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Gen Dwivedi said the security agencies have also identified all the places where weapons are being dropped to ensure that terrorists, who are running short of arms, do not get hold of the weapons.

“Drone is an evolving technology and in the coming days, you will see action from both sides – they (Pakistan) will try to send drones (with weapons and drugs), we will deploy counter-measures using technology,” the Army commander told reporters here on the sidelines of a programme to mark the platinum jubilee of the historic “Poonch Link-up Day”.

Lt Gen. Dwivedi said terrorists are present in Jammu and Kashmir but despite planning to carry out an operation, they are not able to strike due to a shortage of weapons.

“We have installed counter-drone equipment at different places and are also looking at those places where drones were used to drop weapons. We have earmarked those places and are taking appropriate action so that terrorists cannot get the weapons,” he said.

Sending a strong message to youngsters in the valley, Lt Gen. Dwivedi said they have to come forward and support the Army, which is doing its best to ensure a bright future for them.

He added that nobody benefitted by joining terror ranks over the last 30 years.

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The BSF director general said the force has shot down a total of 7 drones over the last six months (December 2021-May 2022) and has detected three underground tunnels along the Pakistan border between January, 2021 to May, 2022.

Singh was speaking during an investiture ceremony and the annual ‘Rustamji Memorial Lecture’ of the border force.

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The sixth edition of Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC-6), launched by the Defence Minister on April 22, calls upon the industry to develop a hand held, hard kill, counter-UAS system. DISC is a platform under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence that offers specific projects to the industry, particularly start-ups, to develop technological solution and products for the armed forces.

According to parameters listed in the document, the self-contained system should be man portable and be operable by a single person besides having a range greater than 300 metre and capable of repeated use in quick succession.

Further, it should not require any special skills and training for neutralizing the drone and the provision of aiming and neutralising should be very simple and achievable with minimum training.

The system is meant to intercept and destroy small low flying drones that have miniscule radar, thermal or acoustic signature and are primarily used for surveillance and cross border smuggling or can be used to carry out a terror strike, as was experienced at the Pathankot airbase in Punjab last year.

Punjab and Jammu regions remain vulnerable. According to data available with the Border Security Force, there were 100 drone sightings along the western border in 2021, out of which 67 were in Punjab followed by 24 in the Jammu Sector. This year there have already been over half a dozen engagements with drones, with some reports claiming that an IED that exploded near Jammu on the day of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally is believed to have been dropped by a drone.

While the capability to detect and counter large unmanned aerial vehicles exits, detection of small drones is very difficult and at present depends primarily on visual sightings or audio hearing. Troops engage small drones with standard rifles, which is difficult.

Two basic options to neutralize drones are the soft kill, which relies on jamming or hacking the target drone’s radio signals, or the hard kill which requires the drone to be physically destroyed by ordnance or lasers.

The armed forces as well as paramilitary and police organisations are laying great stress on the induction of anti-drone systems. Besides procurement of some foreign systems, several projects are underway to develop different indigenous systems to counter various types to drones.

Over the past few years, there have been several reported instances where drones have been used to smuggle arms and ammunition as well as narcotics into India. Employment of drones for surveillance and recce in border areas is also a regular feature. Border guarding forces have been modifying their operating procedures to tackle hostile drones.

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The notification comes days after the ministry of civil aviation issued the drone certification scheme on January 25 to stipulate minimum safety and quality requirements to boost indigenous manufacturing. The certification scheme will help in simpler, faster and transparent type-certification of drones.

Since August last year, the government has issued liberalised drone rules, a drone airspace map, extended the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to drone manufacturing and introduced a single-window DigitalSky platform to help the drone manufacturing industry grow.

According to the government last year, the domestic drone manufacturing industry is expected to grow from a combined turnover of about ₹80 crore to ₹900 crore in three years.

