Indian Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Thursday said that the easy availability of drones allowed both state and non-state actors to use them, increasing the complexity of challenges faced by the security forces, days after an unprecedented unmanned attack on an Indian Air Force (IAF) station in Jammu.
Highlighting the easy availability of devices such as the ones used in Jammu on June 27 -- and several other drones seen and repelled in the region’s Kaluchak area over the past week -- he said that building drones was akin to a “DIY project that could be tackled at home”. The attack was the first-ever offensive use of drones to target an Indian military facility.
“Drones will increasingly be used in all sorts of combat in future by state and non-state actors. We will have to factor it in our future planning,” the army chief said at a seminar organised by the Global Counter Terrorism Council, a think tank. Steps are being taken to counter the drone threat, he added.
“We are developing the capability to deal with this threat in both kinetic and non-kinetic realms. Troops have also been sensitised to the evolving threat...we are focusing on offensive use of drones as well as adopting counter-drone technology to prevent any attacks on our critical facilities either by state or non-state actors,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}“We are developing the capability to deal with this threat in both kinetic and non-kinetic realms. Troops have also been sensitised to the evolving threat...we are focusing on offensive use of drones as well as adopting counter-drone technology to prevent any attacks on our critical facilities either by state or non-state actors,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}The technology used in the aerial attack in Jammu indicated “state support and the possible involvement of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba terror groups,” Lieutenant General DP Pandey, who heads the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, said on Wednesday.
The army and IAF have tightened security and activated countermeasures at their forward bases to pre-empt such aerial attacks. Pandey said there appeared to be an “element of guidance from state actors” to modify the drones for aerial attacks.
The Jammu attack is a wake-up call, but it must be appreciated that the threat has been long in existence, and the antidote to terror drones is a whole-of-government approach since it’s not only military installations that are threatened but civilian infrastructure of importance too, said Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd), former additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies.
“Thus, the IB, RAW and other intelligence agencies have to work hand-in-hand to pre-empt attacks and terminal anti-drone defences have to be provided to key installations. In these Covid crunch times, finances would have to be provisioned from somewhere by the government,” Bahadur said on Wednesday.
The drone attack is a watershed in asymmetric warfare and underlines the need for the armed forces to build capabilities to deter, detect and neutralise such aerial threats.
He said, “The seesaw battle between drone warfare and counter-drone technologies will keep evolving. We will have to keep adapting,” he said.
The army chief also talked about achieving self-reliance in niche areas to tackle new threats. “In order to harness niche technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), exploit our depth in IT and realise the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat, we need to shed old mindsets and make our procedures more flexible and adaptive,” Naravane said.
The imaginative and offensive use of drones, riding on AI algorithms, first in Idlib and then in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, have challenged the traditional military hardware such as tanks, artillery and infantry, Naravane said.
In Syria’s Idlib, Turkish forces successfully used drones to carry out attacks against Syrian tanks, air defence systems and other assets. Also, Azerbaijan made extensive use of Kamikaze drones to target and inflict losses on Armenian forces in a conflict last year.
“More recently, the Israel Defence Forces have hailed the just-concluded 11-day conflict with Hamas, as the first Artificial Intelligence War. Whether it was the famed Iron Dome neutralising incoming rockets to great effect or the air targeting of Hamas locations in the Gaza strip, Israel has credited its success to the accomplishments in the field of AI,” he said.
Chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat on Monday said that India has to start preparing for future generation warfare. He said the three services, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), academia and other stakeholders were working together to develop technology to counter the threat from drones at the earliest.
The drone threat has surfaced at a time the armed forces are undergoing a major restructuring drive. Theaterisation plans are being refined to integrate the capabilities of the three services and optimally utilise their resources for future wars and operations. The plans cover the setting up of an Air Defence Command to protect key assets and installation from airborne attacks by standalone weapons such as armed drones, rockets and missiles.
DRDO chief G Satheesh Reddy said that the counter-drone technology developed by his organisation could provide the armed forces with the capability to swiftly detect, intercept and destroy small drones that pose a security threat. He said DRDO’s anti-drone system would give the military both “soft kill” and “hard kill” options to tackle the aerial threat. The first refers to jamming the hostile drone, while the second involves a laser-based kill system.
The DRDO’s counter-drone technology uses a variety of methods to neutralise the danger from such aerial attacks. DRDO officials previously explained how the system works. The solution consists of a radar system that offers 360-degree coverage with detection of micro drones when they are 4km away, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors for detection of micro drones up to 2 km and a radio frequency (RF) detector to detect RF communication up to 3 km. “The radar detects micro drones and hands over the track for soft kill and hard kill after due verification by a sensor. Once confirmed by RF detection and verified by EO/IR sensor, the system is ready to jam RF/GNSS signals or use laser weapon as per standard operating procedures,” an official said.