[This technological leap puts India in the exclusive club of nations, along with the United States, Russia and China, that have proved their ability to destroy targets in space. This could be a crucial advantage in war, allowing a country essentially to blind another by taking out the enemy’s space-based communication and surveillance satellites.]
By
Jeffrey Gettleman and Hari Kumar
A
man at a showroom in Mumbai watches Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India
address
the nation on Wednesday. Credit Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
|
NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi of
India announced on Wednesday that India had test-fired an interceptor rocket
that shot down a satellite, escalating the country’s rivalry with China and Pakistan,
and demonstrating a strategic strength that few countries can claim.
If confirmed, a successful anti-satellite
test could destabilize the balance of power between India and Pakistan, both
nuclear powers that for years have eyed each other warily, with hostilities
briefly breaking out last month.
This technological leap puts India in the
exclusive club of nations, along with the United States, Russia and China, that
have proved their ability to destroy targets in space. This could be a crucial
advantage in war, allowing a country essentially to blind another by taking out
the enemy’s space-based communication and surveillance satellites.
It is no easy feat. In this case, scientists
estimate that the satellite that India claims to have blasted apart was moving
around the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour.
Mr. Modi made the announcement to a rapt
nation just weeks before the country heads into a hotly contested election.
“India stands tall as a space power!” Mr.
Modi tweeted after his announcement. He added that the entire effort was
“indigenous,” accomplished entirely by Indians.
When China first successfully tested such an
anti-satellite missile in 2007, it set off global concern over the growing
weaponization of space.
Many analysts now worry that the regional
rivalry between India and China, the two most populated countries in the world,
has moved into space.
India’s test was a “demonstration against
China,’’ said Kazuto Suzuki, an international relations professor at Hokkaido
University in Japan and an expert on space security.
“The proliferation of this technology and
capability would make the space order very unstable,’’ he said.
No other country has yet confirmed that India
actually shot down a satellite. The United States, Europe, Japan and a few
others have the ability to track space debris as small as a softball, but
experts said it was unlikely that India would present this as a successful test
if it hadn’t actually happened.
Mr. Modi broke the news in a rare televised
address to the nation, and many Indians immediately suspected that his primary
objective was more political than technological.
In a little more than two weeks, India will
begin holding an election — billed as the biggest in human history, with nearly
900 million registered voters — and Mr. Modi is up for re-election. Leaders in
his political party have recently been heckled in public and attendance has
been poor at rallies for some of his party’s candidates.
Though Mr. Modi enjoyed a burst of popular
support after India conducted airstrikes last month in Balakot, Pakistan, in
retaliation for a deadly suicide bombing by militants against Indian forces,
that news has mostly subsided.
The announcement “shows a poll-eve
desperation we hadn’t yet detected/suspected,” tweeted Shekhar Gupta, one of
India’s best known political commentators. “It’s just a frantic new national
security headline as Balakot has faded in a month.”
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Modi posted a
message on Twitter, which he uses frequently, telling Indians to tune in
because he was about to make a major announcement.
Many people believed the speech would be
related to Pakistan; tensions had risen very fast and very high last month
after Indian warplanes dropped several bombs on the site in Balakot where
Indian authorities said anti-India militants were hiding. It is not clear what
if anything the Indian Air Force hit.
But the next day Pakistan shot down an Indian
fighter jet and captured the pilot, pushing the two nations dangerously close
to a major conflict. Both wield nuclear arsenals. Pakistan quickly defused the
situation by releasing the pilot.
The whole episode brought Mr. Modi a crest of
support. The old, thorny issues that had been dogging him — such as rising
unemployment, poor drinking water and widespread distress among farmers —
disappeared for a moment.
Flags came out across the country. Even
Indians who didn’t necessarily agree with the Hindu nationalist flavor of Mr.
Modi’s party still cheered him on.
But in the past few days, the electoral mood
seems to have changed once again. Complaints about jobs, health care and farm
subsides have been rising.
The Indian National Congress, the leading
opposition party, scored some points after its leader, Rahul Gandhi, the scion
of a longstanding political dynasty, promised that Congress would give the
equivalent of $1,000 to India’s poorest families.
Around noon, when Mr. Modi was set to address
the nation, the streets of New Delhi, the capital, grew uncharacteristically
quiet. Many people ducked inside shops to watch TV.
Saurav Jha, the editor in chief of “Delhi
Defence Review,” an online defense related magazine, said that successfully
shooting down a satellite was a major achievement.
“It’s as significant as India’s first nuclear
blast,” he said.
India has been steadily advancing its space
program since its first satellite launch in 1975. It joined a manned space
mission with Russia in 1984 and launched a Mars orbiter in 2013. This December,
India sent its heaviest communication satellite so far, weighing nearly 5,000 pounds,
into space.
A big motivation clearly is China. As China
has stepped up its satellite launches and space probes, India has been trying
to catch up.
The test, Mr. Jha said, was “very much the
part of the India-China rivalry.”
Another factor may have been archrival
Pakistan. Last year, China helped Pakistan launch a remote sensing satellite.
India’s test showed it could blast apart the Pakistani eye in the sky, turning
it into space garbage.
This could make the bitter regional contest
between India and Pakistan even more dangerous. Before this test, the two
militaries were widely viewed as comparable. Each side has been reluctant to
start a major conflict, fearing that the other could stage a devastating
counter attack.
But some analysts said that if India has now
gained superiority in anti-satellite warfare, it might be able to stage a
pre-emptive attack on Pakistan’s satellites, or even Pakistan itself. That
could unsettle the longstanding doctrine of mutually assured destruction that
both countries have followed, and put Pakistan even more on edge.
“The militarization of space is underway,
whether anybody likes it or not,” Mr. Jha added. Part of the reason, he said,
was that satellite technology had become “the backbone of global
communication.”
Mr. Jha and other analysts said that China,
the United States and Russia have been discussing a space nonproliferation
treaty, and that with this test India’s position must now be considered as
well.
The Indian government did not reveal what
kind of satellite it shot down; the Ministry of External Affairs described it
as “one of India’s existing satellites operating in a lower orbit.”
Mr. Modi has revived the notion that he is
India’s “chowkidar,” or watchman, and looking tough in space seemed to fit nicely
with that image.
“Today’s success, in the coming days, will be
seen as India’s forward march toward a secure nation, a rich nation and a
peaceful nation,” he said.
The test was conducted within three minutes
on Wednesday morning, he said, and the satellite was flying about 186 miles
above Earth. It was low enough, Indian officials said, that its debris will
decay and fall back to Earth.
In 2012, Indian scientists announced they had
the capability to shoot down a satellite but that it would take 24 months to
prepare for such a test.
Some analysts wondered if Mr. Modi, who is
known as a cunning political strategist, planned as early as two years ago to
conduct this test right before this year’s election, to give him a
late-in-the-game boost.
“The timing indicates that there is politics
around this,’’ said N. K. Singh a political analyst. “The issues of food,
clothing, housing and employment are emerging on the surface in bigger way.”
He added: ”Nobody can say for sure but the
perception of politicization is there.”
Suhasini Raj contributed reporting from New
Delhi. David Sanger contributed reporting.