Lt Gen PJS Pannu (Retd.), Senior Advisor to Space Industries Association of India, speaks with Col Anil Bhat (Retd.) on Role of Space in Future Warfare | SAM Conversation
00:00Welcome to SAM Conversation, a program of South Asia Monitor.
00:16Our program today is on space in future warfare.
00:23It is a pleasure to welcome the friend General P.S. Pannu, retired senior advisor to Space Industries Association.
00:36Pannu, in a previous program of yours, which I saw, I remember you mentioned how Saurabh Kalia,
00:46during the Sargil confrontation in 1999, how young, then young Saurabh Kalia went on a patrol, a recce patrol, a reconnaissance patrol,
01:00and how he was very badly captured and very badly mangled by the Pakistanis.
01:11And how we have now reached a stage of how we made progress, that whatever Saurabh Kalia went to reconnoiter
01:27becomes readily available on screens in any bunker operations room or out in the open, wherever our troops happen to be.
01:40Also, there was the confrontation with the Chinese PLA at Galwan in 2020.
01:53That was another case of, you know, if we had been able to get previous intelligence about movements of the PLA, it would have helped a lot.
02:05Please bring us up to date with whatever has been done.
02:15Thank you, Colonel Anil Bhatt, for getting me over to speak on a very important subject that is military space.
02:22Actually, space is not meant for military or civil. Space is a resource which can be used both by civil and military.
02:31It is a god's eye that if you, in the military parlance, understand the relevance of high ground, space is the ultimate high ground.
02:42And it means whatever you can see and whatever you can communicate with through the space, you will be able to influence that area.
02:50And the area that the space can influence is very, very vast.
02:53So from tactical to strategic applications in the Earth observation, that you can look at the Earth is extremely important.
03:02And if you can look at the Earth, you can also look at the other satellites.
03:05So therefore, looking at the capability on the Earth, around the Earth, into the orbital platforms which are operating in the space and even looking at the celestial objects is what the observation can give you.
03:25It is how your senses are, how sensitive your resolution is, that will give you that kind of a persistent surveillance.
03:35From the military parlance, obviously, you want to have land warfare benefit out of the space communications, space navigation and space observation.
03:50These are the three things which are called triad, the Earth observation, the navigation ability and communication.
03:57And communication actually weds both Earth observation and the navigation, both.
04:03So loosely, when I call observation in the military parlance, it becomes the ISR, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
04:12You do it in the opposite sequence. First, you continue to reconnaissance, reconnoiter the area.
04:19And if you find that there is some information of military significance, then you start keeping those areas under surveillance.
04:30And once you start finding data and meaning out of what objects you've kept under surveillance, you start working on the information and intelligence of those areas.
04:41So once you have the intelligence, now you are ready for anything.
04:45Now all this, whatever you gather from the space has to be communicated.
04:50And you can only communicate it down if you have good, secure communications without any latency and the kind of information which is available from the satellites is so much that you need very high throughput satellites.
05:04So therefore, ISR through communication becomes one facet of the military space assets that a country can have.
05:18Once you've done that now, if you want to have an information about a particular place, you do not know what is the lat long of that area.
05:25And being a military officer, you would know that if you don't know the exact map reference or the exact location on ground, you have to have the grid reference.
05:34So which is lat long. So once you have a lat long, you will be able to track from one spot to another.
05:41What is the movement time? What is the direction and what is the predictable path that that movement is likely to take place?
05:49So the predictive intelligence can be built up through that.
05:52So therefore, the ISR, the communications and the PNT, which is the navigation, because PNT is place, navigation and timing.
06:03Where it was, where it went and when did it go.
06:08And therefore, these three, four attributes that I'm talking about builds it into a triad and triad is extremely important.
06:14Now you give a reference point of Kargil.
06:17There was some information which was received manually by those graziers who went up after the winter session got over.
06:28The military had actually vacated certain posts and they went up because the graziers keep going up.
06:34And they, when they went up, they realized that all is not well.
06:37There are some strange looking people there, which was a manual intelligence.
06:40And that was also not military intelligence, which had to be then converted into a military intelligence by sending out a military reconnaissance patrol, which was headed by Saurav Kalia.
