India is planning to conduct its first-ever simulated space warfare exercise in the last week of July, 2019.
Named ‘IndSpaceEx’, the exercise will basically be a ‘table-top war-game’, with all stakeholders from the military and scientific community taking part in it.
The main aim of the exercise, to be held under the aegis of the Integrated Defence Staff of the Defence Ministry, is to assess the requisite space and and counter-space capabilities that are needed by India to protect its national security interests in the final frontier of warfare i.e. the outer space.
China, after testing an A-Sat missile against a weather satellite in January 2007, has set a scorching pace in developing military capabilities in space in terms of both kinetic (direct ascent missiles, co-orbital kill satellites) as well as non-kinetic (lasers, electromagnetic pulse) weapons.
IndSpaceEx underlines the seriousness with which India is taking the need to counter likely threats to its space assets from countries like China.
India took the first step towards developing a credible counter-space capability under ‘Mission Shakti’ when it launched a 19-tonne interceptor missile to destroy the 740-kg Microsat-R satellite, at an altitude of 283 km in a ‘hit-to-kill mode’ on 27th March, 2019.
Since then, a new Defence Space Agency has begun to take shape, by amalgamating the Defence Imagery Processing and Analysis Centre (Delhi) and the Defence Satellite Control Centre (Bhopal), with a two-star IAF general to be soon appointed to head it. The agency is expected to eventually grow into a full-fledged Space Command in the years ahead.