On September 16 last year, civil aviation minister JyotiradityaScindia said the combined turnover of the drone sector – hardware, software and service delivery – was expected to grow to about ₹ 12,000-15,000 by 2026. The government says India has the potential to become a global drone hub by 2030.

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The appearance of new drone-based threats flying across the Line of Control and international boundary have presented a new range of threats to security agencies. Since 2019, Pakistan-based terrorists are using drones to drop arms and ammunition into India.

On June 27, this threat made the next logical step-up—when two drones attacked the Jammu airbase dropping shaped charges which punched through a roof of a building without any casualties. It, however, signalled a clear and present danger—of small-sized drones being used to carry out attacks on sensitive installations and in public gatherings.
BSF personnel open fire at the drones which are launched from within Pakistan but they have no idea if they ever hit them or not.

Pakistan operates drones with GPS coordinates which are pre-programmed for the drone to land at some place or at least reach that place to dump the consignment.

Existing ground-based air defence radars are unable to track commercially obtained drones because of their small size—a one-metre drone has the radar cross-section of a bird and can often be mistaken for one. The successful integration of the counter-drone system with legacy AD systems offers interesting in-country solutions to replace costly imports.
The Army has tested L70 anti-aircraft guns in anti-drone mode against low flying mini rogue drones, firing 40mm shells with proximity fuses.

The system interfaces a counter-drone system made by a Hyderabad-based Zen Technologies with the army’s in-service L-70 air defence gun. It is similar to one ordered by the Indian Air Force in August. The IAF placed a Rs 120 crore order for an unspecified number of counter-drone systems from the same firm.

The Zen-Anti Drone Air Defence Systems or ZADS variant ordered by the IAF, is primarily a ‘soft kill’ system. It detects and jams radio frequency emissions from the drone between 10 metres and 10 kilometres. The firing trials in Gopalpur are the first use of it as a ‘hard kill’ system, where it physically destroys the drone.

The radio frequency detector on the ZADS indicates the direction of the approaching drone, the day and night camera aligns itself towards the target and zoom searches to estimate its approximate range. The system then passes target coordinates on to the L-70 gun through a customised hardware interface. The gun receives the coordinates in ‘remote’ mode, aligns itself towards the target allowing the operator to lock on and fire. And all this in a matter of seconds.

The army can swiftly upgrade older guns like the Swedish L-70s and the Soviet-made ZSU-23 guns into drone killers. The costs are not known but are believed to be in the range of Rs 6 to Rs 8 crore per gun upgrade. The guns have to be first upgraded with an electro-optical system, like the one on the upgraded L-70, before they can be interfaced with the ZADS counter-drone system.

It will also need newer ammunition like the special proximity-fused ammunition manufactured by Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL)—each shell is packed with 1,000 fragments of tungsten that are detonated by a proximity fuse.

The army has approximately 1,180 L-70 anti-aircraft gun, made by Swedish arms firm Bofors AB, which were first bought off-the-shelf in the late 1960s and later licensed produced in India. Around 200 guns have been upgraded by BEL under a Rs 575 crore contract some years ago. The guns are being given new electrical servo drives, electro-optical fire control system, video tracking and a new air defence radar. The upgrades however were meant primarily to tackle low flying helicopters and aircraft.
These were preliminary trials. The system will need to be further refined before it can be certified for use.

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Undoubtedly, countries are investing large sums for R&D and procurement of the unmanned combat aerial systems (UCAS). The US Air Force received the prototype of the vehicle-mounted C-UAS – High-Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) in 2019. As per the Congressional Research Service paper of Jan 2021, the US Army as well as the US Navy, is working on the development of computer-enabled C-UAS products in collaboration with the Defense Digital Service. As per the Navy Technology news of 17 Mar 21, the US Navy is set to deploy the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, (ODIN) and the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) in 2021. It took the delivery of HELIOS from Lockheed Martin for testing in January 2021. Lockheed Martin is also developing a 60kW laser weapon system combining multiple fiber lasers to counter drone attacks. Further, ICARUS system, a cyber solution to combat small drone threats, has also been developed.