06:50The number of days he was kept in enemy custody left a huge doubt as to where he went, whether he got lost or whether he actually got captured.
07:01And ultimately through communication, which was sent out through the civilians, they said, you can come and take his body, which was completely mutilated and eyes galled out.
07:11At that tender age in twenties, a youngster went up because if he had technology, he would have carried out carried the communication with him and he would have very quickly given out the manual assessment of that area.
07:25If that was covered by the satellite communication.
07:29Secondly, he would have already got the satellite maps available with him to know that there is something strange, which has happened depending on the resolution.
07:37If the resolution is not very high, then it will give you some terrain configurations or some bunkers.
07:46But if the resolution is so much better, then it can even tell you that there is a human presence there.
07:52So it is again, the story of resolution through Earth observation and the ISR.
07:56And if we had done that, if we had the PNT linked up in the triad, you could have actually eliminated that kind of infiltration through a smart equipment by targeting them smartly.
08:13exact spot could have been targeted through smart ammunition use through artillery guns or through missiles.
08:20And none of that what we went through during Kargil would have been the sequence in which the manual infantry operations had to be undertaken.
08:30A devoid of intelligence, devoid of targeting facility and devoid of command and control.
08:37Because if you don't have the communication, there's no command and control.
08:40And the command and control had to be manual.
08:42And imagine carrying the VHF radio sets, which have got huge amount of screening.
08:46And you are from Mohammed Kor and you would realize that you can't depend on the line of sight communication.
08:52And line of sight communication means that if you have any intervening feature, then the VHF doesn't work.
08:58You got to then have different systems like HF, which are more conventional, but very, very difficult in the hands of specialists.
09:05So ultimately it is a SATCOM, which would have ensured that the command and control and information flows into the ops rooms.
09:13So I think I have given you the whole perspective through your example of Kargil operations as to how the military and the future warfare is shaping up.
09:25So now that you have given that, very recently, Operation Sindur were an eye opener to a lot of us who have been writing about strategic affairs, military-
09:33was an eye-opener to a lot of us who've been, you know, writing about strategic affairs,
09:46military, you know, military, whatever has been going on between, particularly between
09:55India, Pakistan, India, China, and I think those, it really, four days or 88 hours between
10:077th and 11th of May, whatever we undertook, which amounted to about hitting very accurately
10:15over 20 targets, nine of them being terrorist strongholds or, you know,
10:25camps or whatever, but, you know, substantially large buildings, and at least eight, at least
10:3611 airfields. Later, there were reports that there could have been 18, that could have been,
10:42no, there are 18 airfields that we hit, but 11 certainly. So, over 21, anyway, but the
10:52way we had targeted and the way we had been able to deflect or, you know, neutralize the
11:04enemy targeting us, I think was a bit of an eye-opener, if you can throw some light on that.
11:13Colonel Bhatt, Opsindoor is an example of many different uses of technology.
11:24I would take it back because a little bit of Opsindoor background as to why and how we reached,
11:31where we reached during Opsindoor is extremely important to cover. You would recall that in the 1990s,
11:39anything we spoke before 1990s was more conventional. You know, strike cores and, you know, huge amount
11:47of maneuver element that would be planned and all that story would unfold, you know, capturing
11:53territories, managing territories and making sure that your defenses are also equally configured
11:59to handle that kind of a large maneuvers. What changed in 1990s was the advent of the space technology.
12:08DARPA brought in two things. One is the internet was growing at that time. So, it made the forces also
12:18take internet for a network centricity. Actually, internet came out of the military requirement and then later on,
12:28it was adapted by the civilian, by the civilian use. Secondly, DARPA also went down to get the PNT, which is the GPS was the outcome of it.
12:44And in 1990s, if you really recall, all of a sudden the civilian networks and the military networks started working very differently.
12:52And also space started showing up. And then the proof of that was in the Gulf Wars, Gulf War I and Gulf War II.
13:00When anything gets used by the military, there is an equivalent of the civilians.
13:05So, one is that the Americans were targeting in a very surgical manner during Gulf War I and II.
13:12Their smart ammunition and Patriot missiles and everybody was talking about, you know, that they can actually put a missile through a window.
