Need to Harness the Strategic Potential of GAGAN

Abstract:   There is a rise in use of satellite-based navigation in the civil aviation sector. It is in the fitness of things that India has launched its own satellite-aided navigation system, GAGAN for enhancing efficiency, safety and reliability of civilian aircraft flying over Indian skies and adjoining areas. Being a dual-use system, the potentials of GAGAN can be exploited for defence applications.  Against this backdrop, India’s defence establishment has evinced interest in using restricted services of GAGAN for military operations.

            GAGAN, an acronym for GPS-Aided Geo-Augmented Navigation or GPS And Geo-Augmented Navigation system is a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) meant to support and smoothen civilian air traffic over the Indian skies and adjoining region and was launched on 13 July 2015 by the Civil Aviation Minister. The basic objective of GAGAN, meaning ‘sky’ in the classical language of Sanskrit, is to operate a certified SBAS for navigation services for the safety of the applications with required accuracy and integrity and to provide better air traffic management over the Indian air space. The implementation of GAGAN, a joint project of the state-owned Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was indeed a challenging proposition in the context of the severe ionospheric variations in the region of its coverage. Significantly, GAGAN is claimed to be the first SBAS in the world certified for approach with vertical guidance operating in the equatorial ionosphere region. India is claimed to be only the fourth country in the world after USA, Japan and Europe, to develop and deploy a satellite-based augmentation system. 

The entire ground support infrastructure of GAGAN is now fully operational. To begin with, the efficacy of the GAGAN will be tried on smaller, general aviation aircraft. Not unexpectedly, it would take some time before bigger Boeing and Airbus aircraft are equipped with GAGAN receivers. According to sources in ISRO, with GAGAN receivers in place, pilots of aircraft will have on their fingertips reliable and continuous data on position and height from the ground and time. As envisaged now, GAGAN will provide augmentation services covering the Indian flight information region that extends from the entire Indian landmass and Bay of Bengal to South East Asia and expanding up to the African continent. According to official sources, “in the aviation field, GAGAN will support more direct air routes, reduce fuel consumption and improve safety”. Apart from this significant cost savings due to reduction in ground-support staff and reduced work load for flight crew will also accrue. GAGAN described as “eye in the sky” technology could also lead to doing away with a huge, costly and complicated ground network system.

Significantly, the benefits of the Rs.7740.00 million GAGAN is not confined just to the civil aviation sector. The potentials of GAGAN could be harnessed to support farming, transportation, defence services, homeland security operations, disaster mitigation as well as search and rescue operations. Indeed, as pointed out by R.N.Choubey, Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, the system would be made available to the countries in the SAARC region. He also revealed that the guided approach landing with the help of GAGAN would immediately benefit nearly 50 airports in the country. However, in the immediate future, GAGAN will cater to the needs of India’s rapidly expanding air traffic requirements by providing improved accuracy and integrity necessary to enable users to rely on GPS at all the phases of flight from en route through to approach for all airports within the coverage area of  GAGAN.

As envisaged now, GAGAN will help bridge the gap between European EGNOS (European Geostationary Overlay System) and Japanese MSAS (Multifunctional Satellite Augmentation System) systems to offer seamless navigation services to the civilian aircraft flights over the Indian airspace and its adjoining areas.

From the perspective of ushering in “Clean Sky”, GAGAN would reduce noise pollution foot print of the civil aviation traffic. According to AAI, the most striking benefit of GAGAN is that it would help reduce the fuel consumption by 20% by allowing the aircraft cruise higher and faster and by charting straight routes by circumventing the zig-zag ones. Right at the moment, fuel accounts for a major part of the cost of the operation of an aircraft. Against this backdrop, the access to GAGAN would help an airline reduces its fuel consumption while increasing its operational efficiency.

Through its vastly superior position information, GAGAN permits an easy and smooth access to airports even under hostile atmospheric and climatic conditions. In addition, GAGAN can contribute to enhanced reliability besides helping cut down on delays in flight. GAGAN could also prove beneficial to air passengers by defining more accurate terminal area procedures that features parallel routes and optimised airspace corridors. At the end of the day, there is no denying the fact that GAGAN will make Indian skies safer and secure for the aircraft.  In particular, GAGAN will make the utilisation of Indian air space more efficient and safer especially above seas, hilly terrain and remote areas. 

The Indian defence establishment has also expressed its interest to exploit the navigation potentials of GAGAN system for a variety of end uses including search and rescue, reconnaissance and weapons delivery. Much the same as the civilian aircraft are being navigated by GPS, combat and military transport aircraft and helicopters could be guided through a satellite navigation system to land and take off and also hit targets with deadly effect. What’s more, GAGAN potentials can be utilised by the Indian defence forces for the launch of high-precision weapons systems including long range missiles with a high degree of accuracy. A synergistic exploitation of the potentials of GAGAN and Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) being operated by ISRO could prove a win-win development for the Indian defence forces. It makes strategic sense for the Indian military establishment to rely on more than one-satellite based navigation system. For, during the moments of emergency, a second, standby system would come in handy for the defence forces to sustain and support their operations. Under an agreement that India had signed with Russia, the Indian defence forces would be allowed access to the capability of Russian navigation satellite system Glonass for strategic purposes. 

The space segment of GAGAN is composed of three satellites equipped with navigation payloads and located in geostationary orbit. Of the three satellites, two –GSAT-8 and GSAT-10—covering whole of the Indian Flight Information Region and beyond are fully operational. The third satellite with a two channel GAGAN payload, GSAT-15, is planned to be launched by means of an Ariane-5 vehicle of the European space transportation company in October 2015.   

For the Indian defence forces, the home-grown IRNSS, a seven-satellite GPS constellation, will be a major force multiplier. Four IRNSS satellites are already in operation with the remaining three spacecraft expected to join the constellation in a year’s time. IRNSS is a regional navigation satellite system independent of American GPS, Russian Glonass and European Galileo. The strategic advantage of operating an indigenous GPS system hardly needs to be emphasized especially during the hours of crisis. The IRNSS will have both civilian and military applications. There is no denying the point that IRNSS could very well serve as an invaluable component of network-centric warfare.

As it is, for long the Indian defence forces did feel thoroughly disadvantaged by the non-availability of accurate signals from GPS system on a sustained uninterrupted basis. For instance, during India’s 1999 Kargil conflict with Pakistan, Indian patrols operating in the rugged and difficult to negotiate terrain along the Line of Control (LOC) initially strayed into enemy territory with disastrous consequences. However, the subsequent availability of hand held GPS receivers proved to be invaluable for the special task forces and crack teams engaged in identifying and destroying enemy installations.

Indeed, the Indian defence establishment has learnt the hard way that inputs provided by the GPS satellites could be exploited to coordinate the movement of troops and supply with a high degree of efficiency. To stay at the winning edge of the battle field, Indian defence forces should devise a strategy for the optimal utilization of the potentials of both GAGAN and IRNSS.  

The author is a freelance writer on subjects related to national security and aerospace. Views expressed are personal.