The race to the swift has nations vying for leveraging the 5G spectrum, since the space to render effective counters to the UAS will vacillate across the electro-magnetic spectrum, utilizing both passive and offensive measures. The range includes radar systems, microwave weapons, jammers, directed energy weapons, swarms riding artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. The cocktail is indeed a heady mix, but it also reflects the lethal operating milieu that militaries will need to contend with in not too distant a future.

Transformational Technologies

Presently, the established means to neutralize UAS is by resorting to physical downing means. Millimeter wave (mmW) radar along with data fusion methods are considered promising trends in the future. Due to the low footprint and low collateral damage, Hacking and Spoofing have emerged as a promising negation solutions, though a package to develop mature scalable, modular and affordable solution is a while away.

AI and ML in the domain of C-UAS assists the human operator in the loop to overcome complexities of sheer volume and speed of an impending attack. The process combines data from multiple sensors and fuses output to be used collaboratively with available data. The database to train the algorithms for ML is extrapolated from existing radars. The decision matrix loop of an incoming attack is in seconds for the operator to detect, mitigate and neutralize the UAS. The dilemma lies in the threat assessment, which is eased by AI that helps improve quality and speed of decision-making.

To optimize the process from Detection to Strike, use of ‘Quantum Computing’ (QC) is also being envisaged. Though the concept is the nascent stage, as the method to leverage these ‘surge technologies’ by factoring life cycles and operationalizing paradigms is still being worked out. QC is considered ideal for detection of patterns and conjuring digital signatures.

What needs to be understood is that AI and ML is good to optimize processes (by training on the datasets to track/recognize the drones) and is ideal for detection; however, for initiating the Strike, the operator in the loop is mandated. This is to guard against cyber threat of a malware being introduced into the system that would generate algorithms, turning the weapon rogue. The scientific community is working on the intrigue of trying to ‘Program Common Sense’, as it were. The approach being adopted by countries on the throes of developing Counter-UAS technologies using AI and ML are:-

• Focusing on the ability to democratize data and use it to generate intelligence.

• Enhance decision making by assisting human operator in the extremely short time critical window.

• Develop infrastructure at the ‘Edge’ to transform data collected into intelligence/ insight.

The ultimate aim of the C-UAS philosophy is the safe integration of the UAS into the airspace. Methods of detection and mitigation overlap and are often combined to provide a more effective and layered capability.

Policy Basket

Whilst, technological advances in AI, QC and Robotics are transformative, they also pose considerable threats and risks regards ethics, privacy, security and sovereignty, that countries developing these technologies require factoring.

The policies for export of weapons-grade technology followed by China and Russia are fairly accommodative when compared to the control regimes that the US has bound itself by. The Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) Policy, revised in 2018 aims to preserve U.S. national security, its economic security, strengthen strategic U.S. allies, and perpetuate the U.S. military’s technological edge in line with its other international trade policies. The International Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) to which Washington voluntarily adheres, provides a framework of understanding amongst states aimed at limiting the proliferation of missile technology with payload and range of the rockets and UAVs of at least 500 kgs and 300 kms, respectively.

Turkey joined the MTCR in 1997 but China does not participate in the initiative. US intends to institute reforms to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that would provide a level playing field and allow it to compete with countries that diluted arms export restrictions, especially with respect to drone exports. The debate in the US rages between the aspects of diluted control for equivalence in the economic security and national security and the jury is still out with the Biden administration considering its pros and cons.

India promulgated the rules for UAS titled, “Unmanned Aerial Systems Rules-2021” on 12 Mar 2021. The rules list out the category of UAS and modalities for permits and licence applications and penalties for non-compliance. The civil aviation ministry has also promulgated the UAS National Traffic Management Policy spelling out the architecture, concept of operations and deployment plan for enabling UAS Traffic Management (UTM) ecosystem in India.

