Why Anti Drone Technology is Essential for Future Warfare

Vishal Pratap Singh

“India has to start preparing for the future generation of warfare,” said Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, after a first of its kind drone strike dropped two bombs at Indian Air Force (IAF) station in Jammu. Speaking on the need for acquiring anti drone technology, General Rawat said drones, swarms and other such elements change the very nature and character of warfare. He said that Indian Army is quite concerned and has been working on countering drone technology.

Challenges in detecting Drones

Hostile Drones can be used to deploy explosives, smuggle contraband or gather intelligence on sensitive assets, and the proliferation of low cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has led to an increase in incidents. Drones have low Radar Cross Section (RCS), slow speed and a small size which makes the task of detection difficult, and thereafter, identification and localisation as well.

How Anti-drone Technology can be used

After this incident, Chief of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) G. Satheesh Reddy said “the counter drone technology developed by DRDO could provide the armed forces with the capability to swiftly detect, intercept and destroy small drones that pose a security threat”. The anti-drone system can detect and jam drones at a distance up to 3 km and it uses a laser weapon to fire at targets that are 1 to 2.5 km away.

Israel’s Defence Technology company Rafael has also developed something called Drone Dome which identifies and intercepts incoming drones. Besides the collection of static radars, radio frequency sensors and cameras, the Drone Dome also offers ‘a 360-degree coverage’ and is capable of jamming the commands being sent to a hostile drone and blocking visuals, if any, that are being transmitted back to the drone operator.

However, its main feature of discussion is the precision with which it can shoot high powered laser beams to bring down targets.
The company claims that Drone Dome works under all weather conditions and at night time as well. Anti-drone technology is deployed to protect areas such as airports, critical infrastructure, large public spaces such as stadiums, military installations and battlefield sites. The anti-drone technology includes ways to counter stationary as well as high speed moving targets.

Modern anti drone radar systems may use a variety of radar technologies, including ESA (Electronically Scanned Array), staring radar and micro Doppler depending on requirements like range, size of protection zone, number of simultaneous targets to track and ability to deal with environmental clutter. Also, they provide 3D airspace tracking and use sophisticated signal processing techniques to accurately detect and identify drones.

Drone Monitoring equipment like Radio Frequency (RF) Analysers consist of one or more antennas to receive radio waves and a processor to analyse the RF spectrum. They are used to detect radio communication between a drone and its controller.

There are some anti-drone systems which are able to identify the more common drone makers and models whereas some can even identify the MAC addresses of the drone and controller (if the drone uses Wi-Fi for communication). This system is especially useful for prosecution purposes like proving that a particular drone and its controller were active. Even some high end systems can also triangulate the drone and its controller when using multiple radio units spread far apart.

Capability of India in this Technology

With the modifications of the platform structure, payload technology and miniaturisation of various components taking place rapidly, the threat level is humongous. In December 2020, the Indian Navy decided to procure SMASH 2000 rifle sights for protection against drone attacks which are manufactured by Smart Shooter, company of Israel. It includes a counter UAS mode that provides for the kinetic elimination of small, low flying drones. Also, it has drone kill mode where drones can be locked, tracked and eliminated.

In India, although the DRDO made anti-drone system was first deployed during last year Republic Day, it is still to be employed in a bigger way. In December last year, two anti-drone technologies were demonstrated by DRDO Young Scientist’s Laboratory- Asymmetric Technologies (DYSL-AT), RCI demonstrated drone and innovative anti-drone technologies to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

This year in January, the National Security Guards has given rupees 1,49,86,000 worth contract to Bengaluru based Accord Software & System for the procurement of indigenous Counter Drone Technology. The key features of this weapon system includes a secure communication link, effective recoil management system, high firing angular resolution and vision based target detection and tracking.

Limitations of Anti-drone Technology

As drone technology is growing rapidly by leaps and bounds, the challenges that are coming up today with respect to Anti-drone technology have also increased. The variety of protocols used for communication between sensors creates a problem during their integration into a networked system. These challenges need immediate attention to be considered when the anti-drone system is conceptualised.

There are issues related to drone signature database. It is need of the hour to conduct extensive studies to have a comprehensive database. In this matter, Inter agency cooperation may help to mitigate the involved issues. Also, novel kinetic kill methods will have to be developed, with systems in place to reduce the effectiveness of drone jamming. Prevention against Jamming techniques is one of the major limitations of Anti-drone systems. Jamming is now being leveraged for drone missions into completion.

Power management considerations will always be a concern as the employment of such systems is going to be there for longer times. Technologies such as fuel cells and solar power sources can be used. Technical challenges will be compounded when trying to detect and localise drones whereas it will not be necessary that all the drones are having a viable Radio Frequency signature. There has been some development in using millimetre wave radar as well as measuring the turbulence caused by the drone rotors.

The Way Forward

Better rules and regulations need to be formulated to regulate the drone attacks in the coming future. Endless possibilities exist in designing a system to counter drones which may later extend to collaborative swarms. There is a definite need to align the timeframe taxonomy with the prevailing threat at all levels.