Six of eleven satellites failed: How India's NavIC became a navigation nightmare

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]India set out to build its own GPS which ended up with just three working satellites and a former air force chief calling the whole thing a failure.

[00:00:09]>> 3 2 1 zero.

[00:00:14]>> Meet Navic. The navigation with Indian constellation system. This system was designed to free India from dependence on foreign powers. Noble idea. Shame about the execution.

[00:00:26]Here is where things stand now. So as of March, Navic has only three operation satellites. You need at least four for accurate positioning but Navic has three. How did it come to this? Since 2013, the Indian Space Research Organization has launched 11 satellites.

[00:00:44]Six have failed, most due to defective imported atomic clocks. The embarrassment has not gone unnoticed.

[00:00:51]The former Indian Air Force chief Rakkesh Kumar Singh Bodora reportedly described the current state of Navic as a failure citing its inability to meet operational requirements.

[00:01:03]Now compare this to how the rest of the world is navigating.

[00:01:07]Four fully operational global navigation satellite systems provide positioning services worldwide.

[00:01:14]America's GPS, Russia's Gloness, European Union's Galileo, and China's Beijing. As of March, GPS has 31 active satellites in orbit. Galileo and Glonas operate with over 24 and BEu has the largest number, 56 active satellites in the orbit. For India, the strategic consequences are no laughing matter. NAV was designed specifically to prevent foreign powers from cutting off India's access to navigation during a conflict.

[00:01:43]And ironically, it's using imported equipment to not rely on foreign powers.

[00:01:48]But with the system now below its minimum operational capacity, India may have to revert to using GPS. The very dependency Navic was built to eliminate.