Invaluable tool to facilitate various aspects of warfare: MoD

The Army is procuring 9,000 hand-held global positioning system (GPS) sets to facilitate offensive as well as defensive operations in remote border sectors or overseas areas that have not been adequately mapped.

“In times where cartographic data is outdated, a hand-held GPS set is an invaluable tool to facilitate various aspects of warfare which require availability of accurate ground position,” a request for information issued by the Ministry of Defence states.

The defensive operations for which the GPS would be used include accurately laying and recording minefields, facilitating the layout of ground defence in a manner which brings maximum benefit, aiding in deciding accurate location of various logistics echelons associated with defence operations and facilitating accurate and targeted delivery of stores critically required by the fighting formations.

As far as offensive operations are concerned, GPS enables the ground forces to intricately coordinate the attack by allocating exact locations to various components participating in the attack.

The GPS is also an essential tool for reconnaissance missions to assimilate and pass back accurate information to commanders, enabling them to make informed decisions.

GPS coordinates relayed by reconnaissance teams can be used by targeting systems to accurately engage the enemy. Such information provided by ground troops can be utilised by aerial platforms, including aircraft and armed drones, to hit sensitive targets.

Further, GPS is a very important tool to enable shared situational awareness towards fructification of network centric warfare. It can also be effectively used to maintain and update operational maps on a real time basis to enable better decision making.

The handsets are required to be compatible with India’s Independent Regional Navigation Satellite System as well as Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Russian Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS).

These would be pre-loaded with India maps with provision for uploading desired country or region maps along with the Indian Grid Reference System and Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system for overseas deployment.