Moreover, Indian satellites in various orbits (geosynchronous, medium, and low earth) could be blanked out, including the GSAT series of communication satellites and remote sensing CARTOSAT satellites. India’s Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), operationally called NAVIC, which provided real-time positioning and timing services, could be partially debilitated, destroyed, disabled, jammed, or their inter-satellite links broken. Given this, India’s C4ISR grid would be severely hit. Few have bothered to appreciate China’s massive cyber offensive capabilities; if they had precautionary cyber defensive measures would have been taken. Furthermore, at ISRO, there has been a thin line between commercial and military space infrastructure. There has been too much reliance on commercial satellites to gather images and other data. Commercial satellites, unlike military satellites, are not built to strict security standards. Besides, there are weaknesses in the supply chain that can be exploited. Control stations on ground can be injected with malware. India is not using artificial intelligence and machine learning for spotting and stopping cyber threats. India’s cyber space agency is too small and ill-equipped to take on the Chinese cyber offensive challenge.
Given the heavily skewed asymmetry, China would go the whole hog, using its cyber offensive capability for whole-of-nation war against India. These include advanced cyber weapons and AI-backed intelligent and autonomous cyber agents. These extremely intelligent cyber agents would decide on their own when and for how long to lie quiet in cyberspace and when to strike and destroy enemy system-of-systems. The success of the military mission would, to a large extent, depend on these autonomous cyber agents and India’s ability to confront them successfully. The PLA has these capabilities now.