Group Captain (Dr) Ajey Lele (Retd.) is the Deputy Director General, MP-IDSA. Earlier, he was a Senior Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and headed its Centre on Strategic Technologies. He started his professional career as an officer in the Indian Air Force in 1987 and took early retirement from the service to pursue his academic interests. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Pune University, and Masters and MPhil degrees in Defence and Strategic Studies from Madras University. He has done his doctorate from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. His specific areas of research include issues related to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Space Security and Strategic Technologies. He has contributed articles to various national and international journals, websites and newspapers. He has authored ten books and has also been an editor for seven books. He is a recipient of the K. Subrahmanyam Award (2013) which is conferred for outstanding contribution in the area of strategic and security studies.
Any cyber architecture can be viewed as a doubled edged sword – either ignore it and be exposed or use it to one’s advantage. Cyber espionage is here to stay.
The Group of Government Experts need to take into consideration complex and inter-related concerns of space activities before formulating the Transparency and Confidence Building Measures. The need is to have an effective mechanism and not an accommodative one.
A ‘pearl’ could be viewed as a sphere of influence seeded, secured and maintained through the use of economic, geopolitical, diplomatic or military means. The ‘string of pearls’ is about China’s unambiguous maritime strategy that investments in increasing its sea power. This is essentially a multi-pronged strategy that challenges dominant US interests in the Indian Ocean and sends a clear message to India that the Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean by increasing the dependence of the littoral states in the region on China.
For almost the last 50 years, space collaboration has significantly remained intact between France and India. They have worked together on a range of issues from satellite applications, developing small satellites to earth system science and weather satellites.
Iran’s investments in space should not be viewed only through the narrow prism of a nuclear threat but as a nascent attempt to challenge the West’s technological domination.
After becoming the first country to oppose the annual non-binding UN resolution ‘Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space’ in 2005, the US made it clear to the United Nations that it ‘will continue to consider the possible role that [S]pace-related weapons may play in protecting [its] [S]pace assets.’ This was only a precursor to the 2006 National Space Policy of the US that has cleared the way for the deployment of Spacebased weapons by the US.
STI 2013 envisages the creation of a word-class infrastructure for R&D and skill development as well as encouraging the scientific community by providing adequate opportunities and better career options.
The most interesting aspect of India and Japan coming together is that they are also proposing to engage with other states where REEs are available for excavation.
India has much to learn from China with regard to using space as an ‘instrument of influence’ and also needs to expand the global footprint of its expertise.
India’s inadequacies in the space arena are not limited to how much weight its launch vehicles can carry into space but also extends to the number of launches that ISRO can carry out in a year.