Time for India to raise ‘space force’ as new zone of warfare emerges

Lt Gen PJS Pannu

Even though the Outer Space Treaty debars nations from weaponising space, the writing on the wall makes it clear that a threat from the new frontier is lurking

All the major powers, such as the US, Russia, China, India, France, the European Union, and Japan, are building space military organisations. Image: REUTERS

Space is emerging as the forerunner in the era of technology-driven warfare. A country like India, with significant geopolitical heft and the potential to emerge as a power of relevance, would sooner or later face a threat from space—a threat that cannot be defended by conventional means. It is therefore important to analyse if India needs to build a space force that is capable of fighting, not so distant, space wars.

Advertisement

The Gulf War I is technically considered to be the first space war where the US relied on space satellite intelligence for aerial and ground operations inside Kuwait and Iraq. The satellite navigation systems played a significant role in the navigation of the US Air Force fighter jets. Currently, space prowess is clearly ruling the Russian-Ukraine and Hamas battlescapes. Taiwan is incrementally coming under the space lens of competing powers. The space satellites started playing their crucial role even before the start of the war.

India raised the Defence Space Agency in 2019 as a scaled-down version of the space command. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) also raised DSP to provide technical and Research and Development (R&D) support. In the last five years, outer space has emerged as a source of concern, primarily the threat from long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Many Direct Ascent Anti-Satellites (ASAT) experimental missile strikes have been tested, including by India (mission Shakti). Counter-missions are being developed for both offensive and defensive forms of space warfare. Even though the Outer Space Treaty debars nations from weaponising space, the writing on the wall makes it clear that a threat from space is lurking.

You May Like

Little Suhana is too young to be suffering like this!Donate For HealthLearn More

by Taboola 

Sponsored Links 

All the major powers, such as the US, Russia, China, India, France, the European Union, and Japan, are building space military organisations. The US Space Force organises, trains, and equips personnel in order to protect US and allied interests in space and to provide space capabilities to the joint forces. The US Space Force, headquartered at the Pentagon, employs 8,600 military personnel and 77 spacecraft.

The Russian space forces are mandated to inform the higher political leaders and military commanders of missile attacks as soon as possible, ballistic missile defence, and the creation, deployment, maintenance, and control of in-orbit space vehicles, like the Persona reconnaissance satellite.

Advertisement

These forces operate the GLONASS global positioning system. The Russian Space Forces include the third Missile-Space Defence Army and a Division for Warning of Missile Attacks.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (PLA-SSF) existed from 2015 to 2024 with the army’s ability to fight “informatised conflicts”. In April of this year, the Strategic Support Force was dissolved and split into three independent arms: the PLA Aerospace Force, the PLA Cyberspace Force, and the PLA Information Support Force.

Like China, Russia views space as a warfighting domain, and they base their warfighting doctrine around the idea that achieving space supremacy is a precondition for winning a conflict. Russia has fielded a suite of non-kinetic options to create reversible effects on satellite systems in space, including ground-based systems to counter GPS navigation signals, tactical communications, satellite communications, and radars.

Advertisement

On the non-kinetic side of this threat continuum, China has operational ground-based jamming systems that are capable of disrupting satellite communications, GPS navigation signals, synthetic aperture radars, missile warning systems, and other satellite systems.

Jamming can prevent users from using satellite communication networks, degrade or prevent transmissions of vital missile warning data from space-based sensors to war fighters, and disrupt uplinks and downlinks needed to command and control spacecraft.

While analysing the space wars, it is important to study the space-based wars of the past, when the intensity was nominal but gains were asymmetrical. During the two Gulf Wars, the Coalition bombers and fighters dropped more than 5,000 GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions during the day and night, in all weather, with shattering effectiveness.

Advertisement

Satellites also made it possible to direct Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) attacks such as Predator and Global Hawk. US imaging satellites gave commanders an unprecedented view of targets and battlespace. At least seven different types of military satellite systems were used during the Gulf War I. GPS receivers were affixed to tanks, trucks, and aircraft across the theatre. Tank commanders wanted to know the moisture content of the soil in some areas. Tomahawk precision attacks have multiple space based use cases, such as intelligence preparation, target location, command and control, weather assessment, launch, route navigation, and damage assessment.

