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By:

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

31 October 2024 at 8:30:19 am

The Beam That Blinds the Drone

As cheap drones reshape the battlefield, India’s T-SHUL BEAM points to a future in which electronic warfare may matter as much as firepower The drone has definitively become the weapon of choice for the modern battlefield. Cheap, expendable and increasingly autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicles can now threaten troops, armour, airfields and critical infrastructure without requiring the attacker to risk a pilot. Their proliferation has created a corresponding demand for counter-drone systems...

The Beam That Blinds the Drone

As cheap drones reshape the battlefield, India’s T-SHUL BEAM points to a future in which electronic warfare may matter as much as firepower The drone has definitively become the weapon of choice for the modern battlefield. Cheap, expendable and increasingly autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicles can now threaten troops, armour, airfields and critical infrastructure without requiring the attacker to risk a pilot. Their proliferation has created a corresponding demand for counter-drone systems that can respond quickly and at a cost proportionate to the threat. This is where beam-based anti-drone technology enters the picture. Broadly, such systems fall into two categories. Hard-kill systems use concentrated laser energy to physically damage or destroy a drone. Soft-kill systems, by contrast, use radio-frequency or electromagnetic energy to disrupt the electronic links that allow a drone to communicate, navigate and transmit information. Sophisticated Weaponry Hard-kill laser systems focus an intense beam of light on a vulnerable part of an incoming UAV - its carbon-fibre structure, control surfaces, battery or other critical components. The concentrated energy rapidly heats the target, potentially burning through its structure or disabling optical sensors and bringing the aircraft down. India’s DRDO has demonstrated a 30kW laser system, while Israel’s Rafael has developed the Lite Beam system. Soft-kill systems take a different route. Rather than physically destroying the aircraft, they interfere with the electronic architecture that keeps it airborne. Directional radio-frequency energy can disrupt command-and-control links, video feeds, telemetry and satellite-navigation signals such as GPS or other GNSS services. Depending on the drone and the nature of the disruption, the aircraft may be forced to land, return to its launch point or lose control. It is in this category that the T-SHUL BEAM system developed by Indian defence company IG Defence deserves attention. T-SHUL BEAM is a man-portable, directional counter-drone system designed for tactical deployment. Its multi-band radio-frequency architecture is intended to target several of the links on which unmanned aerial systems depend, including command-and-control, telemetry, video transmission and GNSS navigation. Its directional configuration allows an operator to concentrate electronic countermeasures on a particular aerial target rather than indiscriminately radiating energy across a large area. That matters on a battlefield where the warning time against a small UAV or first-person-view drone may be measured in seconds. The appeal of such a system is therefore not simply that it can counter a drone. It is that it can potentially bring counter-drone capability closer to the soldier and to the tactical edge. Large counter-UAS installations have their place, particularly around fixed and high-value assets. But forward units require systems that can move with them, be deployed rapidly and operate against small, low-cost unmanned platforms without imposing the logistical burden associated with conventional weapons. The T-SHUL BEAM’s significance also lies in its proposed integration with an artificial-intelligence-enabled battle-management architecture. IG Drones, the original equipment manufacturer, has stated that T-SHUL BEAM has been integrated with GRID, its indigenous AI-powered platform. The GRID architecture is intended to bring sensors, intelligence systems, unmanned platforms and command elements into a common operational framework. The attraction of such integration is obvious. Countering drones is increasingly less about a single weapon and more about the speed of the kill chain: detecting a threat, identifying it, deciding what response is appropriate and directing that response before the target disappears. An AI-enabled command architecture can potentially improve situational awareness, facilitate real-time threat detection and coordinate different systems operating simultaneously. This is particularly relevant as drone warfare evolves from isolated attacks towards increasingly complex and potentially swarming operations. A battlefield crowded with drones cannot be managed effectively if every sensor and weapon operates as a separate island. The advantage will increasingly belong to forces capable of turning disparate streams of information into a coherent picture and responding at machine speed. The T-SHUL BEAM’s reported demonstration at Pokhran represents another step in India’s attempt to build a domestic ecosystem spanning drones, counter-drones, artificial intelligence and electronic warfare. Counter-drone warfare is likely to be a recurring requirement rather than a niche capability. Importing every component of such an ecosystem would leave India vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions, technology restrictions and foreign-exchange pressures. Indigenous development, even when undertaken by relatively small private-sector companies, can broaden the country’s technological base and give the armed forces greater freedom to adapt systems to their operational requirements. Economics of the Contest Yet the real measure of any counter-drone system will ultimately be operational rather than promotional. Electronic warfare is inherently a contest between countermeasure and counter-countermeasure. Drone designers can alter frequencies, communications protocols, navigation methods and levels of autonomy. A system that is effective against one generation of drones may require modification against the next. The battlefield, in other words, will remain a technological arms race. The economics of the contest nevertheless favour directed-energy and electronic-warfare solutions. A conventional interceptor expends a missile or projectile against each target. A beam-based system can, subject to its power supply, engagement envelope and other operational constraints, engage targets without expending conventional ammunition. The marginal cost of an interception can consequently be dramatically lower. The beam also travels at effectively the speed of light, removing the flight time associated with kinetic interceptors. In densely populated areas or around sensitive infrastructure, bringing down a drone with a projectile can create its own hazards. Electronic disruption, when properly controlled, offers the possibility of neutralising the threat without sending an interceptor crashing back to earth. These advantages should not obscure the limitations. Soft-kill systems depend on the vulnerabilities of the target’s electronic architecture and may be less effective against increasingly autonomous drones that require fewer external communications. Weather, range, power availability, frequency management and the sophistication of an adversary's electronic countermeasures can all affect performance. No single technology is likely to provide a complete answer. The future of counter-drone warfare will therefore belong not to the beam alone but to layered defence combining. The emergence of systems such as T-SHUL BEAM suggests that India is beginning to build the technological pieces of that architecture at home. (The writer is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

