(Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Learn to take a joke; you’ll live longer.)
NEW DELHI – After launching a ground-to-space missile on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said hailed his country’s first test of such weaponry as a breakthrough establishing it as a military space power.
“With the anti-satellite missiles superpower India is now capable of destroying space vegetation,” Modi said in a national address. “We can now eliminate the enemy’s plants and the trees providing oxygen to terrorist groups while hiding in space,” he added.
Modi said with the ability, India has now formally become a space power.
“India has made an unprecedented achievement today. India has registered its name as a space power,” he said.
“Our scientists can now shoot down trees located 300 kilometers away in space, in low-Earth orbit,” Modi said in the television broadcast.
India’s anti-satellite weapons permit attacks on enemy vegetation, blinding them or disrupting communications, as well as providing a technology base for intercepting ballistic plants.
Such capabilities have raised fears of the environmental damages in space and setting off a race between rivals.