France conducts first military exercises in space

France has launched its first military exercises in space in order to test its ability to defend its satellites as well as other defence equipment from attack amid the growing competition between the world powers in Earth’s orbit.

The Head of France’s newly created Space Command Michel Friedling called the space exercises a stress test of the systems and mentioned that the exercises were a first for the French army as well as entire Europe.

The exercise, which has been codenamed ‘AsterX’ in the memory of the first French satellite from the year 1965, will be based on 18 simulated events in an operations room.

Objective of a military exercise in space:

At the time of the exercise, the French military will be monitoring a dangerous space object as well as a threat to its own satellite from any other foreign power with a considerable space force. According to Friedling, a series of events appear and create threats or crisis situations against the space infrastructure but only this.

Key Highlights:

• The German Space and US Space Force agencies have also been taking part in the French exercises. They began on March 8 and will run till March 12, 2021.

• The Space Command of France was announced in 2019 and aims to have 500 personnel by the year 2025.

• Investment by France in the space program is set to reach 4.3 billion euros over the budget period of 2019-2025. It is just a fraction of the amount spent by China or the United States.

Stopping the militarization of space:

The Defence Minister of France Florence Parly had stated that our allies and adversaries have been militarizing space.

She further added that France plans on developing anti-satellite laser weapons and new surveillance capabilities to close the gaps with rivals Russia, the US, and China.

France, in 2018, had accused Russia of trying to intercept the transmissions from a Franco-Italian satellite that was being used by the armies of France and Italy for secure communications. Louch-Olymp, the Russian satellite, had allegedly approached the Athena-Fidus satellite in what France called ‘an act of espionage’.