After a gap of four-long years, the 12th edition of GeoIntelligence is back again in 2022, with the theme, “Geospatial Strategy for Defense & Security”. Geospatial has been an integral sector of human endeavour starting from agriculture, transport, communication, energy and defense.
The global security environment is undergoing definitive transformation due to the rapidly changing geopolitical scenario and at the pace of technological development. US’ dominance in the Indo-Pacific region appears to be diminishing, because China’s military, economic and political rise is by far the most significant change in the international world order in the current century. Apart from its massive thrust on developing its economy, last few decades have seen it embark on modernising its armed forces in a very big way which is a way is posing threat to USA’s world supremacy.
India is regionally in a very difficult place, with two collusive nuclear powers one in the north and one in the west along with the history of disputed regions J&K, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, which is why “we cannot afford to drop our guards as far as our defense preparedness is concerned. We are in the era of network centric warfare, characterised by exponentially enhanced situational awareness decision making, dissemination of information, and precision capabilities, all of which are facilitated by geospatial technologies,” said Lt Gen AKS Chandele PVSM, AVSM (Retd), President – Defence, Internal Security & Public Safety, Geospatial World in his welcome speech.
Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari PVSM AVSM VM ADC, Chairman, COSC & Chief of The Air Staff, spoke about shaping Indigenous national space capabilities. “Space today has become closely integrated with our everyday life, enables numerous essential functions.” He points out that in recent times increased focus on military space application has been accelerated by two key factors:
1. Increased Geopolitical churnings have aggravated the threat scenario
2. Growing realization that boundaries that separate military and civil are getting blurred.
“With multiple commercial players entering the segment, in due course space technology will evolve and we shall see reduced manufacturing and launching costs, which will favor the shift towards the concept. While capability enhancement in multiple domain of space applications is the way forward, I strongly feel this evolution can only be fast tracked if we increase the military and civil fusion, which is a blend of institutes, industries, startups, academia, research and development, test and evolution capabilities,” he added.
JD Patil, Whole-time Director and Senior Executive Vice President, L&T & Chairman, ISpA, said, “The most important aspect of geospatial is to be able to see and put things in digital domain.”
Today there are limitations in terms where do we put a man or a flag, but with the help of satellites, intelligence gathering becomes easy. There is another looming threat is spoofing and hacking of satellites which makes the fusion of different domains difficult and puts national security at risk. “We have to address that together by developing such technologies that can protect the satellites from getting hacked,” he added.
Lt Gen Vinod Khandare PVSM, AVSM, SM (Retd), Advisor, Ministry of Defence identifies that there is a struggle between resource and the priorities, wherein resources come at a price while priorities don’t wait. “GeoInt offers capability to develop defense diplomacy. India is known for taking own stances and not taking sides in global geopolitical scenarios. GeoInt empowers us to look for optimizing our sources by adopting deep technologies and smart solutions. It gives you broad spectrum of events that will happen for all the three services air, land and sea. GeoInt is important for Comprehensive national security, it along with the synergy of various intelligence helps you identify the threats whether temporary or permanent and where we went wrong or what we did right, when it comes to complicated economic security,” he added.
Sanjay Kumar, Founder & CEO, Geospatial World, emphasized that creating robust GNSS infrastructure is very critical for a nation’s security in terms of both for military and civil services because they are prone to manipulations. He applauded at the move that the government has made in allowing private players into the space sector, which will help in building the nation. He pointed out that, “we need to nurture and handhold the entrepreneurs and make them part of the nation’s strategy.”
Next year in 2023, the focus of the 13th edition of GeoIntelligence will stretch beyond India with a wider vision, and widest participants and audience from Asia-Pacific region, (excluding China). It will be Indo-Pacific GeoIntelligence 2023.
