June 17, 2008
WITH APOLOGIES TO MARK STEYN...:
India goes to war in space (Sudha Ramachandran, 6/17/08, Asia Times)
India's defense forces will be keeping an eye on yet another frontier - outer space. An Integrated Space Cell, which will be jointly operated by the country's three armed forces, the civilian Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been set up to utilize more effectively the country's space-based assets for military purposes and to look into threats to these assets.Announcing the setting up of the Integrated Space Cell, India's Defense Minister Arackaparambil Kurian Antony said last week that it was being established because of "the growing threat" to India's space assets. "Offensive counter-space systems like anti-satellite weaponry, new classes of heavy-lift and small boosters and an improved array of military space systems have emerged in our neighborhood," the defense minister pointed out, stressing that these need to be countered. [...]
That announcement came less than a month after China used a medium-range ballistic missile to shoot down one of its own aging satellites, a Chinese Feng Yun 1C polar orbit weather satellite that it had launched into orbit in 1999.
...it's actually China that's alone.