(The article was first published in Vijay Times, 28 January 2007).
On January 11, China fired a ground-based ballistic missile into space to destroy one of its own weather satellites. It was not a great technological leap for China, except that it proved that China had missile guidance capability accurate enough to hit a small moving target some 530 miles away. But what China did was to put the US on notice that it would not have a free run for its military in space. And by doing so, China has in all probability accelerated what the world has dreaded since 1970s – the weaponisation of space.
America, which condemned China’s act, isn’t exactly innocent in this respect. In fact, it started it all and has a much broader and much more advanced space weapons policy, programme and capability than any other nation. Presidents Clinton and Bush revived Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars plan in the form of the ballistic missile defence programme which includes not only ground-based missile interceptors but even space-based laser and kinetic interceptors that would be capable of shooting down enemy missiles just as they are being launched or while they are coasting in space. But the American development programme extends far beyond BMD. It includes such fantastic weapons that the US military plans to deploy and use in space not just for fighting wars on the earth but even for fighting wars deep in space.
The reason is simple: America already is in command of the global commons on the earth. No other military power can currently match it on land, sea and in air. But it is increasingly dependent on space-based war fighting assets — spy, navigation, communication, weather and other satellites that are all fused into its network-centric military machine. In a future war, an enemy such as China would do everything it can to destroy these space assets and paralyse the network-centric military. President Bush, therefore, made it policy in October 2006 to establish American command and supremacy in space.
In fact, in anticipation of growing Chinese capabilities, the US military had started to test both defensive and offensive space weapons and warfighting doctrines even before the October 2006 policy. When rumours spread that China was developing a ‘parasitic satellite’ that would be capable of attaching itself to enemy satellites and destroy them when commanded, the US military launched in April 2005, a 138-kilogram micro-satellite called XSS-11 into earth orbit.
Its stated purpose was to ‘meet’ other American satellites in orbit, inspect them and repair defects. To do this, it only needed to be told where to find fellow satellites and the XSS-11 would do the rest. Clearly, it was not just a mobile repair service in space, but an anti-satellite and anti-anti-satellite weapon.
The XSS-11 is only one of several innovations in military space that are taking place currently which together have the potential to render space into a busy battleground in the future. Other innovations under development are low-cost rockets that can be launched with as little as 24 hours’ notice, swarms of tiny robots in space that could be fitted with cameras so that together they can search large areas or the entire swarm could be directed to close in on a target satellite and destroy it, and so on.
Meanwhile, Russia is developing new nuclear missiles that would penetrate a future US missile defence system. The Russians also maintain world-leading capabilities in anti-satellite orbital weapons technologies. Japan is increasingly feeling called upon to answer the challenge of the rise of Chinese space power. It has stepped up its space activities. The European Union’s Galileo global positioning system will also have military applications. NATO is committed to building a missile defence shield for its forces in the coming decade.
In short, all the major world powers are stepping up their military space activities. Where does India stand? As a claimant to major power status, does India matter in military space?
India’s military space capability is today limited to what its civilian remote sensing satellites afford as well as images and data from one Technology Experimental Satellite that was launched in 2001.
Former defence minister Pranab Mukherjee had announced that India would build a full space-based sensor network by the end of 2007. But even if India does manage to build such a network, other space powers are now threatening to leave it far behind in the renewed ‘space race’. It is time that India does acquire some real military space capability. In the 21st century, space might be the most important global common in which nations will fight for supremacy, just like in the colonial era they fought on the seas and post-1945, they fought for supremacy in air.
Of course, no one is yet suggesting that great power competition should or would take the form of shooting wars in space. In all likelihood, and assuming the leaders of both the existing and the rising superpowers would exercise at least as much rationality as the US and the former Soviet Union did during the Cold War, the problem will be one of arms control, and therefore of diplomatic negotiations.
It is unlikely during a power transition that the great powers will agree to a totally weapons-free space. What is certainly likely, however, is that in the next decade, the world’s military space powers will sit together and hammer out a ‘Space Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty’.
The Indian leadership will do well, therefore, to recall India's nuclear experience. Drowned in our own public rhet oric of nuclear disarmament, we wasted a precious decade in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and continue to suffer for it even today. The great powers sat together, hammered out the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and India was not invited to the high table because it had no cards to play.
If we persist in repeating that mistake over a military space capability, we should deserve to be no more than a second-rate power.
