Saudi Arabia suffered the deadliest attack on its oil facilities. The shocking attack, which saw a small army of drones attack two major oil plants, destroyed nearly 50 per cent of the country’s global supply of crude. Questions arose with many experts asking whether India would be able to avert or pre-empt such an attack?
Reports say that a blueprint to secure India’s civil airports and prevent such drone attacks is in advanced stages. Sources said an IIT Bombay alumni company, IdeaForge, has been tasked by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to come up with a solution by the year-end. Taking seriously intelligence inputs that terror groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba could use drones as platforms for IEDs to target Indian installations including airports, multiple field trials have been carried out in the past three months in Delhi.
Sources said that IdeaForge, which designed the Netra drone along with the DRDO, was authorised after CISF was dissatisfied with field results carried out by western and domestic anti-drone makers. Top sources said that “Several companies came in for the field test including Israel, German and Indian companies each promising state of the art technology.”
The companies needed to pass two criteria: One is to have a system with white listing, which essentially “attacks the enemy drone, without harming your own drone or even your own plane in the vicinity.” The other was to perform tasks without hampering the communication system. However, the companies did not live up to the claim.
So CISF roped in the makers of indigenous drone Netra – IdeaForge. Ankit Mehta, CEO of IdeaForge agreed that “Currently there are no homegrown anti-drone solutions. Anti-drone [technology] is mostly indiscriminate jamming tech for GPS and communications.”
