• In March, India demonstrated an operation called ‘Mission Shakti’, the Defence Research & Development Organisation demonstrated India’s ability in offensive defence capability, using a missile to destroy a satellite in Low Earth Orbit.
• Mission Shakti is a joint programme of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

About Mission Shakti:

• It is the technological capability to hit and destroy satellites in space through missiles launched from the ground.
• The technology is aimed at destroying, if necessary, satellites owned by enemy countries. The test, however, can be carried out only on one’s own satellite.
• There are a large number of satellites currently in space, many of which have outlived their utility and orbiting aimlessly.
• One such satellite was chosen for the test. India did not identify the satellite it had chosen to hit for the test.

Analysis:

• Satellites are extremely critical infrastructure of any country these days. A large number of crucial applications are now satellite-based. These include navigation systems, communication networks, broadcasting, banking systems, stock markets, weather forecasting, disaster management, land and ocean mapping and monitoring tools, and military applications. Destroying a satellite would render these applications useless. It can cripple enemy infrastructure, and bring it down on knees, without causing any threat to human lives.
• It requires very advanced capabilities in both space and missile technologies that not many countries possess.
• But more than that, destroying space infrastructure like satellites is also taboo in the international community — at least till now — just like the use of a nuclear weapon.
• Almost every country agrees that space must not be used for wars and has spoken against weaponisation of space. There are international treaties governing the use of space, that mandate that outer space, and celestial bodies like the Moon, must only be exploited for peaceful purposes.
• There is a Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to which India is a signatory, that prohibits countries from placing into orbit around the Earth “any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction”. It also prohibits the stationing of such weapons on celestial bodies, like the moon, or in outer space. “The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all state parties to the treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes.