NEWS

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) has given the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for capital acquisition proposals for GSAT 7B satellite, along with equipment like Night Sight (image intensifier), 4X4 light vehicles, and Air Defence Fire Control Radar (light).

GSAT 7 SERIES

• Advanced satellites
• Developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
• Meet the communication needs of the defence services
• Launched in August 2013 from an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from Kourou in French Guiana
• 2,650 kg satellite has a footprint of nearly 2,000 nautical miles in the Indian Ocean region
• Mainly used by the Indian Navy for its communication needs
• Satellite provides a gamut of services for military communication needs, which includes low bit voice rate to high bit rate data facilities, including multi-band communications
• Named Rukmini, the satellite carries payloads in UHF, C-band and Ku-band, and helps the Navy to have a secure, real time communication link between its land establishments, surface ships, submarines and aircraft.
• GSAT 7A was launched in 2018 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, and has gone a long way in boosting the connectivity between the ground radar stations, airbases and the airborne early warning and control aircraft (AEW&C) of the IAF
• GSAT 7C satellite is on the cards for the IAF, and a proposal to this effect was cleared by the DAC in 2021

WHAT OTHER KINDS OF MILITARY SATELLITES DOES INDIA HAVE?

• An Electromagnetic Intelligence Gathering Satellite (EMISAT), developed by ISRO, was launched in April 2020 through a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C45). It has an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) package called Kautilya, which allows the interception of ground-based radar and also carries out electronic surveillance across India.
• India also has a RISAT 2BR1 synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, which was launched in December 2019 from Sriharikota. It has the capability to operate in different modes including very high resolution imaging modes of 1×0.5 metre resolution and 0.5×0.3 m resolution with a swath of 5-10 km.