India yesterday said that it shot down a low-orbiting satellite in a missile test, proving that it is among the world’s most advanced space superpowers.
In a rare address to the nation just weeks out from a national election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India has joined the US, Russia and China in accomplishing the feat.
A missile fired from a testing facility in Odisha, eastern India, downed the live satellite in orbit at about 300km in a “difficult operation” that lasted about three minutes, Modi said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“This is a proud moment for India,” he said in his first televised national address since late 2016.
“India has registered its name in the list of space superpowers. Until now, only three countries had achieved this feat,” Modi said.
It comes a month after Indian and Pakistani fighter jets engaged in a dogfight over a disputed border in Kashmir in a serious military escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals.
An Indian jet was shot down and a pilot captured by Pakistan, which had launched retaliatory airraids after Indian warplanes bombed Pakistani territory for the first time in decades.
Modi said that the missile test against the satellite was peaceful and not designed to create an “atmosphere of war.”
“I want to assure the world community that the new capability is not against anyone. This is to secure and defend the fast-growing India,” he said.
The US and the former Soviet Union carried out their first successful anti-satellite missile tests in 1985, and China in 2007.
All are now said to be working on so-called Star Wars laser arms to destroy satellites.
With satellites becoming increasingly crucial because of intelligence gathering — and major nations seeking to gain a foothold in space — the US in 2014 rejected a Russian-Chinese proposal for a treaty to ban weapons in space, saying that the treaty was “fundamentally flawed” because of the lack of weapons verification measures
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
RSS