India’s 2019 ASAT Strike Caught U.S. Intelligence Off Guard, Recalls Ex-Intel Officer David Grusch
NEW DELHI — Former US Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch has revealed that India’s 2019 Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile test, known as Mission Shakti, triggered sudden panic and high-alert responses within the US intelligence community.
"There was an unexpected Indian missile test that hit one of their own defunct satellites in 2019, and they didn’t tell us," Grusch stated during a podcast appearance.
According to Grusch, orbital analysts immediately began modeling the trajectory and resulting debris field from the destroyed satellite, Microsat-R. The primary concern for the NRO was assessing whether the fragment cloud posed immediate danger to US reconnaissance satellites operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
India's Ministry of External Affairs had clarified at the time that the test was intentionally executed at a low altitude (~300 km) to ensure that space debris would safely decay and re-enter Earth's atmosphere within weeks, minimizing long-term operational risks in orbit.
The successful interception made India only the fourth country in the world—after the United States, Russia, and China—to demonstrate an operational kinetic anti-satellite capability.
