In this episode of Cut The Clutter, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta examines how satellites have become a crucial enabler of modern warfare. Drawing on Iran’s use of satellite imagery in the Gulf conflict and India’s own experience in recent operations, he explains how the ability to see, strike and prove damage has become central to both combat and perception. He also lays out why India needs to strengthen its space-based capabilities.
Here is the full transcript edited for clarity:
We are taking a short pause from the war, but still talking about the war in the Gulf. The pause is to look at a new instrument of war. New, perhaps, only in the sense that this is not a weapon in the traditional sense. It is an enabler. We have said often enough that in modern warfare, it is not just the weapon that matters, or even its range. It is who sees the adversary first, who can target first, and how quickly the adversary realises it has been seen and moves away. That is the cat-and-mouse game of modern warfare.
What is the primary instrument for doing this? There can always be agents on the ground, human intelligence, and when you have that, it works very well. But the consistent instrument has been what is up there. In the old days, it was aerial reconnaissance. India had a squadron of MiG-25s, which could fly at very high altitude, outside the range of fighters. At one point, one of these even created a sonic bang over Islamabad. It used special fuel, and later that capability was replaced by satellites. The MiG-25s based out of Bareilly were eventually retired. That entire era is now gone because satellites rule.
The second point is what we have seen in the Gulf war so far. Were you not surprised by the number of pictures showing damage on American sites? American and Gulf sites, yes, but especially American sites, because those were the best protected. Hitting American sites gives a much greater propaganda victory than making claims on radio or television, because these are pictures. This is hard evidence.
The other side of the same coin is this: how were the Iranians able to target these American sites so precisely? Many of these sites were in the Gulf countries rather than Israel. The plausible reason is that Israel is farther away than Qatar, Kuwait or Bahrain. The longer the range, the more time the defender has. Drones are also more accurate, and swarm attacks mean at least some get through. That is also why American sites were targeted more successfully.
Take Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, where a bunch of Stratotankers, American refueller aircraft, were hit. Trump later claimed four were already flying and a fifth would fly soon, but the fact is that five were hit. That picture was also obtained by the Iranians. It was a morale booster for them, and for their supporters in the region.
Then there was the Muwaffaq Salti air force base in Jordan, the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama in Bahrain, and Erbil air base in northern Iraq. All of these were attacked. There were also pictures of surveyed areas, such as Alba, one of the largest aluminium smelters in the world in Bahrain. These were displayed by the Iranians to show they can hit critical economic targets too, because if you hit their energy or economic assets, they can retaliate in kind. There were also pictures of Ali Al Salem air force base in Kuwait and Camp Buehring in Kuwait. Even though Dubai International Airport in Oman was not hit, the point remained the same. The Iranians made sure these pictures were released.
What were the Iranians telling us? That they now have the same ability as their adversaries. They have satellite power. They can find where you are, target you, and do so precisely. That means three things: they can find you, they have the weapons to reach you, and they have the ability to guide those weapons. Because after all, when you fire those weapons, the defenders still have time to spoof or intercept them. So you need to guide them in flight.
The fact is that Iran suffered a lot of attrition and damage in this war. Militarily, you can say it lost every battle. But the one war it did not lose was the propaganda war, because globally it seemed as if the Iranians were carrying out more hits on Americans than they actually were. That was partly because Donald Trump imposed restrictions on American private satellite companies from releasing pictures. First came a moratorium, then a complete ban. So the world stopped getting pictures from American commercial companies and was left only with what the Iranians chose to release. Naturally, they did not release pictures of what they were losing.
The truth is that Iran probably suffered hundreds of times more damage than the Americans did, or even the Israelis. Most missiles in Israel, and almost all drones, were intercepted. The missile interception rate was initially around 95 percent. Towards the end, about 27 percent got through. Some of these were missiles with cluster munitions, which are almost impossible to stop because one missile becomes many munitions. The downside is that each munition is not very powerful, so the damage is not as great as it might otherwise be. Still, Iran suffered severely, including at underground locations.
