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Soldiers, Militants, and Small Drones

Brig Narender writes, drones are emerging as new weapon for use at tactical level having operational and strategic implications. Use of drones by state and non-state actors will increase in the future since it gives leverage to cause collateral damage, act as target designator for smart bombs, carryout surveillance and act as a platform for electronic warfare.

Henrik Paulsson has highlighted in his article “Soldiers, Militants and Small Drones” the exponential use of drones in modern combat. Use of drones by state and non- state actors are adding new dimension to the conventional and sub-conventional conflicts. It is putting psychological and logistic strain on the soldiers combatting terrorism and insurgencies. The author writes that the ISIS drones in Mosul were not overly deadly, yet they provided a lopsided weapon that caused outsized psychological and logistical nightmare to the forces fighting against the ISIS.

Drones are emerging as new weapon for use at tactical level having operational and strategic implications. Use of drones by state and non-state actors will increase in the future since it gives leverage to cause collateral damage, act as target designator for smart bombs, carryout surveillance and act as a platform for electronic warfare. Drones can be assembled by students and by those who have basic technical knowledge of electronic circuits. Drones used by ISIS in Syria against Russian air bases were locally assembled but potent enough to cause major destruction. The swarm attack by drones can be used against military and non-military targets that can cause collateral damages on critical infrastructure at multiple targets near simultaneously.

Use of drones by militaries have altered the way future wars will be fought without exposing the soldiers to acquire information or carryout targeted attack on hostile weapons systems and small body of soldiers or non-state actors. Whereas it gives a huge leverage against insurgents and terrorists but it also poses serious threat to counter-insurgent and counter-terrorist forces. The challenge to the conventional armies is to acquire capabilities to pick up hostile flying drones/robots and neutralise them before they reach the targets.

The threat to India has increased manifolds with availability of the material in the market to assemble small drones capable of delivering 2 to 5 KG improvised bombs or IEDs. With this technology, terrorists can attack city centres, critical infrastructure, military installations, chemical factories that can lead to major disaster and even targeted killing of individuals. Jihadi terrorists, Left Wing Extremists, and insurgents in the North East are likely to acquire this technology to keep surveillance over security forces and their camps, target government forces and infrastructure.

To deal with such a threat there is a need to acquire capabilities to neutralise and keep potential areas of launch under surveillance. Even the locally manufactured drones can fly up to a range of 25 to 50 Km. However, more worrisome aspect is controlling the threat of small drones that can be launched within 1 to 5 Km with smaller payloads that are difficult to detect and bring down by use of guns.

There is a need to develop capabilities to jam, or acquire control of rogue flying object or destroy by use small arms. It would require good radar coverage to detect any flying object in the nap of the earth and high above. It may also call for developing drones having electronic warfare capabilities to jam the intruder or hostile drone so that neither the attacker is able to retrieve it nor they are in a position to direct it to the objective.

There is no denying the fact that the threat is increasingly and drones are becoming a potent weapon system for offensive and defensive use in conventional and sub-conventional conflicts. Thus there is a need for the security forces to be aware of the threat and counter measures required to deal with the impending threats from drones.

https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/soldiers-militants-and-small-drones/#.W-qat5MzbIU

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