Doctrinal Precepts

India and the US have signed four significant foundational agreements reinforcing military cooperation. Progress made by the US in the UCAS domain will assist India leverage the development at some stage. According to Janes, India is the world’s third largest armed force and third largest defence spender after US and China. In the midst of a large military modernization drive, with the indigenous defence industrial bases having been put into motion with a corridor each in the Indian states of UP and Tamil Nadu, the Defence Acquisition Procedure-2020 classifies Capital Procurement under a new category – “Buy (Global – Manufacture in India)” – with minimum 50 per cent indigenous content. The UCAS from any of the Indian allies may be routed through this category.

The air and ground radar package must include low power, low signature KU-band radars, networked by AI compute, made resilient through redundancy, looking at all angles, capable of simultaneous detection and tracking multiple threats (essentially a guard against swarms). The inclusion of directional radio frequency inhibitor in the process would mitigate the UAS by instituting loss of control thereby denying, deterring or disrupting an impending threat. If the electronic counter-attack is insufficient, the kinetic hard-kill option still exists due to the layered approach across the full kill-chain.

Own vulnerabilities must be assessed, factoring AI and ML. A 360-degree cardinal situational awareness, layered with sophisticated AI facilitated techniques to deduce swarm objectives and threat mitigation needs to be propagated. International cyber attacks either through nations or through organizations, leveraging the power of AI can have catastrophic impact on society. Juxtapose this with lethal autonomous weapons and the problems get accentuated.

UCAS is not a silver bullet but a natural corollary to the evolution of UAS continuum. Nagorono-Karabakh was the real conflict experience for the U-CAV. At different levels of operation, the integration levels preferred are:

• At the technical level, there is a requirement of multi-domain solutions.

• At the tactical level, there is greater requirement of integration to develop a common operational picture to avoid fratricide.

• At the operational level, there is requirement of a seamless integration of the UCAS with existing capabilities.

• At the Strategic level, there is a requirement of whole of the government approach. The entire gamut of actions from Prevention (that stresses on the EW signals to Intelligence) to Situational Awareness (that legislates detection, tracking, classification and identification) to Response (by defeating, deterring, destruction or capturing) and to the post event analytics (or PSDA); the entire flow chart of activities is constructed and these precepts incorporated in the CUAS operational strategy.

The Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Bipin Rawat, during a webinar on ‘Shaping the Armed Forces to meet likely current and future challenges’ at the Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi, on 7 April, spelt out the emerging paradigm to be adopted by India and he stated, “Future battles requires us to confront the growing capabilities of our adversaries, i.e., the hybrid imprint, collusive support and threat posed from emerging technologies. Needless to say, we cannot fight the next war premised on the experiences and structures of the past wars. The keystone to the way forward is by joint-ness, integration and modernization by imbibing technology in line with the changing security environment and utmost optimization of resources generating greater combat effectiveness”.

Out of the world glare, India has donned the ‘Green (creativity) Hat’ from De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to try new ideas and perspectives – something vital for assuming leadership in the global context. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), as part of it next generation Combat Air Teaming System (CATS) has unveiled the Air Launched Flexible Asset (ALFA-S) swarming drone system to penetrate contested airspace. Remember, a swarm itself maybe used as an effective C-UAS against a swarm attack. The approach is collaborative with the USAF’s ‘Air Force Research Labs’ joining the bandwagon with India.

A layered approach with integration of different systems is ideally suited for the Indian approach. Since C-UAS needs to be factored into the air defence philosophy at the Service level, the announcement of an Air Defence Command, as part of the overall theaterization, synergizing all resources under direction of a single theater commander augurs well for the concept. The system must be capable of detecting – tracking -identifying – deterring and ultimately defeating an incoming attack. The strategy must be based on an ‘autonomous’ model with fused systems, capable of more than one vector response, used proactively. It is a concept that needs incorporation sooner than later.     (Concluded)

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