The Geostrategic Implications of India's Space Program

Abstract

In August 1999, India announced a draft nuclear doctrine that declared that its nuclear forces would be based on “a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles, and sea-based assets,” and that “spacebased and other assets shall be created to provide early warning, communications, [and] damage/detonation assessment” for this force.1 The draft doctrine was not official government policy; it primarily represented the thinking of technical and political elites who influence Delhi’s nuclear decision making to varying degrees. Nevertheless, although the government of India ultimately distanced itself from the document, Delhi has still been pursuing many of the doctrine’s technical parameters. And while it may take India several years to build and deploy a robust nuclear arsenal, many of the technologies required for such a force are already becoming available through the country’s space program. India’s space program undertakes two major activities–it builds satellites used for remote-sensing, meteorology, and communications and constructs the rockets to launch its satellites. These space assets have found both civilian and military applications. In the 1970s and 1980s, India’s first satellite launch vehicle, the SLV-3, was powerful enough only to launch a light payload (typically, a scientific satellite) to 300–450-km altitude low earth orbit (LEO). Such light-weight low-orbit satellites did not have significant military or commercial capabilities. However, the SLV-3 could still be used as an intermediate range ballistic missile.