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 and increased the complexity of challenges faced by the security forces. Stressing on easy availability, he said building drones was akin to a "DIY project that could be tackled at home". The army chief's comments came days after the June 27 attack on the Jammu air force station. It 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 the future by state and non-state actors. We will have to factor it in our future planning," the army chief said. Steps are being taken to counter the drone threat, he said. "We are developing the capability to deal with this threat in both kinetic and non-kinetic realms. Troops have also been sensitized to the evolving threat…We are focusing on the offensive use of drones as well as using counter-drone technology to tackle the threat," he said.
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 HQs 15 Corps, said on Wednesday. The army and the 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 the civilian infrastructure of importance too, said Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd), former additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies.
"The IB, RAW, and other intelligence agencies have to work hand-in-hand to pre-empt attacks and terminal anti-drone defenses 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 neutralize such aerial threats, as previously reported by HT. Chief of defense 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.
DRDO chief G Satheesh Reddy said that the counter-drone technology developed by his organization 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.
