India is putting up a monitoring system with drones along its borders to prepare for surprise attacks like the one in Israel by Hamas.
Over the past week, the country’s defense officials met with six domestic suppliers of surveillance and reconnaissance drones. A person who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public said that an order could be revealed as early as next month.
People also said that the military wants to have the system up and running in some parts of the border as soon as May.
Tensions remain with nearby China and Pakistan, especially along the Himalayas, which is why the decision was made to keep an eye on the borders all the time. The war in Ukraine made Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government rethink its weapons, readiness for war, and battlefield goals. The surprise Hamas attack, on the other hand, pushed the country to quickly take some of the suggested steps.
India has been attacked without warning before. People from Pakistan came into Mumbai by sea in 2008 with assault rifles and grenades. They besieged important sites in the city for three days and killed 166 people.
India has also said that drugs and guns are being moved across its western border by drones. People who know said that the system could cover the whole border stretch in almost 18 months and cost as much as $500 million a year.
They said that the system would use “High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites,” which are solar-powered drones that can fly for long periods of time without stopping. For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the long-lasting, high-altitude drones will also send images directly to local command centers to back up the standard radar network along the borders.
A spokesperson for the defense minister did not answer when asked for comment.
The people said that both the drones and the software that runs them would be made in the country. India’s military relies on Russia for a lot of its weapon platforms. As part of a 10-year, $250 billion plan to modernize its military, the Indian government is trying to improve local production.
The people said that once the system is up and running, the 14,000 miles (22,531 kilometers) of India’s land borders and shoreline will be constantly watched. When the current round of border tensions with Beijing started to rise in the summer of 2020, New Delhi hired two drones from the US to keep an eye on things.
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