The question then arises: how did the Iranians get this ability? That is where stories have now started to emerge. There is a long, detailed Financial Times report, an Economist story, and also a New York Times document that speaks about China’s weapons transfers to Iran. The key in this case is one satellite, and I will come to that. But before that, let me remind you of something else from Operation Sindoor. We are heading towards one year of Operation Sindoor now. After that operation, Lieutenant General Rahul Singh, the deputy chief of army staff, was speaking at a FICCI seminar. He said the next important lesson is the importance of C4 ISR, and civil military fusion. C4 ISR, in military parlance, means command, communication, control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
He also said that when the Pakistani DGMO was speaking to ours, he said a certain vector was primed and ready for action, and requested that it be pulled back. The point is that there were live inputs from China. That is one place where they move fast and take appropriate action. The immediate question is whether the Pakistanis needed Chinese information, or whether they bought it from the Chinese. Most likely, they were getting it from China. But they could have also bought it. And yes, the immediate reaction is, how could Pakistan afford something like this? To answer that, you have to see what the Iranians have done.
The stories now tell us that Iran had full access to a Chinese satellite, TEE-01B, launched by a supposedly private Chinese firm called Earth Eye. Its website says it sold one of these satellites to an unnamed country, a member of BRICS. But the contract signed for the satellite shows that, on the other side, it was signed by a brigadier general of the IRGC Aerospace Force.
That brings us back to the question of price. How could Iran afford something like this? They were selling oil to the Chinese, so they could do it. The satellite cost only $36.5 million, which is just over ₹350 crore even today. The Chinese now sell satellites after launching them. That is called in-orbit delivery. You do not need to make the rocket, and you do not need to make the satellite yourself. The Chinese can make it, customise it, launch it, and then sell it to you once it is successfully in orbit. That is what happened here with TEE-01B.
The Financial Times story shows timestamped coordination lists, satellite imagery and orbital analysis of key US military sites. Take Prince Sultan air base again. The satellite took pictures of the same base on the 13th, 14th and 15th of March.
The strike happened on the 14th. So on the 13th, the satellite figured out which aircraft were where. On the 14th, the strike was carried out. On the 15th, the picture was taken. That is modern warfare. First, the one who sees the adversary first wins, provided he has the means to strike. Second, the one who strikes and can show the pictures to the whole world also wins the narrative battle. I know I have banned the word narrative in the newsroom, but I am using it here because that is how this has been described. And I have already used the word propaganda more than once.
Look at India’s experience in Balakot. India did not have visual evidence, and because it did not have evidence, Indian partisans believed the government, but Pakistanis did not. They said only one crow had died and one tree was damaged. They even went to the United Nations and made a complaint about environmental damage. That was a setback because India did not have evidence. But in Operation Sindoor, India had evidence of everything, whether it was the terror bases on the night of 6 and 7 May or the strikes on the morning of 10 May. India did not even have to wait for satellite images in many cases, because the bombs carried imaging capability and sent back pictures as they struck. India also had drones floating over Bahawalpur and Muridke, which meant it had invested in, or taken the risk of, expendable drones. Satellite pictures take time to arrive, and by then the Pakistanis may have already put out the fires. The idea was to see the fires while they were there, and that was done using drones. The pictures on 10 May then came out thanks to international satellites, and Pakistan could not deny them.
Whatever claims Pakistan may have made, Reuters, Bloomberg and CNN out of Pakistan are almost as bad as our own warrior channels in terms of the propaganda they buy into. That is what my former editor Aroon Puri used to call greenhouse journalism. I saw one report saying that 19 Indian air bases had been hit. Indian air bases are in the middle of cities. Nothing can be hit there without people noticing. Pakistan was not able to produce even one picture, whereas India did, and that became a big plus. That tells you something important. Information, surveillance and pictures are now the power for delivering weapon systems. Pictures are also the power for being effective after warfare.
There are still questions. You may ask why Israelis and Americans, while bombing Iranian installations, did not hit the satellite control centres or the ground bases for the satellite. The answer is that the Chinese have another company called Emposat, whose job is to set up ground stations. Many are in China, but many are also in Latin America, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world, from where these satellites are controlled. A buyer of a satellite gets access to those. Israelis had already knocked out most of Iran’s own earth stations in June last year, and whatever was left was knocked out now. But can you go to China and knock out the earth stations there?
Or can you go to another country and knock out Chinese-owned earth stations there? It does not work that way.
