NEW DELHI: To boost India’s surveillance system from space, the Cabinet Committee on Security led by PM Narendra Modi has quietly approved the phase III of the Space Based Surveillance (SBS-III) for launching a big bunch of spy satellites in low earth and geostationary orbits.
“CCS on Monday gave the approval for launching 52 satellites under the SBS-III project, which would cost around Rs 27,000 crore,” a source in Isro told TOI.
India had already launched several spy or earth observation satellites under the SBS programme like Risat, Cartosat and Gsat-7 series satellites. The SBS-1 was first approved under the Vajpayee regime in 2001 under which four surveillance satellites were launched. Thereafter, six such satellites were launched under the second phase in 2013. The 50+ satellites, which are likely to be launched in five years, will boost the numbers of ‘eyes in the sky’, adding punch to the space-based surveillance system of India’s land and sea borders at a time the country is facing security concerns on the western border with Pakistan, northern border with China and increased sea surveillance by Chinese spy vessels and submarines in the Indian Ocean Region.
The new fleet of satellites will be based on artificial intelligence (AI) that can “interact with each other in space to gather geo-intelligence” on the Earth. “We will have communication between satellites, so that if some satellite detects something, which is at GEO (geosynchronous equatorial orbit) at 36,000km altitude, it can ask another satellite in the lower orbit (at 400-600 km altitude) to check much more carefully and then give us more information. This capability will give us enormous potential,” a senior Isro official said last December.
The new tech will be able to “improve the ability of satellites to detect changes, to bring in more AI-related and data-driven approaches to analyse data, reduce data downloads and get only the necessary information”. “If India is able to launch satellites at this scale, threats to the country can be better mitigated,” he said. The recent Cabinet clearance to purchase 31 weaponised Predator drones from US-based General Atomics will add more teeth to the surveillance capability of the SBS-3 mission.
Like the earlier dedicated satellites such as Gsat-7B (Indian Army), GSAT-7 (Rukmini for Navy) and GSAT-7A (Angry Bird for the IAF) for the armed forces, the three wings will have more such dedicated satellites for their special operations and missions.
SBS operates 24-hours a day, 7-day a week collecting metric and space object identification data for man-made orbiting objects without the disruption of weather, time of day and atmosphere that can otherwise limit ground-based systems.