India to counter outer space attacks

INDIA will set up an aerospace defence command to shield itself against possible attacks from outer space, officials said.

The announcement came three days after Russia backed India’s response to a Chinese satellite-destroying weapons test that demanded a “weapons free outer space”.

Indian airforce chief Shashi Tyagi said the military was in the process of establishing an aerospace defence command “to exploit outer space,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported yesterday.

“As the reach of our airforce is expanding it has become extremely important that we exploit space and for it you need space assets,” Mr Tyagi said.

“We are an aerospace power having trans-oceanic reach and we have started training a core group of people for the aerospace command,” the air chief marshall said without specifying a time-frame for the ambitious project.

Military sources said the Indian project would try and replicate the North American Aerospace Defence Command set up by the US and Canada which detects and tracks threatening man-made objects in outer space.

“The aerospace command will be an integration of various components of the airforce, Indian satellites, radars, communications systems, fighter aircraft and helicopters,” PTI quoted an unnamed airforce official as saying.

The Indian airforce, the world’s fourth largest, plans to establish air superiority in Asia with the acquisition of 126 jets for $7 billion (€5.41bn).

The Indian airforce has developed air-launched cruise missile systems. It also has a key role in the deployment of India’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

China, which fought a bitter border war with India in 1962, destroyed an orbiting satellite this month using a ballistic missile.

Russia and the US also have such capabilities.