Weapons now circle the earth. How can India protect itself?

Earlier this week, US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink opened the Air and Space Forces Association's Air, Space and Cyber Conference at National Harbor, Maryland and confirmed that the United States now possesses on-orbit space control weapons able to defend its combined land, sea and air forces against enemy attack. He named no system, method or date, and his department declined further comment. He later said the phrase was very carefully chosen. It was Washington's first admission that an offensive tool already circles the planet.

Gen. Douglas Schiess, the new US Chief of Space Operations, had said Chinese and Russian advances made the disclosure necessary and that deterrence must now come from strength. American space troops, he said, already operate orbital weapons that can shield the joint force from an attack that uses space. Beijing's foreign ministry said China opposes an "outer space arms race," while Moscow spoke of long-term stability. Both have spent years building exactly what they now condemn.

India claims no weapons in orbit and stands outside the front rank of space powers. Yet India stopped being an onlooker in March 2019, when Mission Shakti destroyed a satellite in low orbit. That test made India the fourth country, after the United States, Russia and China, to prove this ability. In 2025 came a Joint Military Space Doctrine and Space-Based Surveillance Phase-III, a planned web of 52 military satellites costing nearly ₹27,000 crore. Private firms will build much of it by 2029. NavIC, India's own navigation system, keeps the nation's clock, and the Defence Space Agency runs military space work. The aim is simple: jawans on Himalayan heights and sailors across the Indian Ocean must never fight blind.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction from orbit, but is silent on everything else. Nations have filled that silence with ground-launched missiles that shatter satellites, jammers, lasers that dazzle camera lenses, and inspector craft parked beside foreign property.

“Russia and China have practised these arts for years. Russia flies GLONASS for navigation, and its Luch-type satellites have hovered near other craft in the high orbit above the equator. American officers link a programme often called Nivelir to satellites that share the low-orbit path of American spy craft. A Russian missile blew apart an old satellite in 2021, scattering debris,” explained defence and space analyst Girish Linganna. Reports this year have suggested that two Russian satellites may have intercepted transmissions from at least 12 European spacecraft since the Ukraine war began. Russia has, however, remained silent on this.

China operates Beidou for navigation, Yaogan for surveillance, and high-orbit TJS craft whose roles are less clear. After destroying its own weather satellite in 2007, Beijing turned to subtler skills: close approaches, towing a dead satellite aside, and what analysts judge was refuelling in orbit between Shijian-21 and Shijian-25. A machine that can dock and refuel can also hover, shove or disable. The Secure World Foundation's 2026 survey found the same pattern across 13 countries: more bodyguard satellites, more practice of flying very close to another satellite, and more reversible tools that leave no visible wreckage.

The US build-up is older. The Space Force, formed in 2019, was told not merely to protect national assets but to strike on command. “The Golden Dome plan joins orbiting interceptors and air-defence missiles into one shield against threats from above. Hardware for those interceptors went from first contract to flight-ready in under a year. The first satellites of a network that tracks moving aircraft from orbit launch this month. Beneath it all lies the world's largest military constellation: GPS timing, National Reconnaissance Office spy craft, secure communications, missile-warning satellites, and American watch-satellites parked high above the equator that keep an eye on other nations' spacecraft,” added Linganna.