Iran dumped reliance on the US GPS satellite network to guide drones and missiles and switched to China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system that is complicating Israel’s air defence operations.
Since the 12-day war with Israel last June, Tehran has upgraded its satellite intelligence that reportedly will reduce the effectiveness of Israel’s electronic warfare tactics that disrupted Iranian drones and missile attacks in the short summer campaign, according to defence analysts.
Israel made very effective use of Western-designed electronic warfare systems last year, which successfully jammed the swarms of inbound Iranian drones and missiles that were dependent on US GPS signals. But in the last year, Iran swapped to China’s increasingly sophisticated BeiDou-3 (BDS-3) navigation network.
“Unlike the civilian-grade GPS signals that were paralysed in 2025, BDS-3’s military-tier B3A signal is essentially unjammable,” bne IntelliNews’ military analyst Patricia Marins says, noting that the system uses “complex frequency hopping and Navigation Message Authentication (NMA), which prevents ‘spoofing’.”
Electronic warfare systems commonly used by Israel have historically attempted to disrupt incoming drones by sending false coordinates, forcing them off course or causing them to crash. The BeiDou-equipped systems can filter out such interference.
“Israeli jammers can no longer trick drones into false coordinates; the BDS-3 hardware simply rejects the interference, maintaining a 98% positioning success rate,” according to analysts.
The navigation system may also improve targeting accuracy. BeiDou-3 operates with a triple-frequency architecture designed to minimise atmospheric interference.
“This allows Iranian missiles to eliminate ionospheric errors in real time, achieving a Circular Error Probability (CEP) of under five metres,” Marins said. The result could shift Iranian strike doctrine from wide-area barrages towards more precise targeting of military infrastructure.
Another feature highlighted by defence observers is BeiDou’s Short Message Communication (SMC) capability, which allows two-way communication with devices using the network. “BDS-3 is not just a beacon; it is a two-way tactical data link,” Marins said, enabling commanders to communicate with drones or missiles up to 2,000 km away while they are in flight.
Under the system, drones could potentially be redirected in real time. “If Chinese spy satellites detect a Patriot battery or an F-15E lock, a 560-bit ‘instruction packet’ is sent via satellite to the drone,” analysts said. “The drone instantly activates a pre-programmed avoidance logic—switching from a standard flight path to unpredictable high-G manoeuvres or sea-skimming profiles.”
The combination of satellite intelligence and networked weapons could form what analysts describe as a more resilient battlefield architecture. “By marrying Chinese ‘Eyes’ (satellite intelligence) to the Iranian ‘Fist’ (kinetic power), Tehran has established a resilient, intelligentised kill chain that bypasses Western technological leverage entirely.”
Some commentators argue the development highlights a broader shift in military technology. “The US and Israel are still fighting a 1990 Desert Storm warfare — Iran is fighting the 21st Century warfare with space surveillance and intelligentised capabilities built into every weapon,” Marins said.
Last week Secretary of War Pete Hegseth admitted that the US had underestimated the effectiveness of Iran’s drones. As it runs low on Patriot interceptor ammo, the US has introduced its own Merops interceptor drones in an effort to counter Iran’s cost-to-kill ratio advantage that allows it to overwhelm US defences with swarms of sophisticated, but cheap to make, drone swarms.
High quality Chinese satellite intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in the Iran war and levelled the playing field in terms of intelligence support as China’s copiabilities now match the US, ending its previous monopoly on real-time satellite intel for use in the battlefield.
Russia and Ukraine offering help
Unconfirmed reports claim that Russia has also been providing Iran with satellite intelligence, but no concrete evidence has been produced so far. Russia has previously launched Iranian reconnaissance satellites and has reportedly shared satellite imagery with Iran and some of its regional allies.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2024 that Russian military intelligence provided satellite targeting data to Yemen’s Houthi movement to help identify vessels in the Red Sea.
While there is no confirmed evidence that Russia is providing real-time targeting support in this conflict, there has been growing cooperation between Russia’s space surveillance, China’s BeiDou navigation system and Iran’s missile and drone programmes, which points to an emerging technological alignment designed to reduce reliance on Western satellite infrastructure.
In 2022 Moscow launched Iran’s Khayyam earth-observation satellite aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, giving Tehran access to higher-resolution imagery than it previously possessed. Western officials say the satellite has been used for military reconnaissance, although both countries have described the programme as civilian. Iran has increasingly relied on Russian launch services, satellite imagery and technical assistance to expand its space capabilities.
Tehran and Russia have also cooperated closely on drone development. In the early stages of the Ukraine, Russia imported thousands of Iranian-made Shahed drones, but following a technology swap in 2024 it built its own large drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. Moreover, the Kremlin has invested heavily in improving the design of what the Russian call the Geran-2 drone, based on the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 loitering munition, most recently upgrading to the jet-powered Geran-5, with help from China. Russia has also developed very sophisticated electronic weapons and countermeasures during its drone arms race with Ukraine, although there are no reports that it has shared this technology with Iran.
Facing pressure from Iranian drone and missile attacks, several Gulf states have turned to Ukraine to purchase its advanced interceptor drone systems in the last week as their supplies of Patriot missiles dwindle, Bankova confirmed on March 9. After four years of war with Russia, Ukraine can now produce 50,000 interceptor drones per month and export between 5,000 and 10,000 units without affecting Ukraine’s own defence needs, according to Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, deputy chief of Ukraine’s air force.
