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By:

Commodore S.L. Deshmukh

31 October 2024 at 3:00:19 am

The Microwave War Is Coming

As drones and electronic warfare reshape the battlefield, high-power microwaves offer India an unconventional weapon. Wars are becoming increasingly dependent on something that cannot be seen, heard or easily defended against: electromagnetic energy. Drones need electronics to fly while missiles need them to navigate. Disable the circuitry and an expensive weapon can become an expensive piece of inert metal. That is the promise of the high-power microwave array (HPMA), one of the more...

The Microwave War Is Coming

As drones and electronic warfare reshape the battlefield, high-power microwaves offer India an unconventional weapon. Wars are becoming increasingly dependent on something that cannot be seen, heard or easily defended against: electromagnetic energy. Drones need electronics to fly while missiles need them to navigate. Disable the circuitry and an expensive weapon can become an expensive piece of inert metal. That is the promise of the high-power microwave array (HPMA), one of the more intriguing branches of directed-energy warfare. Instead of destroying a target with an explosive projectile or burning it with a laser, an HPM system floods the target with intense electromagnetic energy, interfering with, or in sufficiently powerful applications, damaging. the electronics that make it work. The weapon is invisible and potentially capable of engaging several targets without the logistical burden of conventional ammunition. Potent Weapon The technology is not entirely new. What is changing is its scale and sophistication. Modern HPMA systems use large numbers of antenna elements to generate high gain and steer beams electronically. Active phased-array architectures can direct electromagnetic energy rapidly towards different targets, while advances in waveguides, power generation and pulse technology are attempting to reconcile three notoriously difficult requirements: enormous power, extremely wide bandwidth and precise electronic beam steering. The modern battlefield is becoming saturated with small, cheap and numerous electronic threats. A swarm of drones can impose a disproportionate cost on a defender if each incoming aircraft requires a missile or another expensive interceptor. Directed-energy weapons turn that equation upside down. Their principal attraction is not simply destructive power but potentially deep “magazine depth” provided sufficient electrical power is available and they do not run out of bullets in the conventional sense. The physics is both elegant and unforgiving. An intense microwave field can couple into a target through antennas, cables, circuit-board traces and other conductive structures. These can behave as unintended receivers, channelling electromagnetic energy into sensitive components. The resulting voltages and currents can overwhelm electronic circuits, producing anything from temporary disruption to permanent component failure. The engineering challenge is considerable. Generating immense instantaneous power is only the beginning. The system must transmit it efficiently, focus it accurately, steer it towards a moving target and avoid crippling its own electronics. Researchers are therefore exploring both active and passive phased-array designs, including architectures capable of radiating pulsed waveforms with extremely high instantaneous power. If these technologies mature, they could have uses extending well beyond counter-drone warfare—to radar, electronic warfare, power beaming and high-throughput microwave and millimetre-wave communications. China has clearly recognised the strategic potential. Its military-industrial establishment has been pursuing high-power microwave technology alongside lasers and other directed-energy systems. Chinese research has increasingly focused on countering the proliferation of drones and other aerial threats, where the economics of conventional interception are becoming uncomfortable. Some reports have attributed extraordinarily high-power levels - running into the tens or even hundreds of gigawatts - to Chinese HPM developments. Such figures should be treated cautiously, since the distinction between peak pulsed power, radiated power and practical engagement capability is important. But the direction of travel is unmistakable. Chinese Interest China’s interest also extends to electronic warfare and potentially space. An HPM system capable of interfering with or damaging vulnerable satellite electronics could add another layer to anti-satellite capabilities, including threats to low-Earth-orbit constellations. That would be strategically significant in a world increasingly dependent on commercial satellite networks for communications, navigation and military connectivity. America is hardly standing still. The Pentagon has been investing in directed-energy systems as part of a broader effort to counter drones and other asymmetric threats. The deployment of advanced laser technology in the Indo-Pacific illustrates the strategic logic: future air and naval defences will increasingly combine missiles, guns, electronic warfare, lasers and microwaves rather than depend on any single weapon. India, meanwhile, is beginning to enter this contest with an indigenous proposition. Bengaluru-based Tonbo Imaging unveiled its Wavestrike high-power microwave directed-energy system at Aero India 2025. The system uses klystron-based technology to generate concentrated microwave energy and combines search-and-track radar with electro-optical systems to identify and engage targets. Its reported range is around 3km, with the ability to target individual drones as well as swarm formations. For India, the significance lies less in any single specification than in the emergence of a domestic directed-energy capability. The country faces an increasingly complicated security environment in which inexpensive drones can threaten military installations, airports, borders, ammunition depots and critical infrastructure. A weapon that can disable several electronic targets without creating the blast radius of conventional munitions is particularly attractive in populated or infrastructure-sensitive areas. There is also an industrial lesson. The development of HPM systems requires expertise in power electronics, microwave engineering, radar, semiconductor technology, software and advanced manufacturing. Success therefore depends not merely on producing a weapon but on building an ecosystem capable of continually improving it. The microwave war will not make missiles obsolete. Weather, range, power requirements, shielding and the complexity of real-world targets will constrain directed-energy weapons for years. But the battlefield is moving towards a simple proposition: whoever controls the electromagnetic environment can increasingly control the machines operating inside it. For India, Wavestrike is an early attempt to ensure that it is not merely a spectator in that contest. The next generation of warfare may well be decided by who can make the other side’s electronics go mysteriously dark. (The writer is a retired naval aviation officer and a defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

