The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) chaired by Defence Minister has given the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for procuring a GSAT 7B satellite, along with equipment like Night Sight (image intensifier), etc.

• Launched in 2013, the GSAT 7 series satellites are advanced satellites developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
• They were developed to meet the communication needs of the defence services, which includes low bit voice rate to high bit rate data facilities, including multi-band communications.
• This satellite has a footprint of nearly 2,000 nautical miles in the Indian Ocean region.
• Rukmini– Named Rukmini, the satellite is mainly used by the Indian Navy for its communication needs.
• It 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.
• The satellite was injected into a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO).
• Role of GSAT 7B – Currently, the Indian Army is using 30% of the communication capabilities of the GSAT 7A satellite, which has been designed for the Indian Air Force (IAF).
• So, GSAT 7B will primarily fulfill the Army’scommunication
• It will also help the Army enhance its surveillancein border areas.

GSAT 7A Satellite

• Launched in 2018, GSAT 7A 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.
• It also helps in satellite controlled operations of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which gives a great deal of reliability to the operations as compared to ground controlled operations.
• It has 10 channels in Ku band with switchable frequency for mobile users, a fixed Gregorian or parabolic antenna, and 4 steerable antennae.

GSAT 7C Satellite

• A GSAT 7C satellite is on the cards for the IAF, and a proposal to this effect was cleared by the DAC in 2021.
• It would facilitate real time communication with IAF’s software defined radio communication sets.
• It will increase the capability of the IAF to communicate beyond the line of sight in a secure mode.

Other Military Satellites of India

• EMISAT– An Electromagnetic Intelligence Gathering Satellite (EMISAT), developed by ISRO, was launched in 2020 through a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C45).
• It is Indian reconnaissance satellite under Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) project Kautilyas.
• Kautilyais an Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) package, which allows the interception of ground-based radar and also carries out electronic surveillance across India.
• It provides the capability in direction-finding of radar and fixing their locations.
• Placed in a 748-km orbit, EMISAT is based on the Israeli satellite system.
• It circles the globe pole-to-pole, and is helpful in gathering information from radars of countries that have borders with India.
• RISAT 2BR1– Launched in 2019, RISAT 2BR1 is India’s synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite.

It has the capability to operate in different modes including very high resolution imaging modes of 1×0.5m resolution and 0.5×0.3m resolution with a swath of 5-10 km.