This month the Chinese propaganda media wrote that 50 Wing Loong II armed drones supplied by Beijing to Pakistan will be a nightmare for Indian ground formations in high altitude areas as its military does not have the ability to respond to the new age stand-off weaponry.
Arguing that armed Chinese and Turkish drones had played a crucial part in Libya, Syria and Azerbaijan conflicts by decimating the enemy defences and conventional armour, the Chinese media continued with psychological warfare by saying that Indian ground formations will be simply unable to parry an attack by large number of armed drones.
While the Chinese crowing about the success of Wing Loong II in African and Asian theatre is a matter to be noted, the fact is that armed drones perform optimally in uncontested air spaces or air dominance. Whether it was the use of drones in Afghanistan and Iraq against insurgents or terrorists, the US achieved success as they were dominating the air space. “Whether it is Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir or Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, the airspace is very closely monitored by radars and hotly contested with fighters. The armed drones will simply be shot down if they cross the lines,” said a former air chief.
However, the supply of armed drones to client state Pakistan by China makes a case for India to acquire weaponized drones as well as anti-drone systems as the unmanned aerial vehicles can be used to launch air to ground weapons without crossing the LoC or LAC. Basically, the drones can discharge the weapons beyond the engagement envelopes of the Indian guns or surface to air missiles on ground.
As of now, India does not have any armed drone system with Israeli weaponization upgrade of Heron drone taking time and the Indian Navy acquiring two US Predators on lease for maritime domain awareness for friend or foe identification. The close in weapon system (CIWS), whose tender was floated for 61 such systems in 2018 after acceptance of necessity in 2015, is still in field trial stage and Russian S-400 system is expected to be available next year. Defence PSU BEL has come up with an anti-drone radar based system but it is still to be validated by the users.
While the Chinese media and military would derive vicarious pleasure by comparing Indian army with Armenian, Syrian or Government of National Accord (GNA) forces in Africa-Asian theatre, the BEL manufactured medium power radar detects even birds in flight and it is cost effective to shoot down an infiltrating drone by using L-70 or ZU-23 air defence guns. After all, a Chinese Wing Loong II drone is one-tenth the cost of a fighter and it does not make sense to shoot them down using US million dollars air-to-air missiles.
To ensure that the troops are protected from stand-off weapons, the Indian Army is using tunnel defences with huge concrete Hume pipes providing the defence in case of first strike on the front-line. But a lucky strike from enemy drone can unravel the best of defence plans without proper integrated air defence network in place.
