Drone Wars

The drone attack on 27th June 2021 at the Jammu Airbase was although not anticipated but the threat like this was always known. The use of drones has heavily increased especially at the Jammu and Punjab borders where drugs, rifles and money are being transposed using drones. As per a report by India Today close to 300 drone activity was reported just in the last six months of 2020 itself.

Although the drone attack on 27 June at the Airbase was an unsuccessful attempt but it has rung the bells of all the possible attacks that drone could be used for from delivering pizzas to bombs.

We recently  saw that on the 73rd army day, a full mock kamikaze drone attack was demonstrated by the Indian army although it also demonstrated how the delivery of first aid can be done via the drone in the New Delhi Carripa Parade Ground.

So drone attacks are no new thing to the global community just to address few major attacks in the past were:-

• ·        The killing of the Iranian General Soleimani by drone attacks by the US forces.
• ·        Azerbaijan bombarding the Armenia territory and destroying their military defence with Turkish drones in 2019 and winning the war.
• ·        The use of low-cost drones to attack Saudi Arabia Aramco oil fields and disrupting for months by the Houthis.
• ·        Even the whole Osama bin Laden surveillance was done by the use of drone itself

There is no denying that we are at the beginning of the era of drone warfare but unfortunately, we don’t have any such countermeasures for drone attacks. Even the DRDO anti-drone system was announced just after the June 27th and the capabilities of the anti-drone system  is jamming the drone signals via within the range of 3km. But now the drone itself have increased their operational range up to 20 kilometres which make it harder to find the operator the organization behind such attacks. The advancement in the anti-drone system globally has been very active since 2017 just to name few organizations like Elvira Anti Drone System which is a Dutch company has developed and deployed their drone security for the G20 2017 summit.

Few things can't be ignored about the drone itself that that it makes a loud noise they are very prone to make their presence in the surrounding so the  use of tech can be very effective while tracking the source of the sound of the drone and having countermeasure to mitigate it. For this kind of attack at the same time there are radars like KuRFS radars which tracks the small objects in the surrounding which can be used in place to detect drones.

 

What can be done to counter-drone attacks?

We have to take into account that we not only have the challenge of cross border drone attacks but also if it is in the wrong hands internal threats are also high like the communal riots would be a very volatile  and attacks on the sensitive zones like the power grids,  airports,  runways, chemical factories even the railway tracks and what not there are many more.

So the best thing to do to avoid these attacks is that monitoring the accessibility of the drone itself and by regulating the whole drone industry itself.

The Government of India have recently drafted drone rule in which the areas like airport and other sensitive areas have been allotted ranges of a no-fly zone which is 12 kilometres for airports. There is no denying that drone technology itself is revolutionary and for few cons, we can't ignore the pros hence a lot of encouragement by the Government of India has been done through this drone rule to adopt this technology likewise the registration form for drones, tech has been reduced from 25 forms to 5 forms.

The minister of Civil Aviation will be responsible for monitoring the drone activity they have proposed a digital sky platform where the height and weight the drone caring would be pre-feed and along with the route that it would follow. The licensing would be turned in and tracked via a unique number identification (UNI) allotted to each drone and also the licensing would be given for those drone operators which would be given only after completion of training in controlling drones. These steps by the Government of India is highly commendable but the thing is that as a nation we are still reacting  rather than being prepared for any such circumstances.

The first thing after this draft is  released is the deployment of the anti-drone system by DRDO has to be deployed in the sensitive areas as mentioned in the article earlier which would at least avoid any high casualty or high loss of resource, post which constant innovation and development has to be taken place which would avoid using a kamikaze style of the drone because every attack can't be tackle by the drone itself which would be a costly affair given the border we share and the enemies we have at the borders.