Pakistan PM Imran Khan | Photo Credit: IANS

New Delhi: As India entered the elite club of nations possessing the strategic capability to destroy a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite Pakistan said that New Delhi is searching for “imaginary enemy.”

Hours after PM Narendra Modi announced that India had successfully shot down a live satellite with a missile; Pakistan issued a statement saying it was against the militarization of outer space.

While India is ready for any future challenges emanating from the space, reacting to this path-breaking test Pakistan quoted Don Quixote who fought imaginary enemies in the novel of the same name written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes.

Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said: “Boasting of such capabilities (to destroy satellite) is reminiscent of Don Quixote's tilting against windmills," he said, referring to India's test.”

In the statement, Pakistan termed space as a common heritage and said that no attempts should be made by mankind or any nation to militarize it.

In a televised address to the nation, PM Modi earlier announced that India successfully test-fired an anti-satellite missile by shooting down a live satellite. After a successful test, India is now the fourth country in the world after the US, Russia and China having the strategic capability to shoot down enemy satellites.

The statement further reads saying that

Pakistan further said that it is a "strong proponent of the United Nations resolution on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space" and called on the countries which strongly condemned demonstration of similar capabilities by others in the past to “work towards developing international instruments to prevent military threats relating to outer space.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs has already said in a statement that India has no plan or any intention of entering into an arms race in outer space.

After Pakistan, China also issued a statement on India successfully test-firing an anti-satellite missile, saying: "We have noticed reports and hope that each country will uphold peace and tranquillity in outer space".

In 2007, China conducted a similar test by destroying a defunct FY-1C polar orbit weather satellite by a kinetic kill vehicle. The test was severely criticized by many countries including Japan, the US, Russia and the United Kingdom.

According to a report by the Center for Space, the official debris count from China's anti-satellite missile test reached 2,317 and they were big enough to be tracked by NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office.

The report further says that the debris field generated by the Chinese test “is so large that it can be easily seen without doing anything to emphasize the debris cloud.”

The US was the first country to successfully destroy a satellite in LEO orbit when in 1987 P78-1 satellite was brought down by ASM-135 ASAT.