Josy Joseph

New Delhi: With a liberal sprinkling of Pentagon jargons to cite China as the key threat, the Indian military leadership is stepping up its demand for a larger military programme in space.

While China’s anti-satellite capabilities are a matter of concern, what is alarming is the way the Indian military leadership has been heavily borrowing from American military arguments on China to augment its own case.

Speaking at a seminar on Monday, Army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor said the Chinese space programme was “expanding at an exponentially rapid pace in both offensive and defensive content. There is an imperative requirement to develop joint structures in the Indian armed forces for synergising employment of space assets”.

Kapoor’s direct reference to China was a step forward from what defence minister AK Antony said a couple of weeks ago. Kapoor spoke on space being identified as the “ultimate military high ground”, a jargon made popular by American researchers.

There have been discussions within the Indian military establishment for long about the need to develop its own capabilities to counter the Chinese anti-satellite missile systems. In fact, Indian military scientists are looking at the possibility of creating a laser system that can immobilise an enemy satellite.

What is suddenly visible in recent days is the stepping up of the pitch by the senior military leadership, directly pointing fingers at China at a time when the relations between the neighbours are showing visible fissures.

Worse, they are borrowing heavily from American arguments and ideologies presented over the past several years to step up anti-China feeling.

“There is an attempt to try and militarise space. There are also agreements that space militarisation should be restricted,” Kapoor said on the sidelines of the seminar.

“The Indian army,which has a large user base, needs to expand its knowledge base about space applications and optimise space-based capabilities to the maximum,” he said.

Noting that the army had already taken certain space initiatives, Kapoor said the formulation of Army Space Vision 2020 and the creation of an army space cell in the Perspective Planning Directorate were measures in the direction of space-related training for its officers and personnel.

Source : DNA