Space is the Place: India’s Anti-Satellite Test and the Militarization of Space

When India shot down one of its own satellites (Mission Shakti) a few years ago, it became one of the few countries with anti-satellite (ASAT) capability. A lot of people asked: why does India need to weaponize space? The answer is because space is already weaponized. China and the US have been testing similar tech for years. India’s reliance on space is massive—GPS for military navigation, satellite imagery for surveillance, communication for banking and railways. If a hostile nation takes out our satellites, the economy stops. Having ASAT capability is a deterrent. It’s like saying, ‘If you touch our eyes in the sky, we can touch yours.’ It’s an expensive club to be in, but in modern geopolitics, the high ground is no longer the mountains; it’s the low Earth orbit.