As such, recognising the strategic importance of owning a space-based GPS system, countries and organisations around the world, are now busy realizing their own, independent satellite navigation constellations. Russian Glonass, European Galileo and Chinese Beidou are all fast emerging as potential rivals to the American GPS system. Not to lag behind, India too is now busy putting in place a home grown, full-fledged, seven spacecraft constellation of Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
While speaking at the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) User Meet 2015 held in Bengaluru on 08 October 2015, ISRO Chairman A.S.Kiran Kumar pointed out that entire IRNSS constellation will be completed during the course of the current year. Rightly and appropriately, Kumar was clear in his perception that IRNSS would provide self-reliance in the strategically important area of navigation services by supporting a range of civilian and military services.
The successful launch of IRNSS-1E, the fifth satellite of IRNSS system, on 20 January 2015 by means of an augmented version of the four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) designated PSLV-XL has brought India closer to the realization of a full-fledged, home-grown satellite positioning system. Designed for a lifespan of twelve years, IRNSS-1E was launched into a sub-geosynchronous transfer orbit with a 284 km perigee and 20,657 km apogee with an inclination of 19.2 degree with respect to the equatorial plane. ISRO said that the efficiency of navigation services being made available by IRNSS has already been validated by the “signal-in-space” of the four satellites already in service.
Giving details, Kiran Kumar revealed that the current thrust is on completing the IRNSS constellation with a focus on extending the navigation services to the countries in the SAARC region. However, the long term plan is to give a global dimension to the Indian satellite navigation capability and make India a recognised operator of satellite navigation system on par with GPS and Glonass. In this context, Kumar said “In this backdrop, activities are going on the way we need to take forward the objective of self- reliance while trying to provide and extend the process of making these signals available not only within and surrounding our country but also looking around the globe.” Providing a logic and rationale for such an exercise, Kumar explained, “A set of regional things you add, it becomes global; it is a thought process on which we are now working with a few countries…right now we are doing 1500-km beyond the border, so we can keep adding regions to those things and get global”.
In this context, he noted that discussions are already on with South Korea and Gulf countries on making available Indian satellite navigation capabilities. Significantly, it is planned to further augment the IRNSS constellation with four more satellites after its initial seven spacecraft configuration is fully well in place. However, keeping in view the refined and stringent needs of the military and civilian sectors, G.Sateesh Reddy, Scientific Adviser to the Indian Defence Minister has called for augmenting the position accuracy of IRNSS .
He also stressed on the need for the Indian industries to focus on the issue of reducing the cost of accessing IRNSS system to make them economically efficient and reliable enterprise. Some of the advantageous features of IRNSS include highly accurate position, velocity and time information, data with good accuracy for a single frequency user with the help of ionospheric correction and an all-weather operation on 24 hour basis.
In the context of fishermen from Gujarat in the West and from Tamilnadu in the South going astray in the high seas and getting captured routinely by the naval forces of Pakistan and Sri Lanka respectively, there is a feeling that Indian fishing boats venturing into the oceanic water around India could be equipped with low cost, hand-held devices capable of providing position information in tandem with IRNSS constellation.” Location-based information using satellite data is becoming increasingly important both in everyday and in strategic matters; it is touching our lives through compact hand-held devices such as mobile phones,” explains A.S.Ganeshan, Director of the Satnav Programme of ISRO. According to ISRO, precise information provided by IRNSS could be of immense potential in supporting emergency services, disaster management, infrastructure development and many other sectors including transportation, surveying and power grids operation.
What more, in the North-Eastern region of the country, which is prone to extensive flooding, the course and changing dynamics of the flow of the rivers can be tracked to alert people against the possibility of flood waters inundating their habitats. “The socio-economic benefits of satellite navigation will be tremendous and create many job opportunities. By 2022, the market for GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers alone is projected to increase to about US$7-billion worldwide,” says Ganeshan. Like a typical GPS system, IRNSS is designed to provide two types of services—Standard Positioning Service (SPS) made available to all the users and Restricted Service which is an encrypted service provided only to the authorised users. The strategic advantage of owning and operating a full-fledged satellite navigation system hardly needs to be emphasized, especially during hours of crisis.
In the context of the navigation satellites emerging as a key tool in boosting the defence and offensive operations, the IRNSS constellation will offer Indian defence forces a certain tactical advantage in so far as launching high-precision weapons including long range missiles with precision is concerned. By all means, space-based GPS platforms have become a most sought after support-base for the aircraft, warships and ground forces to give a new edge to the battlefield strategy to stay at the winning edge of the war. Incidentally, as part of an agreement that India has entered into with Russia, Indian defence forces will be in a position to access the restricted capability of the Russian Glonass to boost their battlefield strategy. For long, Indian defence forces did feel thoroughly disadvantaged by the nonavailability of accurate signals from GPS system on a sustained and uninterrupted basis. Indeed, as strategic analysts point out, proper navigation in an unfamiliar territory that is devoid of any identifiable landmarks is vital for the successful accomplishment of reconnaissance missions and well-planned military operations. Significantly, to a large extent, the success of Desert Storm military campaign launched in the early 1990s by the US-led coalition forces to free Kuwait from the clutches of Iraq was a tribute to the imaginative use of space- based navigation platforms.
There is no denying the point that during India’s 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan, in the absence of a proper navigation aid, Indian patrols operating in the rugged and difficult to negotiate terrain along the Line of Control strayed into the enemy-held territory with disastrous consequences. It was the subsequent availability of hand-held GPS devices that proved to be a turning point for the special task forces and crack teams engaged in identifying targets and destroying enemy installations. Evidently, inputs provided by GPS devices could be exploited to co-ordinate the movement of troops and supply with a high degree of efficiency. At the end of the day, the GPS capability in tandem with GIS allows military planners view, plan, interpret and visualize data in ways that reveal solution and intelligence as never before. As it is, most combat aircraft come equipped with GPS receivers to help access navigation services on an uninterrupted basis and smoothly guide its flight under the cover of darkness, haze and cloud, besides help it use weapons and ammunition with a vastly enhanced efficiency.
GPS system particularly designed for weapons delivery stand to benefit from the optimal integration of GPS receivers with inertial measurement units and use of adaptive processing algorithms and antennae that reject unwanted signal interference. GPS space platforms along with a string of other satellites meant for different end uses hold the key to a well-coordinated and synchronised operations of a battlefield strategy to seamlessly integrate weapons systems, missiles, radars and sensor suits, UAVs, UCAVs, electronic and communications network ,fighter jets, transport aircraft, logistics and support systems and defence forces spread across and around the world.
(By: CLAWS)
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