13:20Some of it was, of course, a media campaign and the campaign run by the business of warfare for the military industrial complex to sell their equipment.
13:32That also starts building the commercialization of military happens just along with that. So, therefore, a lot of advertisement happens.
13:39And therefore, media war became a new way where every citizen of the country or even globally, they could watch Gulf War sitting in their drawing rooms.
13:52In the 1990s, more and more commercialization happened and India also went in to buy the services of the GPS.
14:03And when we bought the services of the GPS at that time, it was also available commercially that you could go in not only for GPS services, but also for Earth observation.
14:13And you could also make sure that your communications could also be bought through services, you know, which is commercial programs.
14:24But India very quickly understood the value of communication. So, we launched our own GSATs.
14:30You know, you remember that there was an INSAT program for our own satellites and it came for development for use in agriculture.
14:39And then, you know, IRS program came for Earth observation and all that.
14:43Well, all that was going on with the resolution was not military.
14:46So, what happened was that when we...
14:49Please, if you could please elaborate INSAT and GSAT.
14:53Just full form. That's all.
14:55That's all.
14:56These are Indian satellites, which are on the geostationary orbit, where you take that orbit at 36,786 kilometers or something like that.
15:08And relatively, when they go into the orbit, it is stationary, it appears stationary on the equatorial plane.
15:17So, it means that relatively, if there is a satellite or communication satellite in the GEO, so it appears to be static.
15:28So, all these were communication satellites, which were static and also were, depending on the band that they used, you know, KU band and KA band, I don't want to really get into that, which could run your satellite operations for communication and television programs.
15:45And if you remember, earlier we used to have the antennas of Doordarshan pointing towards the Earth television antenna, you know, those big cameras.
15:57And then later on, all of a sudden, all those directional antennas disappeared and the dish antenna came up because they started pointing towards the space.
16:06And that is how the INSAT program came in.
16:08And once you do that, then you can communicate and then the Earth observation starts off and Earth observation is a little different cup of tea.
16:17I think over a period of time, we will talk about it.
16:19So, in Kargil, what happened was that all of a sudden-
16:23What about GSAT?
16:25GSAT is?
16:26GSAT is communication.
16:28Yeah, it is meant for communication at the GEO orbit, which is a stationary orbit, geostationary orbit.
16:35Geostationary orbit?
16:37As I said, 36,786 kilometers, which looks relatively stable, static on ground.
16:44You know, you can always keep looking at the satellite.
16:47Technically, if you could, you will find the satellite always at the same place.
16:52And the satellite would, if you technically sat there, the transponder would continue to look at the area under it, one third of the Earth's surface it can cover in a static manner.
17:06Because it is moving in the same speed and same direction as the Earth's movement.
17:11You know, we don't realize that, where we are sitting, that the Earth is also moving at a very, very fast pace.
17:20Yeah, the Earth is moving.
17:21And then, I think, at that time, the satellite at that 36,786 kilometers moving at about 11,000 kilometers an hour.
17:30That is the speed of the satellite to match the speed of the Earth.
17:37So, you want me to delve more into it?
17:40Well, now, I think, now, briefly, if you could tell us what, you know, the future, what we can expect in the future.
17:50Because, I think, whatever happened in those four days may not be the end of it.
17:57There certainly is going to be more.
17:59And there is no saying, the Director General of Military Operations, after a few days, corrected.
18:08He corrected us, saying that it's not two nations that we were fighting against.
18:14It was three.
18:15It was, you know, Pakistan, China, and Turkey, Turkey.
18:21So, there is no saying to, you know.
18:26So, I mean, we have to be prepared for at least, maybe even better than what we were, how we performed.
18:34That's why, briefly, if you could put us through to what the future, what we can expect in the future.
18:41But, since you spoke about Opsindoor, and the discussion is on space.
18:48So, I will restrict it.
18:50Otherwise, you know, we will go into a very large plane of discussion into the future technologies, which we can touch upon later during our discussion.
19:00So, coming back to Kargil, because I need to give you a few benchmarks, benchmarks, which are benchmarks of change.
19:10So, all of a sudden, when we went to war, we realized that the GPS services of the United States had been denied to us.
19:19So, that was a denial of service.
