NDTV Defence Summit: From Pilot To Autopilot, Drone Warfare Here To Stay

Drones are here to stay and the sooner the Indian military and defence sector gets to grip - from developing systems and software to deploying it in the battlefield, complete with operational support and weapons integration - with this next phase in modern warfare, the faster it can be mapped to mission needs to ensue powerful results, a panel on evolution in warfare told NDTV.

At NDTV's annual defence summit a discussion on this topic focused on two points - first, that drones are part of a 'doctrinal shift in warfare', one that will continue to change, rapidly, and the second, that this necessitates offensive and defence recalibration of defence technology.

Drones, and drone warfare, made headlines after Operation Sindoor, India's military response to the April Pahalgam terror attack. But it wasn't Op Sindoor that put combat via unmanned or uncrewed aerial platforms on the map, it was Pakistan's response to the precision strikes.

"Only after Op Sindoor arrived at our doorstep did we take notice. Drones are here to stay and drones are the next evolution of warfare. They are the next pillar, standing with legacy man platforms, and the earlier we embrace it and learn to operate it, in a manner that can support mission needs (the better)," Sameer Joshi, CEO of NewSpace Research and Technology, said.

Familiarity, as much as possible, with various aspects of drones and drone warfare, from their design and manufacture to integration with military weapons and surveillance platforms, will lead to enhanced use-case scenarios, Mr Joshi explained.

The key, he said, is that going forward battlefields across the world will have a "robotic lawyer between the enemy and us" and that "this is the doctrinal shift in warfare over the next 10 years".

The 'doctrinal shift', many would argue, has begun playing out, overtly, in the Indian defence sector after Operation Sindoor. Pak's response to India's strikes was to unleash a barrage of more conventional missiles and rockets, yes, but Islamabad also fired weapon-carrying drones.

These targeted, unsuccessfully, Indian military and civilian centres. Unsuccessfully because they were identified, tracked, and neutralised (or shot down, in some cases) by India's air defence system, which earned plaudits for the efficiency with which it protected the nation.

Pak's use of drones highlighted another point the Indian military and defence sector, both private and public manufacturers, must consider - the defensive aspects of drone warfare.

"When we talk about drone warfare, we usually end up talking only about drones as weapons... but it is going to be used against us too. So we need to have enough measures to defend against drone attacks as well," Amit Navin Mahajan, Director of Paras Defence said.

That technology, he explained, extends from detection to identification (is it a bird or a drone, or a small plane?) and then it is necessary to apply algorithms to work out countermeasures.

"This becomes complex in a war-like situation because you don't know what to expect (from the enemy). You don't know the frequency at which they will operate... what anti-jamming technology it has," he said.

Concurrently, the topic of rapid obsolescence of technology was discussed, a particularly significant discussion given how much militaries everywhere now rely on tech. And obsolescence of technology was also highlighted by Rahul Singh, the co-founder and Vice President (Engineering) of IdeaForge, whose drones were used in Op Sindoor.

Mr Singh spoke about the big takeaway from Sindoor - learning. "Modern battlefields are characterised by rapid responses. You don't know what is black or white. It is said some tech in Ukraine had an obsolescence period of 90 days... so that is just transforming the way we think about product development. And companies and ecosystems that can are very important."

"This thing ties to indigenisation (i.e., the 'aatmanirbhar Bharat' point Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made earlier today) because the ability to move that fast means you need control over the core tech... otherwise you can't move at the pace at which the tech become irrelevant."

On the actual hardware, i.e., the drones themselves, Sandeep Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Exicom Technologies, made an important point, that their development cannot happen in a situational silo. One cannot assume, he said, that Pak, for example, has inferior tech.

"We cannot say that just because it is Turkey or China supplying them... they have a few good systems also, supplied by the United States or other Western nations, that can counter us. So we need to be progressive enough to ensure our tech will always be at the cutting edge."