Age of Astropolitics

January 23, 2024

NEW DELHI – It was recently reported that the Indian Air Force (IAF) is renaming itself as the Indian Air and Space Force (IASF) as part of its on-going overall drive to transform itself from “a potent air-power” to “a credible aerospace power” for the future. It has also formulated a new doctrine for effective exploitation of the “air and space continuum” and a “Space Vision 2047”, for which it expects the government’s approval soon.

It is now readying itself to fully exploit the final frontier of space assisted by DRDO, ISRO and its commercial arm, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) which was set up in 2019, besides IN-Space (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) which was set up in 2020 to facilitate collaboration between the private sector and ISRO. Other major space powers already have similar structures in place ~ China has the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force for space domain and the United States has created a full-fledged Space Force (USSF) as a distinct branch of its armed forces in 2019. Several other countries like the UK, Japan, France and Russia have also set up their space commands or wings in the air forces.

Space is definitely turning into the battleground for future wars and has to be integral to any country’s security system. Hence IAF’s existing fully-automated air defence network, called the Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), will also have to evolve into IASCCS. IAF wants India to have over 100 big and small military satellites in the next 7-8 years when the tri-Service Defence Space Agency set up in 2019 evolves into a full-fledged Space Command.

Geopolitics is now slowly transforming itself into astropolitics. In the 19th and 20th