Exclusive: CCS clears launch of 52 surveillance satellites

Under SBS III, Modi govt wants land and maritime domain awareness with military and civilian applications

Published on: Oct 11, 2024, 08:32:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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New Delhi: The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved phase III of its Space Based Surveillance (SBS) mission for better land and maritime domain awareness for civilian and military applications. The project is being handled by the National Security Council Secretariat along with the Defence Space Agency under the integrated headquarters in the Defence Ministry.

While the Modi government is silent on the approval, it is understood that the proposal cleared by CCS involves the launch of at least 52 satellites in low earth orbit and geostationary orbit for surveillance. Costing ₹26,968 crore, the proposal involves the construction and launch of 21 satellites by ISRO and the remaining 31 by private companies.

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SBS 1 was initiated by the Vajpayee government in 2001, and involved the launch of four satellites for surveillance, Cartosat 2A, Cartosat 2B, Eros B and Risat 2. SBS 2 came in 2013 with the launch of six satellites, Cartosat 2C, Cartosat 2D, Cartosat 3A, Cartosat 3B, Microsat 1 and Risat 2A. The newly cleared SBS 3 shows that India will be launching 52 satellites within the next decade. HT learns that the three services will have dedicated satellites for their land, sea or air-based missions.

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With the Modi government already signing in January, a letter of intent with France for the joint construction and launch of military satellites, the Indian focus is to acquire capabilities which can detect enemy submarines in the Indo-Pacific as well as track infrastructure construction by its adversaries on the land and sea border with India.

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The SBS 3 mission will also be helped by the Indian acquisition of 31 Predator drones from US-based General Atomics as the platform has very potent surveillance capabilities apart from its weapons package. India tested its anti-satellite capabilities through test firing on March 29, 2019, when an Indian missile destroyed a live satellite in orbit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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