China's space march

The militarisation of the space domain is emerging as a key element of 21st-century warfare. The US Defence Intelligence Agency, in its report ‘Challenges to Security in Space, 2022’, has linked China and Russia’s increased operational space capabilities in recent years to their ‘growing intent to extend future conflict into space’. The report observes that China has doubled its space assets for ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) over the past four years, adding that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) owns and operates about half of the world’s ISR systems, ‘most of which could support monitoring, tracking and targeting of the US and allied forces worldwide, especially throughout the Indo-Pacific region’.

China’s rampant expansion of military space capabilities is of paramount importance to India. The two neighbours have remained locked in a tense standoff in Ladakh for the past almost two years. While India has tried to keep pace with China in terms of infrastructure development and troop deployment along the LAC, there seems to be considerable imbalance when it comes to space and counterspace strategies and systems.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) needs to do a lot of catch-up. The space agency had suffered a setback in the early 1990s when Russia backed out of a deal for the transfer of cryogenic engine technology, which was later developed indigenously. The 1994 fake espionage case, in which the then ISRO deputy director D Sasikumaran and scientist Nambi Narayanan were falsely accused of selling India’s scientific secrets, pushed back the country’s GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles) programme by a decade. Of late, India has been relying more on America on the space front. During the recent 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, India and the US signed an MoU on Space Situational Awareness, aimed at protecting their satellites. With the Chinese threat looming large, India should go all out to bolster its space assets and be well prepared to protect them from disruptions that can not only impact military operations but also hit critical services such as disaster response, healthcare, weather forecasting and digital transactions.

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