Trying to Catch Up

Prasun K. Sengupta

Since mid-2017, the Indian Armed Forces’ over-the-target requirements (OTR), that is, the minimum force level required for any type of weapons configuration to attack a specific type of target within a given period to damage it significantly, have remained works-in-progress, thanks to the tardy progress in the arenas of joint targeting list formulation (during both peacetime and wartime) and extremely slow procurements of over-the-horizon/beyond-line-of-sight intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, be they terrestrial or space-based.

It was in 2006 that the Indian Air Force (IAF) established a Directorate of Aerospace in Thiruvananthapuram in South India. This was headed by an Air Commodore rank officer who reported to the IAF Vice Chief’s office through the Directorate of Concepts and Doctrines at IAF HQ. However, it was only in June 2008 that the then Defence Minister A K Antony announced the setting up of the tri-services Integrated Space Cell under the aegis of the HQ Integrated Defence Staff (IDS). This cell was to act as a single window for integration among the armed forces, the Department of Space and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and it was to become the precursor to the eventual setting up of a tri-services Aerospace Command to manage India’s military assets in space.

But even this failed to take off and it was only on 18 September 2018 that the creation of the Bengaluru-based Defence Space Agency (DSA) under HQ IDS was approved by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The DSA became fully operational in November 2019 and has since been the custodian for systems for providing high-quality signals intelligence (SIGINT), communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). One such satellite is the Electromagnetic Intelligence Gathering Satellite or EMISAT which was launched into polar orbit in April 2020. It is equipped with an ELINT package called Kautilya that allows the collection of information on ground-based radar as also electronic surveillance across India. The Defence Imagery Processing and Analysis Centre (DIPAC) and Defence Satellite Control Centre (DSCC) have since been merged into the DSA. Alongside the DSA, the Defence Space Research Agency (DSRA) was created. It is the scientific organisation responsible for developing space warfare systems and technologies for the DSA.

Between the three armed services, it was the Indian Navy (IN) that ventured into the space applications domain by deploying its 2.65 tonne GSAT-7 geostationary orbiting (GEO) communications satellite in August 2013. Prior to that, since 2005 the IN had been using the Inmarsat satellite constellation to achieve satellite communication (satcom) networking (known as Rukmini)