{"id":34051,"date":"2022-12-15T02:32:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T21:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=34051"},"modified":"2025-04-20T08:29:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T02:59:04","slug":"us-space-force-establishes-first-foreign-command-in-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/us-space-force-establishes-first-foreign-command-in-south-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"US Space Force establishes first foreign command in South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Space Security \u2013 About, need<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Counter-space capabilities of India<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>News Summary<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The US military formally launched a space force unit in South Korea, a move that will likely enable Washington to better monitor its rivals North Korea, China and Russia.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is Space Security?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Space security deals with the abilities of a country to protect its assets in space &#8211; such as the hundreds of satellites used for communication and surveillance.<\/li>\n<li>The space landscape is changing rapidly. Terrestrial politics is casting its shadow on outer space.<\/li>\n<li>Hence, relevance of space to national security and conventional military operations is increasing day by day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is the need for space security?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Competition in outer space<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Several recent trends are impacting the security and sustainability of outer space activities. These include:\n<ul>\n<li>the massive growth in the number and diversity of actors operating in outer space, including governments and the private sector;<\/li>\n<li>the proliferation of hazardous space debris; and<\/li>\n<li>increasing dependence on outer space in the civilian, government and military sectors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Protection of space assets<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>There exists a possibility of intentional tampering with such assets and the associated ground setup, either by state or non-state actors.<\/li>\n<li>While there are no specifically deployed weapons in space yet, there are satellites that could be manoeuvred to act as weapons to disable or destroy the space assets of others.<\/li>\n<li>The threat to space assets is directly proportional to degree of nation\u2019s dependence on the assets.\n<ul>\n<li>Higher the dependence the greater will be threat and the vulnerability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Countries developing counter-space capabilities<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The first <strong>successful<\/strong> Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test took place in January 2007.<\/li>\n<li>China\u2019s launch of a rocket from a ship is evidence of growing sophistication of the Chinese military space capabilities.<\/li>\n<li>In December 2019, US president announced the creation of US Space force.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What are counter-space capabilities of India?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>So far, <u>India\u2019s approach to outer space can be described as purely civilian<\/u>. India has been developing its space capabilities for peaceful purposes.\n<ul>\n<li>It should be noted that, India <strong>does not have a declared Space Security Policy<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>However, due to changing landscape, in an effort to deny an adversary advantages, India also started to develop its counter-space capabilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What steps taken are by Indian Government for space security?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>India\u2019s first dedicated military satellite was launched only in 2013.<\/li>\n<li>Under the <strong>Mission Shakti<\/strong>, in March 2019, India shot down a live Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite in space thereby showing its deterrence capability in space.\n<ul>\n<li>This was the first Indian demonstration of anti-satellite (ASAT) capability.<\/li>\n<li>With this feat, India became the 4th country in the world to have this capability. The <u>other three countries are U.S, Russia and China<\/u>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The establishment of the new tri-service <u>Defence Space Agency (DSA)<\/u>, based in Bangalore, is an important institutional initiative.<\/li>\n<li>To promote R&amp;D in this field, government gave its approval for setting up of a new agency called the Defence Space Research Agency (DSRA).<\/li>\n<li>India conducted war game IndSpaceEx to gain a better understanding of the current and emerging challenges in the space security domain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>News Summary<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The US Space Force has launched its first foreign command in South Korea.<\/li>\n<li>The facility is the first of its kind outside American soil since the creation of the US Space Force in 2019.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Background:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In December 2019, the then President Donald Trump officially created a force focused on warfare in space &#8211; the US Space Force.<\/li>\n<li>It was created to protect US assets in space &#8211; especially satellites used for civilian and military navigation, intelligence and communication.\n<ul>\n<li>A previous Pentagon report said China and Russia had embarked on major efforts to develop technologies that could allow them to disrupt or destroy American and allied satellites in a crisis or conflict.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It was created to bring together diverse surveillance assets including space-based satellites in one organization to manage them effectively.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>South Korea: the first foreign unit of US space force<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>South Korea has been chosen as the first foreign unit due to following reasons:\n<ul>\n<li>There is a growing concern over North Korea, which has launched a record number of ballistic missiles in 2022.<\/li>\n<li>The militaries of South Korea and the US already have strong ties through their Combined Forces Command.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The unit will also help the US to monitor security threats from Russia and China.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is space force?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>A space force is a military branch of a nation&#8217;s armed forces that conducts military operations in outer space and space warfare.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2) Who conducted Mission Shakti?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Mission Shakti was under taken by DRDO in which a missile launched from ground had to hit and neutralize with pinpoint accuracy a fast-moving satellite in orbit hundreds of kilometres away.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To ensure space security, US military has formally launched a space force unit in South Korea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}