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IAF plans “eyes in the skies”

SINGAPORE: The Indian Air Force is now “conceptualising and developing plans” for a satellite-based project of “eyes in the skies” to improve the country’s “strategic reach and capabilities.”

Disclosing this, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal F.H. Major told The Hindu that the prospective “aerospace command,” first “mooted a couple of years ago,” was certainly “no” ruse for “weaponising space.” He said “India has never had any bent towards weaponising space.”

Noting that “we have nothing in place today,” he said the “eventual” plan was to deploy four or six satellites to “exploit space” for a variety of purposes including defence. However, the idea of an aerospace command was floated with “no intentions of any ballistic missile defence or anything of that kind.”

Asked whether the Indian plan was sparked by the successful anti-satellite test China conducted in 2007, he said the new command was suggested “about a year before that.”

Air Chief Marshal Major, who was here to participate in an Asia-Pacific air chiefs conference and visit the ongoing Singapore Airshow, said the Indian project would be “absolutely indigenous.” He emphasised that “we never discuss this with anyone,” including the United States, present here for these events.

“There is [also] no connection between the Indian Space Research Organisation and this.” While “a tri-service command” might be needed, “it is logical that we [the IAF] should be in the lead [as] air and space are very close.” And, as the project would be “very expensive, we have to go around in an in an incremental manner.”

Air Chief Marshal Major said: “We want to be a 45 combat-squadron force by the end of the 12th Plan [2017]. We are presently supposed to be thirty-nine-and-a-half squadrons. But we are slightly less now, because of phase-outs.”

Speaking before his departure for Delhi on Thursday, he said he would like to project India’s air power from the Horn of Africa to the South China Sea.

“Not for any evil intentions, but as a power in this part of the world, as a competent force. India is growing economically. If you are an economic power, you also need to be a big military power in the region. It is a national policy or objective.”

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