The Chinese play this game in different ways. For example, you may have wondered how the Houthis were able to target not just commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea, but also American ships so accurately. Many of them survived. The USS Harry Truman, a big aircraft carrier, had to make such a hard manoeuvre to evade a missile that an F/A-18 fell off along with its trailer vehicle because it was being towed. The trailer vehicle and the aircraft both went into the sea. That is because the Houthis also had access to Chinese satellites. In this case, the satellite was probably from a company called Chang Guang Satellite Technology.
There are also insinuations that the Chinese have given more weapons to Iran. They have certainly supplied Silkworm missiles, which are used to strike or threaten ships in the Gulf of Hormuz. The Iranians also have a large stockpile of shoulder-fired missiles. Some of those probably shot down the F-15E, an A-10 and perhaps a couple more, including a C-135 tanker, though that was over Iraq. The Americans have made these allegations, while the Chinese have denied them. What I picked up from international media is that the Chinese say it is untrue, that this war should never have happened, and that these are fabricated rumours. Trump, on the other hand, has said that if this goes on, China is in big trouble.
One Iranian ship coming from China has already been caught carrying sodium perchlorate, a chemical that is an essential ingredient in missiles. That only adds to the larger picture. So what exactly is this TEE-01B satellite that Iran bought or leased from China? It is not a top military-grade satellite like those the Americans, Chinese and Russians have, but it is still highly effective. It is about as accurate as any commercially available satellite in the world, including Maxar. It has 0.5 metre resolution, which means each pixel gives you 0.5 metre detail. It can show you an aircraft parked at an air base, and even the shape of the aircraft. Sometimes you can even see the weapon systems hanging on the aircraft. That is how accurate it is.
Before this, the Iranians had produced satellites of their own, launched by the Russians. Those were N-2 and N-3, but they were low-resolution satellites. N-3, for example, is 5 metre resolution, while N-2 is 15 metre resolution. At that level, you will only see smudges and the rest is guesswork. India itself has a bunch of military satellites, though not enough. We have recently had launch failures with some DRDO satellites, which is troubling. Still, India has launched 15 dedicated military or strategic satellites, of which 10 have been successful and five have failed. The latest and best of them, Cartosat-3, has 25 cm resolution, among the best in the world. The Americans, Chinese and Russians do not give data about their military satellites, but it is generally believed that the American KH-11 has around 10 to 15 cm resolution, and the Chinese Gaofen series around 10 cm. The US commercial WorldView 3, launched by Maxar, is about 31 cm. India’s Cartosat-3 is better than all of them.
The unfortunate thing is that our last two PSLV launches, each carrying a DRDO satellite or a military-grade satellite, failed. Those were PSLV-61 and PSLV-62, and it is surprising because PSLV has been the workhorse of ISRO. So far, ISRO has had 66 PSLV launches, of which 62 have been successful. Only four have been full failures, and the last two both had military satellites. Still, rocket launches are always risky. Chinese launches fail too, except the Chinese rarely show the launches themselves. They only show what worked. We are waiting for the next one to come up.
Alongside this, India has 21 earth observation satellites of different resolutions. India’s NavIC system, which stands for Navigation with Indian Constellation, has become nearly defunct because it had eight satellites but only three are functional now. Two others may respond to some things, but cannot do very much. That is a setback because Indian fighter aircraft will still depend on American GPS or the Russian GLONASS. Indian aircraft and rockets need their own system, so some of these gaps need to be filled quickly.
There is one more basic point, and it is about the category of satellites according to how far they are from the Earth. The more distant they are, the more they can see. That is logical, is it not? These are geostationary satellites. India has some of them, and in fact all of India’s military satellites are somewhere there, though not enough. They hang above the Earth at 35,786 km and beyond. Then there is medium earth orbit, which is between 2,000 km and 35,786 km, and then low earth orbit, from 160 km to 2,000 km. There are a lot of satellites there, including those Elon Musk is launching, which make up the constellation behind many of the telecom systems he is building. India needs satellites in all these areas. At this point, the emphasis seems to be on having the private sector make these satellites, while launches will probably continue with ISRO for now. In time, India wants private-sector launches too.
All of that said, this war has shown us something once again. The new weapon, the new instrument of war, is satellites. We need a constellation of them. Given our scientific tradition, our depth and the prestige of ISRO, we should be doing much better in this direction.