First-mover advantage is immense after J&K drone attack: Group Captain Kishore Kumar Khera

Jammu airport (Image: ANI)

The Indian Air Force (IAF) and police are investigating two low-intensity explosives that were dropped within a gap of five minutes using a drone inside the high-security technical area of the Air Force base in Jammu in the early hours on Sunday.

The attack at around 1.45 am, leaving two IAF personnel with minor injuries, is being termed as the first drone attack on any Indian military facility across the country.

The incident may be minor in terms of size and damage, but it has emerged as a new challenge for the country's security apparatus, at least in terms of the process, experts said.

“It is like opening up another chapter for the security establishment of the country,” Group Captain (retd) Kishore Kumar Khera, former fighter pilot, author and aviation analyst told MoneyControl.

Khera has served as a fighter pilot in the IAF for 33 years and was a Research Fellow at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

Two low intensity explosions were reported early Sunday morning in the technical area of Jammu Air Force Station. One caused minor damage to the roof of a building while the other exploded in an open area.

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— Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) June 27, 2021

First drone attack in India

Not that drones have not been used in the past. The Border Security Force (BSF), for example, has been able to shoot down some in the last couple of years. But those drones were involved in dropping weapons and drugs. On June 20, 2020, the BSF shot downa suspected spy drone in the Kathua district of Jammu. In September, the J&K police found weapons dropped from drones at a village in the Ak hnoor region of Jammu.

But Sunday’s attack is the first incident in which a drone has been used to carry out explosions – using improvised explosive devices (IED), according to some reports, and grenades, according to others.

"Use of drone with payload in both the blasts at Jammu airfield suspected to drop explosive material. Another IED weighing 5-6 kg was recovered by Jammu police. This IED was received by LeT outfit operative & was to be planted at some crowded place, " Director General Police, J&K Dilbagh Singh told news agency ANI.

The challenge for the security establishment, according to Group Captain Khera, remains that the technology used is rather cheap and available off-the-shelf in plenty. Anyone with a little bit of money can access it and use it, he said.

READ : Drone attack on Saudi plants may lift oil prices by $5-7/bbl; IOC, HPCL, BPCL, GAIL in focus

“The proliferation of this technology has tilted the balance in favour of offence. First mover advantage is immense now,” said Group Captain Khera, who has also served in Plans and Operational Branches at Air Headquarters as well as in the High Commission of India, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The technology, he said, is the same used in drones for dropping products by e-commerce companies.  

Sources said that the incident is being treated as a serious one. A National Investigation Agency team also visited the airport, 16 km from the border with Pakistan. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Air Force Vice Chief Air Marshal HS Arora about the incident.

Raksha Mantri Shri @rajnathsingh spoke to Vice Air Chief, Air Marshal HS Arora regarding today’s incident at Air Force Station in Jammu. Air Marshal Vikram Singh is reaching Jammu to take stock of the situation.

— रक्षा मंत्री कार्यालय/ RMO India (@DefenceMinIndia) June 27, 2021

The Jammu airport is a dual-use facility under IAF control and is also used to operate passenger flights.

The attacks using a drone are common in Iraq and Syria. The most famous drone attack in the recent past was on September 14, 2019, when drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck two key Saudi Aramco oil installations inside Saudi Arabia, damaging facilities that process the vast majority of the country’s crude output and raising the risk of a disruption in world oil supplies

Also read: India tests longer-range drone flights, eyes COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to rural areas

As of now, Indian forces are in the process of acquiring anti-drone technology in large numbers. The Navy had recently gone in for procurement of Israeli anti-drone system “Smash 2000 Plus”. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has also developed an anti-drone system that was deployed at the Red Fort for the Independence Day address by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a report in the Print.

“It is nearly impossible to stop all such attacks even with the best of technology by taking only defensive measures. The technology that can counter these attacks is not available in plenty right now and is still evolving,” said Khera, who is also a pioneer member of the Composite Battle Response and Analysis (COBRA) Group and headed the Operational Planning and Assessment Group at Air Headquarters.

Shoot them down, install GPS jammers 

So how to counter these attacks.? One, the simplest, shoot them down.

“But it is not easy to detect these drones because they are of small size. It is difficult to detect even with a radar. And if you detect it shooting a small device moving in three-dimensional directions is not an easy task,” he said.

Drones are of two types -- one which is directly controlled by a ground control station and the second which has a pre-programmed system and sent autonomously with a communication line with the ground station.

Normally most of these drones use a global positioning system (GPS) for navigation from wherever they are launched to wherever they are headed.

“So installing GPS jammers will help. It is like closing its eyes. If you can intercept and jam that communication system, then you can disable it,” Khera said.

A GPS jammer is a small, transmitter device used to conceal one’s location by sending radio signals with the same frequency as a GPS device. The GPS device is thus unable to determine its position due to interference.