India’s first-ever dedicated military satellite, Rukmini or GSAT-7, “seamlessly networked” around 60 warships and 75 aircraft during a massive month-long naval combat exercise in the Bay of Bengal that ended on Friday.
The location of the exercise “Tropex,” or the theatre-level readiness and operational exercise, was significant since India is steadily bolstering military force-levels on the eastern coast and Andaman and Nicobar archipelago to counter China’s strategic moves in the critical Indian Ocean region (IOR), the Times of India reported yesterday.
The exercise saw the western and eastern fleets – commanded by Rear Admirals Anil Chawla and Atul Jain, respectively – amassing across the Bay for the intensive combat manoeuvres in all the three dimensions of “surface, air and underwater.”
“Tropex provided the Navy with an opportunity to validate its network-centric warfare capabilities with the effective utilization of GSAT-7, which was launched last year,” said an officer.
The geostationary naval communication and surveillance satellite, which has a 2,000-nautical mile (3,704km) footprint over the IOR, beams signals from its UHF, S, Ku and C-band transponders to network all warships and aircraft with operational centres ashore through high-speed encrypted data-links.
“The exercise also assessed the operational readiness of warships, validated the Navy’s war-fighting doctrine and integrated newly-acquired capabilities in its concept of operations,” said the officer.
Apart from GSAT-7, the exercise this year also saw the “maiden participation” of nuclear-powered submarine INS Chakra, on a 10-year lease from Russia for $1 billion, and the newly-acquired P-8I long range maritime patrol aircraft.
