Defence Satellite Programme and Future Requirements

In this year’s war between the United States and Israel against Iran, Iran reportedly attacked the US Naval Support Activity in Bahrain, which hosts various facilities, including an AN/GSC-52B military satellite communications terminal.

The attack on the military satellite communications terminal illustrates Iran’s efforts to disable US military communications in the Persian Gulf, where satellites are now indispensable to C5ISR systems.

With human-made vehicles orbiting above the Earth, a party can establish a command-and-control network and monitor events on the Earth’s surface in real time. This allows tactical and strategic decisions to be made quickly on the basis of relatively up-to-date and comprehensive information. It is therefore unsurprising that the United States established a new service branch, the US Space Force, several years ago, while each service branch apart from the US Air Force also has a Space Command organisation.

For countries with military satellite constellations in space, one of the main concerns, now and in the future, is that an adversary could disable those satellites during a war by various means.

The loss of a satellite constellation — whether communications, early-warning, reconnaissance or navigation satellites — would cause C5ISR systems to fail entirely. Units on land, at sea and in the air, separated by distance, could no longer be managed within a single chain of command and control.

US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Menk’s statement in September 2026 that the United States had deployed weapons in orbit is evidence of how seriously the country views the threat of Russia and China disabling its military satellite constellation in space.

Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits placing weapons of mass destruction in space, major powers are seeking to exploit capabilities that are not covered by the agreement.

Indonesia has used satellites for defence purposes since the Hughes Aircraft Company-built Palapa A1 was launched into space on 8 July 1976. To date, the country’s use of these human-made vehicles for defence has mainly served communications needs, rather than observation, navigation or early warning.

Meanwhile, Indonesia’s command of rocket technology — one of the foundations for sovereign use of space — remains little changed from the 1960s. In short, the country remains highly dependent on other nations to manufacture satellites and satellite launch vehicles.

Under the Ministry of Defence’s 2020–2024 Minimum Essential Force (MEF), it awarded Thales Alenia Space a €273.3 million contract to acquire reconnaissance satellites, in collaboration with PT LEN Industri. The French-Italian firm is required to build four Earth-observation satellites for Indonesia.

The four satellites will form an initial reconnaissance constellation. The final configuration is intended to comprise seven satellites, provided Indonesia awards Thales Alenia Space a similar contract under the 2025–2029 Optimum Essential Force (OEF).

The joint venture between Thales and Leonardo cannot be expected to work with brokers if the Ministry of Defence wants to complete the seven-satellite configuration before the end of this decade. A seven-satellite Earth-observation constellation is a requirement Indonesia must meet if it wants comprehensive reconnaissance capabilities from orbit.

Under the current agreement, Thales Alenia Space is building four reconnaissance satellites for Indonesia: two optical satellites and two Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites. All will be placed in low Earth orbit (LEO), with two using polar orbits and the other two equatorial orbits.

To the author’s knowledge, however, it remains unclear which orbital positions the four European satellites will occupy, as Indonesia has not yet registered them with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Their launch schedule is also unknown, given that PT LEN Industri has not signed a contract with any launch-services provider.

Will the Ministry of Defence award Thales Alenia Space a further contract for the remaining three satellites under the OEF 2025–2029, in order to complete the seven-satellite constellation? And what are the plans for procuring defence communications satellites before the end of this decade, to make up for the shortfall under the 2015–2019 MEF?

Defence communications satellites are needed so that the Ministry of Defence and the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) no longer depend on satellites owned by state-owned or private companies, even when transponder capacity is provided free of charge. Such satellites would support not only voice, video and data communications, but also the control of unmanned aircraft, particularly Medium Altitude Long Range (MALE) types, which currently depend on Chinese satellites.

Indonesia is now seeking to meet its defence satellite needs, particularly for Earth-observation and communications satellites. Navigation and early-warning satellites will be difficult to acquire unless the country can manufacture satellites domestically and develop its own satellite launch vehicles.

Given these requirements, it would be prudent for the Ministry of Defence to draw up a defence satellite plan covering the next 25 years, to guide all parties involved.

The plan must be realistic and grounded in actual conditions, rather than in aspirations detached from reality. It should include how the government will prepare funding to support the defence satellite programme, covering both the space and ground segments.

The plan should also realistically assess the capabilities of the domestic satellite industry, given that satellite manufacturing is not only an advanced but also a complex industry. In other words, ambitions for domestic companies to produce communications and reconnaissance satellites on an unrealistic timeline should be avoided.

No Indonesian company currently has the capacity to manufacture satellites; efforts to develop that capability were interrupted in 1997 when the Asian financial crisis struck. It would be wiser and more realistic for the government to steer national industry towards joining the global supply chains of satellite firms such as Thales Alenia Space or Airbus Defence and Space.