The Indian DefSpace Symposium 2023 began with a special focus on India’s space and defence collaboration. Both the space and defence sector has been the topmost priority for the betterment of Indian citizens and the symposium made sure to accentuate this fact by operating relevant and detailed sessions that spurred throughout the day.
The 3-day symposium commenced with the welcome address by Lt Gen Anil Kumar Bhatt (Retd), Director General, Indian Space Association who talked about the importance of the gathering and the way forward. He highlighted, “This symposium will pave the way forward of how we leverage international space cooperation and also the policy and strategy for building an overall comprehensive different space strategy.”
Addressing the conference, Chief Guest and Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces, Gen. Anil Chauhan emphasised the need for expanding the NAVIC constellation while providing agile space-based ISR and ensuring secure satellite-assisted communications.
He further said, “We also need to explore the field of miniaturization of satellites and reusable launch platforms to mitigate cost, challenges and accelerate the pace of augmenting our space-based capabilities. The populating of space domain and the emergence of dynamic threat environment to our space assets also demands that we enhance our space situational awareness capability.”
He added that we need to focus on safeguarding our assets with counter-space capabilities while also building resilience and redundancy in a space-based infrastructure.
Dr Samir V Kamat, Chairman, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), said, “We at DRDO have started increasing our focus on the very critical space domain with focus on space-based surveillance, space situational awareness, protecting our space-based assets. We are now looking at working very closely with industry as well as academia right from the development stage and have started DRDO industry-academia centers of excellence in about 15 institutions mostly within the country.”
The symposium aims on bringing all the stakeholders in the defence and space sectors under one umbrella to boost the partnership between the aforementioned sectors.
With the spotlight on delivering space domain awareness and satellite communications to enhance military operations and address issues related to securing funding for new space capabilities, expanding international partnerships, and developing a Defence Space Strategy in line with the National Space Strategy, the symposium sets apart with a one-of-its-kind event.
