Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv plans to produce 1 million drones in 2024. Video footage provided by Ukraine’s military and demonstrating the use of UAVs in action, shows a small drone carrying an explosive device flying into a Russian armoured vehicle parked in a garage before the screen goes blank.
Elsewhere on YouTube, young men of unrecorded nationalities can be seen in backyard machine shops assembling drones either bought readymade online, or available as DIY knock down kits and spare parts, screwing on high explosives such as grenades to the frame, and once airborne, using hand held devices to stir them to targets chosen on iPads or tablets. A deadly form of an electronic war game.
International security experts are not really gong-ho about devices assembled by school boys for the equivalent of a few thousand in terms of Indian rupees and guided by home sun GPS devices o military targets.
After all, in the real world, armed and unarmed Unmanned warplanes of this nature cost tens of million American dollars a piece, and trade is tightly controlled by the security establishments of the big powers, US, China Russia among them.
China is a major manufacturer of civil and military drones. As a matter of fact, it has also supplied Pakistan with various versions of these devices, some of which were apparently shot down by Indian security forces at vulnerable points of the western border, from Punjab all the way up north.
India itself became conscious of the threat from drones when it, without too much fanfare, secured a set of unarmed drones equipped with high resolution grown surveillance camera and electronic listening gear, to some experimental patrolling along the long Himalayan border with China, especially in Kashmir and Ladakh region.
By all accounts, the images came as a complete surprise to the India defence and political establishment. Visible in sharp detail were military installations along the border, of course, and perhaps a little more. This additional information, coupled with imagery that India has had since it started sending up satellites of various configurations atop ISRO’s many rockets that could up these devices in polar orbits too, as well as geo-stationery ones of yore, has quite categorically shown the Chinese incursion and preparedness.
It were these developments that lent urgency to New Delhi’s efforts to procure the state of the art MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones from the United States. These would including both armed aircraft and the unarmed versions to be operated by the Indian navy as well as the Air Force and the Army. The $4 Billion deal was finalised during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s America visit last year.
It should have been a straightforward and easy purchase, considering India’s close strategic cooperation and collaboration with Washington, which has included in participation in the Quad framework in military exercises in the region of the China sea with its partners US, Australia and Japan.
A spanner in the form of a statutory “hold” on the deal was enforced by the US Congress pending clarifications on the country’s human rights record. This was an embarrassment for both countries. But the US government did finally convince the senior political leadership on the importance of India getting this equipment before winter ended in the border regions.
The Defence Security Cooperation Agency recently delivered the required certification, notifying the US Congress of the sale. “This will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to strengthen the US-Indian strategic relationship and to improve the security of a major defence partner which continues to be an important force for political stability, peace, and economic progress in the Indo-Pacific and South Asia region,” Defence Security Cooperation Agency said.
So far so good, and hopefully the new additions to India’s security muscle and eyes will help it meet the challenges on its northern and western borders. Some will expectedly be also deployed along the borders with Burma, for instance in response to recent challenges in this region.
It is however not international borders but the situation within that has triggered anxiety both in the north eastern states, and in regions infested with ultra left activity, such as the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh and contiguous areas. Nothing really prevents the emergence of drones in the internal confrontations. On either side.
Civil society activists of the region have in recent months increasingly referred to what they say are the use of drone-borne weapons against civilian populations where government forces believe there are Maoist elements.
On the eve of the Telangana assembly elections, security forces are believed to have used upper-end India made drones in the Maoist-affected districts in Telangana. This as a first for the state, certainly, if not for the country.
The proliferation of weapon grade drones, to call them by their work, demands a surveillance apparatus on the ground to ensure that these are not going into the wrong hands, or are being hijacked mid-flight.
As a routine, security forces in Delhi and elsewhere ban such flying machines in not only in the airspace above military establishments, but high security buildings such as Rashtrapati Bhawan and much of the New Delhi region which is home to the political leadership.
The government can be expected to tighten the rules and regulations governing the sale of drones and knock down kits through online markets such as the India operations such as Amazon and Ebay.
In a country where the appearance of strange pigeons can cause consternation – with debates on their possible home in Pakistan or China – the hum of a strange drone on the horizon adds a new static to the noise on security.
(John Dayal is an author, Editor, occasional documentary film maker and activist)
