In his much-hyped and anticipated address to the nation a couple of days back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India is now a space-power, as DRDO successfully destroyed a low earth orbit satellite in space using a missile

by Karthik Iyer

While the government claims that the ASAT test has provided 'credible deterrence' against the threats to the country's space-based assets, a former ISRO Satellite Communication Engineer thinks that this won't be effective at all. First of all, in case you don't know what the announcement was all about then here's PM Modi's address to the nation -

Now, let's see what N Kalyan Raman, former ISRO Satellite Communication Engineer, who has worked with ISRO for over two decades thinks. 

According to him, India won't be able to knock out the satellites that are in the higher orbit with its missile. “Most of the countries' satellites are in the higher orbit, and even with this India won't be able to knock out those satellites,” he said.

Kalyan noted that Mission Shakti doesn't quite add up in a war-like situation. In fact, he says there are a lot of other ways through which one can keep an eye on the enemies. He said, “In a war like situation, if a country wants to spy on its enemies there are various ways to do it-- for example, Google Earth. All you need is good resolution photos. Why do we even need this?”

Raman firmly believes that India's anti-satellite test was more a demonstration of its ballistic missile defence system, rather than its ability to challenge its adversaries in space.

On the same lines, even Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT, told the WIRED that India needs to balance things out if it's interested in getting into the anti-satellite deterrence game. He added that China can knock out all of India's satellites, but India can't really do the same.