New Delhi: As India commemorates 20 years of the Kargil war, it is also preparing for wars of the future, wars that will be fought as much in space as on earth.
The country's armed forces, along with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and other stakeholders, will conduct IndSpaceEx on July 25-26. The exercise will access threats in space from a military perspective and India's current capability in space. DRDO will be the accessing agency for the exercise.
IndSpaceEx will take stock of the military space assets of the United States, Russia and China, and deliberate over how to plug the gap. The two-day exercise will also include think tanks like ORF and academics from IIT Mumbai.
The exercise comes five months after the successful testing of an anti-satellite (A-Sat) interceptor missile that destroyed a low-earth orbit satellite.
In a specially televised announcement in March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that India became only the fourth country after the US, the USSR and China to have used such a weapon.
Declaring "Mission Shakti" a success, Modi had said that India's action was not directed against any country. "I assure the international community that our capability won't be used against anyone but is purely India's defence initiative for its security. We are against an arms race in space," he had said.
But experts says IndSpaceEx is also an attempt to counter the growing influence of China in the space domain. Beijing poses a major threat to India's security interest.
As India celebrates 20 years of the Kargil war, there is a realisation that the next war India fights will include anti-satellite weapons and direct energy weapons. "These will be wars that you fight as a nation with integrated capabilities. Space will be a big part of it," said a source in the Ministry of Defence.
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