India To Buy 200 Mini Drones For Security, Surveillance In Jammu-Kashmir

Indian army is planning to buy 200 mini drones to deploy them for surveillance and detection of enemy movement in Jammu and Kashmir.

The country’s decision is to revive a four-year-old plan to purchase 200 mini drones in the wake of attacks on army camps by militants located in Jammu & Kashmir recently, Geopolmonitor reported Thursday.

The drones would likely to arrive in variants. The loiter time will be the same, the plain variant would have a maximum ceiling of 1,000 meters above take off altitude and the hill variant will have a maximum elevation of four kilometers. The army has requested drone manufacturers to deliver the security systems by December 23.

“The need for mini-UAVs for deployment along the Line of Control (de-facto border between India and Pakistan) has been felt for a long time because of persistent efforts by externally sponsored terrorists to infiltrate across the border,” said Brigadier Rumel Dahiya (retired), defense expert and former deputy director general of Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses.

“The mini UAVs will be deployed close to the border and will be operated by the troops on ground who will directly receive the information and act upon it thus shortening the Observe, Orient, Decide and Act (OODA) loop and filling up a void in the surveillance grid,” Dahiya added.

India is taking measures to improve its security facilities around military camps amid an increase in attacks on the camps located in Jammu & Kashmir.

An investigation on the attack on the Pathankot airbase camp attack by a high-level commission revealed that the lack of alertness allowed the entry of armed terrorist into high-value military facilities.

The commission suggested measures that include technology-based security systems in and around military establishments.

This week, a terrorist attack on an army camp in J&K, the second on an army base in two months, exposed the lack of technological tools with the Indian security forces. This year alone, the Indian army has lost 89 men to militant attacks in Kashmir.