link : With Fire From Missile & Space Program, India Tests Anti-Satellite Weapon
With Fire From Missile & Space Program, India Tests Anti-Satellite Weapon
Nearly a decade after Indian military scientists first declared that an anti-satellite weapon capability was within reach, India today conducted the first test of the weapon system, under the aegis of a project codenamed Mission Shakti. While official specifics of the weapon haven’t been revealed so far, Livefist learns that the weapon was a derivative of the Prithvi Defence Vehicle (PDV) missile interceptor developed for the country’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) program. The test was conducted this morning from the Integrated Test Range off India’s eastern seaboard.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a televised announcement just weeks before the country’s national election, said that the missile had destroyed a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite at an altitude of 300 km. In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said, “This was a technological mission carried out by DRDO. The satellite used in the mission was one of India’s existing satellites operating in lower orbit. The test was fully successful and achieved all parameters as per plans. The test required an extremely high degree of precision and technical capability. The significance of the test is that India has tested and successfully demonstrated its capability to interdict and intercept a satellite in outer space based on complete indigenous technology. With this test, India joins an exclusive group of space faring nations consisting of USA, Russia and China.”
The government hasn’t released images or video of today’s A-SAT test, but is likely to later today.
In what is proving to be a historically no-holds-barred election season, the declaration of today’s A-SAT test swiftly became the centrepiece of a fresh political joust, with the opposition Congress Party suggesting that the Prime Minister had announced the test of a weapon that had been in the works long before the latter’s party came to power in 2014. Wars over credit for military accomplishments and weapons tests are far from uncommon in India, and stand hugely amplified during an election campaign.
What the current government will likely emphasise is that the previous government, under the Congress Party, plainly didn’t have the political will to pull the trigger on demonstrating the anti-satellite weapon — a suggestion strongly indicated in 2010 by the then DRDO chief, V.K. Saraswat. At the time, he had told Livefist, “We already have a design study of such a weapon, but at this stage the country does not require such a platform in its strategic arsenal. Testing such a weapon also has a lot of repercussions which have to be taken into consideration. But testing is not an issue — we can always rely on simulations and ground test. We can see in the future if the government wants such a weapon. If so, our scientists are fully ready to deliver it.“
Former director of the DRDO’s Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL) that leads India’s strategic missile development, Dr. Avinash Chander has also told journalists that the decision to demonstrate the A-SAT is a recent one, even if the building blocks existed earlier. In an interview to Times of India, Dr. Chander says, “While we had been working on this technology for long, the current program was initiated sometime recently.”
In an interview to Livefist in 2013, Dr. Chander spoke in detail about the ballistic missile technologies that have likely gone into the anti-satellite weapon demonstrated today.
from Livefist https://ift.tt/2WoZxJh
via Live Defense
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