Context: Two low-intensity explosions took place in the technical area of Jammu Air Force Station recently.
Key highlights

• It is believed to be the first-ever offensive use of drones to target an Indian military facility.
• The attack appeared to have been carried out using drones and marked a new chapter in Pakistan’s proxy war against India in Jammu and Kashmir.

Concerns

• It 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.
• It seems to be a trial run to gauge India’s capability to detect small targets that can fly across the border and target Indian installations.
• Pakistan-backed terrorist groups and its Inter-Services Intelligence have been using drones to smuggle arms, ammunition and drugs across the border into J&K and Punjab.

Road Ahead

• India needs to strengthen the surveillance capabilities, especially to pick up radar signatures of small drones that are capable of causing significant damage.
• The military needs to invest in anti-drone capability.

Anti-Drone capability

• The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed anti-drone technology to disable or shoot down hostile drones.
• The anti-drone system has a range of two to three kilometres with radar capability to pick up the drone and then use frequencies to jam the unmanned aerial vehicle.

Challenges of anti-drone technology

• Heterogenous Sensor Fusion: The variety of protocols used for communication between sensors poses a problem during their integration into a networked system.
• Energy Efficient Sensors: Power management to employ such systems all-day and all-night. Solar power sources and fuel cells are the technologies can be tapped.
• Multiple Drone Detection and Localisation: Technical challenges when trying to detect and localise drones, it will not be necessary that all the drones are having a viable RF signature.
• Identification Friend or Foe (IFF): IFF shall always remain challenging with the use of drones for all unethical purposes by non-state actors.
• Prevention Against Jamming (JAM-ME) Techniques: Jamming is now being leveraged for drone missions into completion.
• Cognitive Avoidance in 4th Generation GPS: GPS systems are becoming increasingly more interference-proof.