Space and cyber domains are the major components of ‘stand-off’ wars, which is the new way of war fighting. Elements contributing to stand-off conflicts are also moving into the hands of private space operators. While ‘space force’ would have a mandate to provide space support to conventional forces, it would largely engage in providing a nation with a space shield.

Advertisement

Direct threats from space, such as hypersonic or ballistic missiles carrying single or multiple re-entry warheads, are a major concern. These missiles are even capable of delivering conventional or Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear warheads. The payloads could also deliver multi-sensor drones and deploy ground-based probes. This force would therefore be mandated to develop space dominance capabilities. The best point of interception of a ballistic or hypersonic missile is in space, i.e., before it re-enters the atmosphere, where it can achieve gravity-based acceleration and atmosphere-assisted glide manoeuvres.

Once such a missile enters the atmosphere, the skies are almost indefensible. Hypersonic weapons can be launched from airborne aircraft, ships at sea, and land-based mobile launchers. Long-range air-launched hypersonic missiles with scramjet engines could also be launched by the enemy’s bombers from under the cover of air defences in their own airspace. Such weapons could be deployed as part of a fractional orbital bombardment system. The variety of launch options means hypersonic weapons might not create an IR signature intense enough to be detected.

Today, most of China’s and Russia’s deployed long-range missiles can carry one or more weapons that can manoeuvre in space, in the atmosphere, or both. Both China and Russia now consider US space-based assets as high-value targets that can be threatened to coerce the United States in a crisis or attacked to achieve space superiority in a conflict. They have developed kinetic ASATs and other space weapons to hold these “difficult to defend, easy to attack”.

Long-range ballistic missiles typically have flight trajectories that take them over 300 km into space before they re-enter the atmosphere. The highly predictable flight paths and high altitudes of non-manoeuvring ballistic missiles make them much easier to detect and track. In contrast, hypersonic missiles can fly as little as 30 to 50 km above the Earth’s surface or even lower, which means that, because of the curvature of the earth, they may be below areas that are effectively covered by today’s radar warning architecture.

Our northern neighbour China has developed and deployed what it refers to as a “multi-layered attack architecture” with weapons systems that span the counterspace threat continuum. Used in combination, these weapons can degrade, deny, or destroy adversarial space systems in all orbital regimes. As a spacefaring nation, India must develop a wholesome space warfighting doctrine and an inter-service space force that would allow it a ready response mechanism to space threats and also support ground, maritime, and air operations.

The mandate for the space force should be to:

• Develop SDA (Space Domain Awareness) to determine, mitigate, and respond to threats from and within space.
• Build sufficient resilient and military-grade capability, including the Line of Defence, for communications, ISR, and PNT to support and execute space-based integrated military operations. Specifications and capacities must be spelled out unambiguously to the industry with at least a 5-year lead time.
• Develop and deploy cross functional technologies (Information Communication Technology, and cyber) to optimise the EM spectrum in space warfare.
• Maintain a high degree of operational readiness and generate meshed intelligence to enhance warning periods.
• Build secure international space collaboration for enhanced regional and global space cover and to respond to surge requirements during external exigencies.
• Train and equip a sufficient and dedicated skilled space force that would support higher leadership, military theatres, and tactical battle areas during war, and participate in R&D, collaborative manufacturing, and cross-training activities during peacetime.
• Own, lease, and maintain sufficient space assets and infrastructure that are necessary to discharge its functions.
• Undertake incremental space and technological development activities that enable achieving space dominance and space superiority.

While building a space cadre, it must be ensured that personnel selected are on permanent secondment to the force and/or are drawn from space and scientific institutions. Building any non-permanent enlisted force would be counterproductive.

Lt Gen (Dr) PJS Pannu is a former Deputy Chief of Integrated Defence Staff. He is a PhD in Management with the subject ‘Indigenization of Defence Industry’. He initiated the raising of Defence Cyber Agency, Defence Space Agency and Armed Forces Special Forces Division. He is on the board of ‘Valley of words’, heading the Military History and Strategy Vertical. He is a distinguished fellow of USI. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author.