19:21And then we realized that you cannot depend on a foreign satellite service, and you have to do your own thing.
19:28So, Kargil taught us, A, the value of space in all the three triad understanding of it, the communication, the ISR, and the PNT.
19:40And the PNT was nothing but GPS.
19:42So, we then decided, after Kargil, that we have to invest in our own PNT services, and we created our own NAVIC system over a period of time.
19:53And NAVIC system is a GPS, which is regional, not global.
20:00And it means that you need to place certain number of satellites to make it global.
20:05But if you do lesser number of satellites on a certain orbital plane, then it can only give you a regional service.
20:12So, we thought that initially we will go regional, and then later on it can be expanded towards global.
20:18So, we have a regional satellite PNT service, which is called the IRNSS, which is Regional Navigation Satellite System.
20:27The growth then, from Kargil onwards, went on to acquiring our own ISR capability.
20:38So, we invested in KatoSat and the Resat.
20:43The KatoSat is more Earth observation, and Resat is more into having the SAR capability, which is synthetic aperture radar.
20:53So, it gives you all-weather capability. The Earth observation, which is through the EO, electro-optical, has a problem with weather.
21:02So, it is a fair-weather satellite, whereas the Resat or the SAR imagery is all-weather.
21:08So, we then built our configurations both for fair weather and for bad weather.
21:15So, Resat and the KatoSat combination started giving us the Earth observation used for military, which is the ISR.
21:25We continued to then invest in the GSAT. So, the first GSAT was given to the Navy.
21:34And because they had to navigate in the oceans, they had to communicate in the oceans.
21:39And the second one was given to the Air Force, and the third one would be given to the Army.
21:43At the moment, Army shares the communication satellite with the Air Force.
21:49So, I have spoken about the three elements in the triad.
21:55That is, now we have the IR-NSS, which is the NAVIC system of our own.
22:00We have the KatoSat Resat series put together, which is our own ISR.
22:05And we have the GSAT series, GSAT 7 and 7A, which are our own military communication satellites.
22:12And we are developing many more, and the time would tell as to how we grow into it.
22:18So, Opsindoor has also become a benchmark on how much we use this triad for targeting across, fighting a non-contact battle.
22:29But it was a non-contact but kinetic battle.
22:33And that is actually what we saw in Opsindoor.
22:36And the satellite imageries very quickly picked up certain targets which had been destroyed.
22:43And that is how, in your drawing rooms and bedrooms, people could see the imageries being shown on the television.
22:50Let me tell you, most of the imageries came from the American satellite called the MAXAR.
22:55So, a commercial satellite used for information and information became information warfare.
23:06And information warfare became the narrative warfare.
23:09So, what happened was that once the imagery starts getting into the television,
23:14then the statements or how you doctor that or how you interpret that and how you use that information to build a narrative became a narrative warfare.
23:24So, really speaking with space, you have the information, but you also have the ability to have information warfare and also narrative warfare.
23:34I think this is the combine of what we have learned during Opsindoor as well.
23:40And I think, you know, what occurred to us after Opsindoor was that we worked, I think, over about at least 10 years.
23:58Because that was a period when a lot of us used to be lamenting, oh, we don't have this, we should have this, you know, it should.
24:07So, and there was a lot of, you know, government lines of Atmanirbharata, self-sufficient in all aspects.
24:19We, it's, this operation proved that a lot has been achieved.
24:27That certainly should not make us complacent because I'm very sure that there is still, there is still a lot to be done.
24:35And also in this, you know, in this operation, what we had, what we had achieved, it, we were, it was almost like learning while we were using.
24:47Anything else you'd like to add?
24:50Yes.
24:51So India has been on this path of indigenization very slowly, but I think now we have caught the attention of the government and of the ecosystem that both have to come together.
25:05And private is privatization becomes very important for indigenization because huge amount of money then gets spent by the private industry into the research and development.
25:15And also in manufacturing, they can also do global business because today huge investments are required and you can't only serve one country.
25:25You have to become global.
25:27So therefore, if you really look at the MOT figures of export, you would know that Indian defense industry is not only providing for, to the Indian armed forces, but is also now having global exports.
25:42We're in demand.
25:44Yeah.
