IndSpaceEx | 08 Jun 2019

• 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.