Antisatellite Weapons: Will India be Next?
India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) wants to develop antisatellite (ASAT) capabilities. Domain-b.com, an Indian online business magazine, quotes DRDO director general V.K. Saraswat today as saying that “We have the building blocks…What is needed is technology to track the movements of enemy satellites, for instance before making a kinetic kill.” But he added that what India needs is a deterrent capability and “many of these technologies may never be used.”
Saraswat’s comments reportedly were made at the ongoing Indian Science Congress (ISC 2010) in Thiruvananthapuram.
Saraswat’s comments are somewhat surprising, especially since kinetic kill ASATs are out of vogue because of the debris created when the interceptor impacts the target. China has been extensively criticized by the world’s spacefaring countries for the kinetic kill ASAT test it conducted in 2007. In his October statement to the U.N. First Committee, Garold Larson said that the debris from the Chinese ASAT test represents 25% of all catalogued objects in low Earth orbit.
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