Fear is the Key

Writer: Smitha Balachandran
Smitha Balachandran
Feb 18
3 min read

Terrorism, which is a near ubiquitous phenomenon today, raises its ugly and sinister head every now and then with frightening precision and disastrous consequences. Terrorism can be defined as the deliberate targeting of civilians to terminate or lessen their support of their political leaders.


In American military historian Caleb Carr’s controversial ‘The Lessons of Terror’ (2002), he analyses and describes how initially, this method was used by the Romans till the late eighteenth century under the name of destructive war. The Romans indulged in what they called punitive war (military campaigns that were carried out as punishment for treachery or rebellion) which were part of destructive war. These destructive expeditions were implemented to overawe newly conquered people with the fearsome power of Rome and thereby discourage any support for indigenous leaders. Also, there was an imperative need to permit the largely underpaid Roman legions to plunder and rape as a reward for their support and constant presence in the heat of battle.


Rome’s imperialism was replete with devastating warfare against civilians and savagely destructive tactics. This sort of warfare against civilians when waged without provocation resulted in retaliation in kind, and when resorted to for retaliatory purposes perpetuates a cycle of revenge and outrage that can ensue for generations. This is the most observed consequence of warfare against civilians. History suggests that violence is a poor servant and a worse master. Many of Rome’s most formidable rebels were products of Roman training itself. The implication is that states that cultivate violent auxiliaries often discover that such forces cannot be neatly dismissed once their utility fades.


The same pattern recurred later. Christianity and Islam preached restraint, yet emerged amid martial cultures that piety alone could not erase. The Crusades, begun with lofty intentions, degenerated into wars in which civilians became routine victims. Terror, once unleashed, proved self-sustaining.


Medieval Italy offered a milder variant. Mercenary captains (‘condottieri’) raised professional armies not to maximise slaughter but to minimise it. Even so, the lesson was that organised violence rarely remains under tidy control.


Piracy reached its zenith in the sixteenth century because of Spain’s rise to pre-eminence at that epoch, funded mainly by the gold and silver it extracted from the New World after the conquest and decimation of the Aztecs and Incas. Privateers like Sir Francis Drake, in the pay of Queen Elizabeth, first began to raid Spanish commerce with the Americas. Drake however displayed an admirable sensitivity in his dealings with his men and with captured enemies.


Oliver Cromwell, England’s only military dictator, first restored domestic stability and then the international might and prestige of England, all of which had waned under King Charles and the civil war. He accomplished this through strict military discipline. Stern officers drilled soldiers hard, punished them severely for infractions and forced them to wear uniforms.


However, when pursuing royalists in Ireland, Cromwell violated all the rules that he had established at home by violently punishing royalists, their Irish sympathizers and slaughtering civilians. His actions later fostered modern Irish terrorism.


Frederick the Great’s notion of limited conflict gave way, under Napoleon, to total war. Even America was not immune: British depredations in the War of 1812 including attacks on civilians and the burning of Washington, left many American officers convinced that enemies were to be crushed, not merely defeated.


Carr is unsparing about the legacy of 1919. The League of Nations, born at Paris, presided over a peace that humiliated Germany into future vengeance while smothering Arab aspirations under a patchwork of mandates and protectorates. Independence was deferred; Western access to oil was secured. The bill for those arrangements, Carr suggests, is still being paid in a region that has since become a fertile ground for terrorism.


The author ends by stating that the United States, in its war against terror, should not respond to unlimited warfare against civilians with similar behaviour. He also strongly advocates that the United States cease to arrogantly interfere in the internal affairs of other countries by limiting and eliminating covert operations by American intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA. A willingness to “fight a dirty enemy with dirty methods,” could, in Carr’s opinion lead to the collapse of the United States.


Finally, Carr concludes by saying that “evangelical Western capitalism must learn greater restraint and respect for other cultures, and Western governments, specifically the American, must acknowledge that the days of gunboat diplomacy are over. The American armed forces should protect American people, not American business.”


The book’s larger warning is sharper still: terrorism is not defeated by swagger or firepower, but by restraint. History shows that violence indulged abroad has a habit of returning home, usually with interest.


(The writer is a Mumbai based educator. Views personal.)


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