25:45Yeah.
25:46So, we started developing our own launch capabilities and not too many nations had launch capability.
25:55Yes, yes.
25:56So, once we have a launch capability in space, so it is like a missile technology that our missile technology, and you know, the Prithvi's and the Agni's and all that development, which has happened from conventional warheads to nuclear warheads ability that we built in our surface to surface missiles.
26:17And once you have a missile system, then you can have surface to air missiles, and then you can continue to change it into any configuration.
26:24You can have the naval variant, you can have a ground variant, you can have an air variant.
26:28So, you know, you can have the air delivery missile, you can have a ground delivery missile, and you can have the naval delivery of missiles.
26:34So, we went into developed missile technology, so that also gave us a capability of standoff warfare.
26:41So, when you talk about non-contact, but kinetic, that comes under the understanding of a non-contact warfare, or a standoff warfare.
26:51Standoff warfare, there is a huge role of industry in it.
26:54And in standoff warfare, the revolution has happened that the drone ecosystem and the autonomous technology has made standoff warfare more lethal business that you don't have to really infiltrate or you don't have to attack, but you can damage.
27:13You can actually do operations beyond borders without physically crossing the borders, including the aircraft did not cross this time.
27:22And they were using technology and standoff warfare to make sure that through standoff and beyond visual ranges, certain targets or most of the targets or all of the targets were being engaged during Ops and Door.
27:35Another point that I wanted to make was that whenever you go into the network warfare, or network-centric warfare, you are susceptible to cyber attacks.
27:58Because in the network, the supply chain infection, if you don't have your own systems and you find that chips are coming from outside, they're programmable or otherwise, the chips can actually bring in a lot of bugs and backdoor problems can come up in the configurations.
28:17So the backdoor entries through bugs can be used for the cyber attacks.
28:23So therefore our systems got to be protected from the cyber.
28:27So you would have realized that the cyber critical infrastructure has been given out a list, you know, what all is part of the critical infrastructure or not.
28:38But unfortunately, at the moment space is not part of the critical infrastructure, but space is susceptible to cyber attacks.
28:46Literally speaking, the modern day satellites are like flying computers.
28:51The Earth, that is the terrestrial network, and the spatial networks, which are both non-terrestrial and terrestrial combined, have the ability of becoming one network.
29:09So therefore, if the cyber attack can be manifested on a ground station, it can also be manifested into a space asset of yours.
29:21And similarly, space can also be used for cyber attacks.
29:25So you would never know from where the cyber attack came.
29:28So as part of the non-contact and non-kinetic warfare, there is a one big plane, which has come up is neutralization through cyber attacks.
29:37So earlier we used to talk about the air campaigns.
29:39Now there will be cyber campaigns.
29:41And cyber campaigns are going to be manifested that you can destroy the entire critical infrastructure, bring the adversary down to its knees.
29:52Even without fighting a battle, you can win a battle or you can lose a battle if you haven't catered for that.
30:01But if you want to continue with your operations, with all the cyber attacks bringing the critical infrastructure down,
30:06now it becomes very easy for an aggressor to go on to this territory to do whatever they want to do, because they will be enabled through the networks, but the adversary would have crippled under it.
30:21So when you say that DGMO made a statement that it is not two countries or three countries, it is a combination of countries,
30:28space is one which can make you capable of fighting collaboratively anytime.
30:33Because space assets or space as service and ground stations as service have put together an ability that you can actually ride on somebody else's assets very quickly.
30:47Like for example, Starlink came in very quickly to support Ukraine against Russia.
30:53So how much time did Elon Musk take to rebuild the destroyed communications, terrestrial communications of Ukraine?
31:02Very quickly, they were replaced by the Starlink.
31:06And then the targeting of the Starlink started happening.
31:09So it means they went into space warfare to bring down some of the Starlink satellites burnt.
31:15Reasons may not be attributed to attack or it could be their own getting into the debris.
31:22So, you know, these are the important things that you go into space warfare, which is another realm of discussion altogether.
31:29Anyway, thank you very much, Jail Panu, for a very concentrated dose. Thank you.
31:38Wish you all the best, sir. Thank you for getting me over to South Asia Monitor of SAM Talks.
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