The Indian Air Force is pitching for a change of nomenclature as well as role to an Aero Space Force with equivalent capabilities and organisations as it believes that, “near space and space applications are important towards national security that include Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; transit of military vehicles, weapon passage and guidance; secure military data links and communication; tracking and interception of weapons utilising the medium of space. Space based assets are the new centres of gravity due to their expanding operational capabilities and capacities but they are also vulnerable to targeting.”
This is as per the Indian Air Force Doctrine published in June 2022 which has pitched for a larger space role for the IAF.
The inflection point for such a direction for the Indian Air Force is said to be the Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh’s Address on 05 May 2022 wherein he stated that the, “Indian Air Force should become Aerospace Force and be ready to protect the country from ever evolving threats.” Mr Singh was delivering the keynote address for the 37thAir Chief Marshal PC Lal Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on May 05, 2022.
The IAF articulation of a doctrine in June 2022 leveraging space indicates that possibly there had been an interaction with the Ministry of Defence on the subject as it would not have led to publishing of a doctrine within weeks of the statement by the defence minister.
“The increasing usage of the continuum between atmosphere and space by ballistic missiles, long range vectors, hypersonic glide vehicles, high altitude pseudo satellites etc pose a greater challenge to air defence. While IAF’s utilisation of the air and space continues to evolve, the term aerospace power assumes great significance from the air force perspective,” says the Doctrine.
The IAF vision stated in the Doctrine are, “To be an agile and adaptable air force that provides decisive aerospace power in furtherance of our national interests”.
Indeed the IAF desire to be an aerospace force may be in keeping with the future trends though India’s military capabilities in the space spectrum are limited but these could increase in the days ahead. In any case the three services are extensively making use of space based assets for a variety of functions with dedicated satellites allocated for the purpose from reconnaissance to communications and possible targeting.
Given that space is a common medium for the services for which the Defence Space Agency has been raised, creating IAF as the sole repository or possibly a dual agency for dealing with the same medium needs some consideration.
The proposal for Indian Aerospace Force would need a holistic appraisal of the roles and charter of such a force and how it will fit into the overall paradigm of the space organisations for the three services. What will be the role of the Defence Space Agency which is controlling the services utilization of space in such a case and what about integration through theaterisation? There appear to be more questions than answers.
This will increase the pitch for a National Security Strategy while it is believed that the HQ Integrated Defence Staff is working on revision of the 2017 Integrated Defence Doctrine. How does it integrate the aspirations of the individual services as the IAF’s for Aerospace power remains to be seen?
Or will the redesignation of the IAF as an IASF be a change in name without complete overhauling of the role and organisations for space which need to be integrated in nature.
More worryingly the penchant of Indian services to continue to propose single service upgradation be it only in nomenclature indicates that the process of jointness and integration continues to be in a limbo, while theaterisation may be on the backburner for now.
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