New Delhi: China’s latest demonstration of physically moving its disabled satellite to another orbit poses a new threat in the race to wea-ponise the space domain, Indian Air Force Chief V.R. Chaudhari said on Thursday.
Moreover, he said no single service — air force, army or navy — can win wars on its own and this holds good even for the future.
In January, China’s Shij-ian-21 satellite physically moved a disabled Chinese satellite, altering its geostationary orbit. This capability of physically altering the orbits of a satellite has earlier been demonstrated by the US only.
“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 weap-onise the space domain, a domain hitherto considered relatively safe,” Air Chief Marshal Chaudhari said.
“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,” he added.
He said the IAF’s training philosophy needs to be modern, flexible and adaptive, with a heavy dose of “jointness”.
