sparked off the space race during the Cold War in the 1950s by first launching military satellites that would help them see further and better, and communicate better over the horizon and beyond the line of sight. Peaceful applications then followed, and both have grown in parallel over the years.

Militarisation of space and weaponisation of space are not the same. Militarisation is considered an essential step for furthering one’s strategies of deterrence by acquiring limited capabilities that enable offensive military operations across domains (land, maritime and air). On the other hand, weaponisation directly involves development, deployment and use of weapons positioned in space against targets located in space and on the ground. Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) and satellites with offensive capability (which can destroy enemy’s satellites or space vehicles) fall in this category.

Most countries have accepted the inevitability of the militarisation of space, but are vigorously opposed to its weaponisation. However, all the big powers and even some of the smaller space-faring nations have made significant progress in developing directed energy weapons and in deploying co-orbital satellites which have offensive capability. This move, in a way, may be considered an emerging paradigm of ‘coercion in space’ and possibly ‘Star Wars’.