India has 9-11 military satellites directly available with the armed forces. An official said that Isro also facilitated “repeatable” data from a commercial global operator.
“While data from our satellites from the Cartosat series and others were also used for planning, images were procured from Maxar,” the senior official said.
US-based satellite imagery provider, Maxer, supplies images to multiple governments and non-government entities across the world. It, however, remains unclear if Pakistan used its services for any of its operations during the current conflict. Pakistan, too, has access to the extensive military space assets of China.
Indian armed forces have access to other satellite data from Sentinel from Europe and another commercial operator from the US.
Indian assets
“Indian satellites provide periodic data – with downloads of specific areas possible about once in 14 days. This data was made use of, while they used commercial data that’s available once a day too,” the official said.The Cartosat family of satellites, with high-resolution imagery and dual-use (image & video) capabilities, has been a key asset in India’s military intelligence. It was first launched in 2005 and has progressively been upgraded with satellites like the Cartosat-2C (for military),. These satellites have provided crucial imagery for operations.Cartosat-2C, for example, delivers images with a resolution of 0.65 metres. This is an improvement over previous models- and has been vital in reconnaissance and surveillance operations.
The high-resolution images from Cartosat can capture areas of interest with incredible clarity, enabling commanders to make precise decisions based on intelligence from space. These were used for the 2016 Surgical Strike.
Aside from Cartosat, the Risat family of satellites would have provided radar images useful to track movement, while the Gsat family of satellites were used for communications.
“In all, a variety of Indian space assets have been useful and efforts are on to increase support to the armed forces in the years to come,” the official said.
Future build-up
Indian Space Association (ISpA) director-general Lt Gen (retd) AK Bhat, said, “There would have been extensive use of space assets for imagery, sat-com (satellite communication) and PNT (positioning, navigation and timing). Space technology is an integral part of modern warfare.”
Isro chairman V Narayanan, who said on Sunday that 10 satellites are working round the clock for the armed forces, did not comment on Operation Sindoor. He, however, told TOI, “We will be launching another important satellite on May 18, the EOS-09 or Risat-1B, which will add teeth to our armed forces.”
“The satellite features an advanced C-band synthetic aperture radar system that delivers high-resolution Earth surface imagery in all weather conditions. This capability significantly enhances India’s surveillance capabilities,” he added.
Risat-1B’s radar technology penetrates these obstacles effectively unlike conventional optical satellites limited by cloud cover or darkness.
Earlier this month, Narayanan had said that India would launch 100-150 satellites in the next five years.
Among these would be the 52 satellites part of the Space-Based Surveillance-3 (SBS-3) programme and 31 of these will be developed by the private sector.