Selective Outrage

India’s left-liberal media has long prided itself on being the torchbearer of secularism, dissent and moral rectitude. In the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor,’ the precision military strike launched by the Modi government against Pakistan-based terror camps, it has revealed its not a principled commitment to peace or truth, but a disturbing penchant for ideological prejudice, performative sanctimony and selective outrage.


The operation itself was a textbook display of calibrated force and geopolitical prudence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, often caricatured as ‘authoritarian’ by the ‘liberal’ English-language commentariat, chose patience over provocation. He consulted opposition leaders, held detailed discussions with defence chiefs and took key international stakeholders, notably the United States and Russia, into confidence before authorising limited military action. The symbolism of ‘Operation Sindoor’ was also carefully crafted: a pointed reminder that the attack’s real victims were Hindu women widowed by Pakistan-sponsored militants in Kashmir. The government’s briefings were also strategic and symbolic as two ranking female officers, one of them Muslim, were made the public face of the mission, underlining a new Indian confidence that blends military muscle with democratic pluralism.


But this was unacceptable for India’s entrenched ‘left-liberal’ press, steeped in academic jargon, Western validation and a knee-jerk hostility to anything remotely ‘Hindutva.’ That a Muslim officer briefed the nation on ‘Operation Sindoor’ was branded ‘tokenism’ by such commentators. Others crudely alleged that the April 22 Pahalgam massacre was the logical culmination of reported atrocities against Muslims since Modi came to power in 2014.


The semantic nitpicking over ‘Operation Sindoor’ was maddening. An editor of a prominent magazine dubbed the operation’s name as ‘patriarchal’ and coded in Hindutva tropes. In a bizarre case of moral inversion, sindoor was likened to symbols of ‘honour killings’ and gender oppression, ignoring both its cultural resonance and the cruel reality that these women had lost their husbands in cold blood. For years, India’s ‘secular’ commentariat nurtured a preordained binary: the Congress may be flawed but was at least ‘secular’ while the BJP was an inveterate ‘fascist.’ Thus, the 2002 Gujarat riots are always focused upon but the Congress-backed pogrom of the Sikhs in 1984 is either downplayed or rationalised. Terrorism in Kashmir is tragic, but state retaliation is ‘jingoism.’ A strong Muslim voice in government is ‘tokenism’ but its absence is ‘exclusion.’ Even journalistic rigour is selectively applied. When Pakistan claimed to have downed Indian jets, some Indian outlets rushed to amplify the story before verification, inadvertently echoing enemy propaganda.


Dissent is vital in any democracy. But when its becomes indistinguishable from disdain, when editorial choices are dictated by ideological conformity, then the press becomes a caricature of itself. Ironically, many of these journalists enjoy robust free speech and loudly lament India’s supposed slide into ‘fascism’ from the safety of their X handles. Yet they turn a blind eye to Putin’s repression, Erdogan’s purges or Xi Jinping’s camps. In their eyes, Modi remains the greatest threat to democracy even as they broadcast their outrage freely, without fear of censorship or reprisal. ‘Operation Sindoor’ was a statement of cultural self-confidence. That confidence has rattled those who have spent their careers gatekeeping Indian discourse. Today, their monopoly is over. The people are watching and they no longer believe that the emperor has clothes.

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