The proliferation of drones in recent conflicts and their unmitigated use in all spheres of life has unwittingly projected them as a panacea for all ills. Maybe this would be a good time to not only discuss concepts and structures considered essential to develop unmanned forces in the country, but also to bust myths regarding their use.
At the outset, drones, at a conceptual level, are robots in the air. Robots are usually expected to proliferate in jobs that are dull, dirty and dangerous for humans. Since the battlefield is dangerous, it can be expected that unmanned systems will slowly replace humans in several dull tasks on the battlefield on land, and in sea and air. In Ukraine, logistics is almost entirely handled by unmanned ground systems. The bulk of offensive operations of the Ukrainian navy, too, are carried out by unmanned systems. This is a natural progression in the field of robotics. However, this needs further context on cost and effectiveness.
Every new weapon system enjoys a period of ‘countermeasure holiday’ when it is introduced, during which the existing counters are either ineffective or costly. The visible success of drones has been largely due to this.
But that phase is over. Sting, a $2,100 interceptor drone, has been in operation for over a year in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered it to the Gulf States recently. Similar systems are in production in several other countries, including India. Further, $1-per-shot lasers, high-power microwaves and other electronic warfare measures have been effective as well.
This doesn’t mean drones are going to be extinct. Like surface ships continue to exist after the arrival of submarines and aircraft, both drones and their countermeasures would co-exist. However, their recent performance cannot be linearly extrapolated.
While Operation Sindoor was the first time that saw the employment of one-way attack drones in India, it was actually inducted by the Indian Air Force way back in 1999. The IAF inducted the IAI Harpy, an unmanned anti-radiation hard-kill drone operationalised in the early 2000s. The much-talked-about Shahed-136 is designed and modelled on the Harpy. At the time, the existence of this system was not even known to the majority of IAF personnel. The IAF is the first among the forces to induct unmanned systems. It issued a vision for them in 2013, followed by the creation of a specialised branch of officers for them in 2022. The Unmanned Systems School has been operational for some time. The IAF has more than 27 years of institutional knowledge in operating unmanned systems in the air.
While the move to unmanned systems in all domains is a natural progression, in India, for reasons unknown, this path has been restricted to air. There is no operational unmanned tank, vehicle, ship or submarine yet. Instead of developing ground and sea systems, the army and the navy have invested a bulk of their effort and budget in unmanned aerial systems. This is sub-optimal, since the air force is adept in that domain, the way the army and the navy are in land and sea. This is well-recognised in the existing structures. All pilots of fixed-wing craft of the armed forces train at the Air Force Academy. Likewise, the diving training of all forces is conducted by the navy.
The economic idea of ‘comparative advantage’ provides a useful light here. It argues that one can benefit more by focusing on the things they are best at, while buying the goods or services they are not as good at. This theory is based on the idea of opportunity costs, which is a potential benefit given up to select a particular option over another. It is down to how well one chooses to use the time and resources at hand. For example, Apple is good at design while Foxconn is good at manufacturing. Apple hasn’t manufactured a single iPhone since 2007, which has been done by Foxconn and other similar contractors. With this choice, Apple profited immensely.
While several recent operations—Sindoor, Rising Lion and Epic Fury included—were predominantly aerial operations, the tendency to believe all future operations will be fought from the air is flawed. Land and sea operations are here to stay. Hence, India needs a whole lot of unmanned combat systems for all three domains, and not just jointly-operated aerial systems.
With the implementation of theatre commands on the cards, apprehensions about the non-availability of air power to support land and sea operations can be laid to rest. Despite all this, the focus is largely on unmanned aerial systems. This comes at the opportunity cost of not developing unmanned combat systems for land and sea.
The IAF’s existing institutional capacity on unmanned systems can be easily expanded to handle the booming demand. The organisational lessons can be shared with the army and the navy to develop unmanned capabilities in their own domains. Not doing so will potentially increase the gap with adversaries in fielding unmanned land and sea capabilities. More than the equipment, the doctrines, training and experience of operating these systems matter—which is one of the reasons the IAF drones succeeded in Op Sindoor while Pakistan’s were intercepted.
Air Vice Marshal Anil Golani (Retd)
Director General, Centre For Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies
(Views are personal)
