China Weaponising Space Domain: Air Force Chief

Asia News Agency

China Weaponising Space Domain: Air Force Chief

Speaking at the Jumbo Majumdar International Seminar about the Future Challenges of Aerospace Power, Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari said Thursday, that recent moves by China have weaponised the space domain. He also stated that terrestrial, space and aerial domains are losing their “individual identities” and the spectrum extends from small drones to hypersonic ballistic missiles.

Space-based assets could become essential for the conduct of operations in a networked scenario in the future, the Air Chief Marshal said.

Chaudhari said, “China’s latest demonstration of physically moving one of its disabled satellites into the graveyard orbit is bringing in newer threats in the race to weaponise the space domain, a domain hitherto considered relatively safe.”

“The spectrum that we are looking at stretches from kinetic to non-kinetic, lethal to non-lethal and from small drones to hypersonic ballistic missiles. This vast and ever-changing continuum will pose significant challenges for the armed forces of the future.”

Speaking about hypersonic missiles, which China tested last year, Chaudhari said, it is “launched from the surface of the earth, flies through the atmosphere into space and returns to a target on the earth with velocities far higher than any land and aerial platform. Similarly, as space-based assets become hubs for controlling terrestrial, underwater and aerial combat, they would also become centres of gravity which an adversary would like to target.”

He asserted that “armed forces across the world have realised that the control of this vast continuum should rest with the air force.”

Drones and miniature aerial vehicles and their proliferation “will pose a significant challenge for conventional air space control” and in the future, he said, “there would be teaming of manned and unmanned combat systems.”

He said that space travel “has already become a reality” and “exponential growth in the civil aviation sector coupled with future developments in terrestrial travel will pose a huge problem in terms of air space control.” This “conundrum” he said, should be addressed “before we get overtaken by technology.”

Terrestrial, aerial and space-based systems, he said, “have now become a single entity bound by a common network and therefore also vulnerable to attacks” and while traditional land, sea and aerial warfare will always take place, “unconventional and hybrid means to disrupt conventional capability will need to be countered.”

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