Drone Technology Critical to Ward Off Threat

Context: Employment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drone warfare is increasing rapidly and is one of the most important combat-strategy developments.

Key Advantages of Drone Technology as Combat-Strategy

• Multiple uses: A pilotless flight designed for dropping bombs, firing missiles, or even crashing into a target and are equally useful in peacetime too, for gathering critical intelligence.
• Low-cost weapon system: (as compared to fighter jets) they are affordable to poor countries to act against powerful adversaries with better traditional military capability.
  • However, it could also become an ideal low-cost weapon system for state-sponsored terrorism. (since no regulatory guidelines have been issued for military applications)
• Precision capability: helps reduce the loss of human life and lowers the risk to military personnel and has less political and military ramifications.
• Enhanced situation awareness: through digitally provided operational information (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) of terrorist locations, limiting their capabilities and collateral damage.

Factors pushing the need for Deployment of Drone Technology by Indian Forces

• Securing borders against neighbourhood: Unstable neighbourhood including a wide range of non-traditional threats; e.g.
  • Nuclear Threats - from China and Pakistan
  • Land centric threats due to unresolved border disputes.
  • Sub-conventional threats like export of terror from across the borders. (including drones)
  • Asymmetric warfare threat: weaponised drones are emerging as an essential technology in asymmetric warfare have not been employed by the forces.
• Globally recognised remote control war strategy: widespread use of drones in offensive military operations is no longer a taboo as is apparent from the following recent use of drone-
  • The US has institutionalised drones as a major counter-insurgency/terrorist strategy since 9/11.
  • Turkey, Nigeria and Iraq have employed drones against the Boko Haram, Kurdistan Workers’ Party and ISIS respectively.
  • Armenia-Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict involved a wide usage of drones.
• Continuance of low-level conflicts: India is facing and is likely to continue to face low-level conflicts which necessitate low intensity of retaliation to avoid an all-out war.
  • Drones can inflict pointed damage on distant targets as they are particularly suitable for low-level conflicts. (e.g. in the events like Pathankot and Pulwama like incidents.