Space Warfare: Sky's the limit

The Indian Express
Tags : DRDO, defence ministry, india
Posted: Tuesday , Feb 16, 2010 at 0201 hrs
Beijing’s dismissal of the DRDO’s claims that its missile technology is superior to that of China might provoke knee-jerk patriotism in Delhi. But no one in the world disputes that China is way ahead of India in missilery and military uses of space. By transferring missiles and their production technology, China has also put Pakistan ahead of India. Instead of acknowledging the reality and redoubling the effort to catch up, the DRDO is making extravagant claims. Take, for example, its head V.K. Saraswat’s claim that the Agni-III, with its 3000 km range, is ready for “induction” by the services. A weapons system inducted after just four tests including one failure? This is the kind of sanctimonious self-congratulation that the DRDO has doled out for decades. Because they wrap themselves in the flag, we are not supposed to ask questions, only clap. Saraswat has claimed that “there is no need to produce and store missiles in today’s world”. Really? China has more than 1000 missiles pointed at Taiwan; and is producing and deploying missiles in scores every year.
Sky's the limit

Comments
Still long way to go
By: MK Mohanty | 16-Feb-2010
In India, we always take too much pride in achievements that are already too late. Here all government organisations have no accountability and people ride to top just doing manipulations and politics. There is no investigation why projects are taking too much time and what the actual quality of products they develop. Instead people in name of patriotism just get proud and complacent. There are only a few people who are sincere and put to much effort to get whatever success they achieve, but they get hardly any recognition and reward for their achievements. Instead people who do not have any honest effort of professional integrity and those who only play blame-game and are active players of favouritism in terms of their language, race and political orientation get all the highlights. This is the culture we have in all spheres of our life and still we feel we are great of all civilisations. We've to still long way to go to understand what exactly is going on around us.

There is NO accountability in the whole system, be it scientists or politicians.
By: Jatin | 16-Feb-2010
In reality, India is great mainly those areas where independent verification is not possible; but in any other area of science-technology we are lagging far behind China and also slipping down fast compared to our own past (as per published data). There is NO accountability in the whole system, be it scientists or politicians. Whole system is crippled by nepotism and political interference.