It has become increasingly clear to India’s strategic community that modern challenges rely on space-based assets. Military and civil telecommunications, even finance now depend significantly on satellites.
The issue in India is with space infrastructure seen as critical to national security. Col KV Kuber (Retd), Director of Aerospace and Defence at EY (formerly Earnest & Young) , a well known professional services network, underscored at the recent Indian Space Congress in Delhi that space security resilience isn’t about active preparation for war, but rather about readiness.
“Space capabilities must be built without being driven by immediate concerns because their destruction could create security disasters,” he warned, sounding a cautionary note on the need for a systematic approach.
Khyati Singh, Research Analyst at MP-IDS, highlighted the stark difference between India’s Chandrayaan achievements and NAVIC failure, noting that the space sector in India is currently afraid of failures, causing projects to be delayed.
“China made the transition we need. They launched 500 satellites in a decade. It is a good case study,” she said.
Dr. Radha Krishna Ganti, Professor at IIT, Madras, noted that “India currently needs 1000s of leo (low earth orbit) satellites. The aim should not be to create a system that doesn’t fail but instead, to create an ecosystem where even if one system fails, the entire critical infrastructure isn’t impacted.”
In his view, distributed systems are the way forward as they help in functionality and are seamless.
Currently, India’s space investment is a meagre 0.65% of the GDP, allocated under the research wing of the defence sector, Khyati Singh said adding that “Our capability needs to translate to a sustained effort, positioned as strength.”
India’s first step should be to design its space policy to identify flaws. Eventually, the way ahead involves co-developing and co-innovating with other nations while maintaining strategic autonomy over the current model that relies on Western systems.
Dr Ganti sounded a warning: “We shouldn’t do with space what happened to the telecom sector. India must develop a large part of its space systems and do it at the right time. Inter-satellite links and communication would play a big role in defence, especially monitoring and interception technologies.”
