India beefing up space-based surveillance after border conflict
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The launch of the first 52 satellites, under Space-Based Surveillance-3, is being fast-tracked to monitor places of interest more frequently.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW DELHI – India plans to launch over 50 spy satellites and add night-time imaging to enhance its national security capabilities, said people familiar with the matter, after New Delhi encountered surveillance blind spots during a border conflict in 2025 with neighbour Pakistan.
The Narendra Modi-led administration is also looking to build ground stations overseas to relay information more quickly and comprehensively, said the people who asked for anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
These could be in the Middle East, South-east Asia and Scandinavia, they said, though local government approval would be required.
Plans are under way to enhance India’s own satellites with newer technology capable of capturing images in dark, cloudy conditions by moving from electro-optical radar to synthetic aperture radar, the people said.
Upgrades are also being worked on to help transfer data from one satellite to another without relying on a ground station, they added.
The launch of the first 52 satellites, under Space-Based Surveillance-3, is being fast-tracked to monitor places of interest more frequently than India’s current technology allows, the people said.
The Times of India, which reported in June 2025 on the plan to expedite the satellite launch, said the first batch may go up by April 2026.
India plans to deploy as many as 150 new satellites to boost its border security, Mint reported in April 2025, citing Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman V. Narayanan at an event in Chennai.
The estimated cost of placing 150 satellites is about 260 billion rupees (S$3.64 billion), they added.
The wide-ranging measures underscore the lessons learnt by India after the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours faced off
India also wants to develop “bodyguard satellites” to identify and counter threats to orbiting spacecraft, Bloomberg News reported in September 2025, as part of overall efforts to plug any capability gaps.
India’s Ministry of Defence, ISRO and Mr Narayanan, who also serves as the Secretary of the Department of Space, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comments.
Satellites were used extensively to identify and monitor targets during that four-day showdown, which put the two nations on the brink of an all-out war.
China provided Pakistan with support during the fighting, helping Islamabad adjust its satellite coverage, a research group under India’s Ministry of Defence said in 2025.
India has more than 100 satellites in orbit, compared with just eight for Pakistan, according to spacecraft data tracker N2YO.com.
India’s satellites are blind at night or in cloudy conditions, a lacuna highlighted during Operation Sindoor against Pakistan in 2025.
Chinese satellites are capable of sending night images.
Currently, the gap in sweeping a particular area runs in days.
That meant India had to procure satellite data from US-based companies to plan attacks against Pakistan in 2025, the people said.
Having these additional spy satellites could potentially reduce the gap to a few hours, they said.
While ISRO will use its existing rockets to launch these spy satellites, the state-owned agency has seen success as well as setbacks in recent months.
One of its rockets failed to launch earlier in January – the second such instance in less than a year.
It had, however, successfully placed the BlueBird Block-2 satellite for US-based AST SpaceMobile on Dec 24, underscoring the uneven path to success in this sector.
Private-sector start-ups like Skyroot Aerospace are also part of a broader push to strengthen India’s space-based monitoring capabilities and help the state-run initiatives. BLOOMBERG
