By Gp Capt AK Sachdev (r)
This month marks the fortieth anniversary of Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma’s week-long space jaunt under the Soviet Interkosmos program. No other Indian (barring persons of Indian origin on other nations’ space programs) has travelled to space since then but the names of four astronauts have been recently announced for the Gaganyaan project which will demonstrate India’s human spaceflight capability. It will launch a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 km above Earth for a three-day mission and bring them back safely to a sea landing.
The astronauts have been selected from the Indian Air Force (IAF) which has recently explained to the government its rationale for being renamed the Indian Air and Space Force (IASF). On May 05, 2022, the Raksha Mantri, while delivering his keynote address for the 37th Air Chief Marshal PC Lal Memorial Lecture, exhorted the IAF to become an Aerospace Force. A month later, the IAF promulgated a public revision of ‘Doctrine Of The Indian Air Force’ which speaks of effective exploitation of the air and space continuum and, significantly, uses the term ‘aerospace power’ instead of ‘air power’. This article addresses the need and the progress of India’s Space Command.
India’s Military Use of Space
The saga of India’s space endeavours is undoubtedly one to be proud of. Recent accomplishments have been a successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon’s South Pole and the launch of Aditya-L1, the country’s first solar mission. Chandrayaan-3 was India’s third lunar mission, and its soft landing on the lunar surface on August 23, 2023, established India’s status as the first nation to reach near the Moon’s unexplored South Pole and placed it among the top four countries to achieve a soft landing on the lunar terrain. Aditya-L1, its first dedicated solar mission, successfully deployed into the Halo orbit. India’s Re-usable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Pushpak Viman has been making good progress too. To boost space enterprise further, the government has allowed 100% FDI into the sector and the private space sector is anticipating a boom.
However, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was established as a purely civilian enterprise and never had a mandate for military projects as India has always professed a pacific and peaceful approach toward the use of space. It is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, officially known as the ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’. In recent years though, global developments and trends in the increasingly dual use of space have brought about a change in the overall Indian approach. National security considerations have nudged India into addressing the threats to, and the need for defence of, its multi-faceted space assets without overtly abandoning its stance of non-weaponization of space.
Possibly, 2019 marked a significant inflection point in as much as India tested an Anti Satellite (ASAT) weapon under Mission Shakti, and carried out IndSpaceX, its first table-top space warfare exercise to demonstrate the use of satellite communications and reconnaissance to integrate intelligence and firepower in the military context. Interestingly, 2019 also saw the establishment of two new space-related agencies – the Defence Space Agency (DSA) and the Defence Space Research Organisation (DSRO). DSA is a tri-service agency tasked with space warfare Including ASAT capabilities, satellite intelligence and formulating strategies to protect India’s assets and interests in space. The existing Defence Imagery Processing and Analysis Centre (DIPAC) and Defence Satellite Control Centre (DSCC) were merged into DSA. DSRO works under DSA as its parent organization and is tasked to create space warfare weapon systems and associated technologies as also to find and implement defence applications for India’s space technologies. Significantly, the approval for these was given by Modi during the Combined Commanders’ Conference at Air Force Station, Jodhpur on 28 September 2018. The expectation was that the DSA would soon be converted into an Aerospace Command.
The Progress So Far
The initial seedling of the Aerospace Command idea was sown by Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, one of India’s leading strategic thinkers. However, the first concrete step in this direction was taken in 2010 when the then Defence Minister Antony declared the formation of an Integrated Space Cell (ISC) to work under the HQ Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), as an intermediate initiative towards the establishment of an Aerospace Command.
Space is now an acknowledged domain of warfare and Chinese and Pakistani stance towards India necessitates a well-equipped and adequately manned Aerospace Command, with inter-continental reach and the wherewithal to mount offensive missions as well as provide a fair degree of assurance in terms of defensive capability. Our capability in building satellites and launch vehicles permits such an entity to be thus endowed. Over the past decade or so there have been — with varying sense of urgency — deliberations on the formation of such a command but the challenges of humungous investments, the need to acquire some technologies not yet within our grasp, and the need for adequate skilled and trained personnel to man it have meant that consummation has eluded attempts by the IAF to set up the command.
One of the reasons is that there are not enough space-specific assets collectively with the three services to bring together under one command as Indian policy has always been non-militarisation and non-weaponisation of space. In terms of numbers, the Indian presence in space is not very large, but it is still significant and critical for the nation. There is a need to establish an Aerospace Command so that there is a clear military mandate under a single command for better command and control. This will also serve the strategic purpose of space deterrence, especially with a focus on China.
The Prognosis
The government’s rushed plan to set up theatre commands has run into trouble over the first aerospace-related command – the Air Defence Command – with the IAF advocating a doctrinal stance different from that of the other two services. Once that command is in place, it would set a precedent for the Aerospace Command to be born.
There is also the question of budgetary allocation for a new command when even the current commitments by the three services are not supported by the allocations. With the current trend of defence budget vis-à-vis GDP, the prospects of any substantial increase in the availability of funds are bleak. Thus, the near future, despite a well-advanced space technological base, does not look promising from the point of view of having an Aerospace Command in place. As some strategic analysts have been warning, China has the potential and the political will to wage a war in the space domain against India. Should an overt offensive action be taken by China against an Indian space asset, the Indian response may be disjointed and indecisive. The existence of an Aerospace Command could deter a Chinese misadventure in space and also provide the fulcrum for punitive retaliation.
Conclusion
Outer Space, once a Global Common, is a zone of competition and rivalry. The noble and utopian objectives of peaceful exploitation of space like the one iterated by Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, as “there is room in space for everybody” are no longer realistic. The United Nations is unlikely to have any control over space squabbles or inhibit the militarisation of space. Thus, India must gear up for military confrontation in space so as to affirm its ambition of becoming a global power.
The Naresh Chandra Task Force set up to review the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee had proposed the creation of an Aerospace Command and the establishment of DSA was a first step towards that command. How and when DSA transmutes into an Aerospace Command and how empowered that Command is will decide whether we deal with space confrontations with China from a position of strength or otherwise.
Gp Capt. AK Sachdev (r) is an Indian Air Force (IAF) veteran with four decades of aviation experience and a former Chief Operating Officer (COO)of an airline.
