new delhi india needs to develop both offensive and defensive space capabilities to safeguard our assets air chief marshal v r chaudhari said on tuesday in the backdrop of china furiously building and deploying antisatellite weapons from direct ascent missiles and coorbital killers to directedenergy laser weapons and electronic jammersthe race to weaponize space has already started and the day is not far when our next war would spread across all domains of land sea air cyber and space we need to capitalize on our initial successes in space and prepare ourselves for the future the iaf chief saidindia did successfully test an antisatellite asat interceptor missile to destroy the 740kg microsatr satellite at an altitude of 283km in the low earth orbit leo under mission shakti in march 2019 after the creation of a small triservice defence space agency dsa the same year instead of a fullfledged space command that the armed forces were demanding india has also been taking some initial steps to develop other counterspace capabilities as well as the ability to protect its own satellites from electronic or physical attacksbut the huge strides made by china have even the us worried with the final frontier of space becoming increasingly contested as well as congested half of the around 700 operational satellites of china for instance are that of its peoples liberation armyin contrast while india does have several dualuse civilian satellites the iaf and navy has only one dedicated military satellite each as of now the armys first dedicated satellite gsat7b will be launched for rs 4635 crore towards end2025speaking at a seminar acm chaudhari said defence minister rajnath singh has categorically stated it was now time for the iaf to become an aerospace force and be ready to protect the country from the everevolving threatswith ondemand launch of satellites and spacecraft becoming the new normal and growing exploitation of it by private and military stakeholders space has definitely become the ultimate high ground the iaf chief saidthe indian aerospace industry along with other players like isro and the dsa need to collaborate and chalk out the path for the future we have already demonstrated our nanosatellite technology by deploying 104 satellites using pslvc37 last year he saidacm chaudhari said the indian defence industries also need to further the development of directed energy weapons dews especially lasers and hypersonic weapons and also integrate them onto airborne platforms to get desired ranges and accuracy such weapons provide significant advantages over traditional ones in terms of precision engagement lowcost per shot logistical benefits and low detectability he saidindia should also be looking at adopting absorbing and more importantly indigenouslydeveloping advanced technologies in unmanned aerial vehicles uavs or drones the use of such evolving technology in terms of swarms etc in the military context will lead to a much higher demand of uavs and ucavs combat uavs in the future the iaf chief saidresearch is already progressing in dronerelated technologies including quantum drones qd quantum computing itself has the