Drones a clear, present threat, says army chief
NEW DELHI: 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 a 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 firstever 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.
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 preempt attacks and terminal antidrone defences have to be provided to key installations,” Bahadur said.
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.
“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.