Technology Ready In 2007 But Absence Of Political Will: India’s Anti-Satellite Missile Has ‘Centimetre-Level Accuracy’
Lauding ‘Mission Shakti’, India’s first successful anti-satellite missile test, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman G Satheesh Reddy said that India has now achieved the capability to hit satellites in outer space with centimetre-level accuracy, reports The Tribune. According to Former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, India has had the expertise to conduct such a test since 2007, but was held back by a lack of political will.
Reddy, who oversaw Mission Shakti’s successful completion, revealed that the Modi government had cleared the project about two years back, with a view to establishing deterrence against possible threats to Indian space assets.
“It is a great achievement for India as the technology used for the test has been completely developed indigenously,” Reddy stated.
India is now only the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to have developed the advanced technology to strike targets in outer space.
The feat may have been possible to achieve more than a decade earlier, considering the comments made by former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair. He stated that when China launched a missile in 2007 to strike down an old weather satellite, India had the technological expertise to carry out a similar mission, but the country did not go forward with it then to the absence of a ‘political decision’.