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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.)

The Human Capital of the Sea

Writer: Parashram Patil
Parashram Patil
6 days ago
4 min read

India’s new role at the FAO offers an opportunity to put the health and productivity of fishers at the centre of the global blue economy.

India’s recent election to chair the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management marks a significant milestone for international maritime diplomacy. Backed by the strategic work of Dr. J. Balaji, India’s Alternate Permanent Representative to the FAO, this two-year term gives New Delhi an unprecedented platform to lead the Global South’s policy agenda. Representing a domestic community of over 28 million marine and inland fisherfolk, India can now introduce a crucial economic paradigm to global forums: formally integrating human health into primary-sector productivity calculations.

 

Fisheries support the livelihoods and food security of hundreds of millions of people worldwide, particularly in developing countries where small-scale fishing remains closely tied to household incomes and local nutrition. Yet international policy discussions have often concentrated more readily on fish stocks, vessels and markets than on the condition of the people who make the sector function.

 

The opportunity for India, therefore, is not simply to showcase a domestic welfare model, but to broaden the definition of what constitutes productive capacity in fisheries.

 

The Missing Asset

Historically, global blue economy frameworks have evaluated growth through capital investments by focusing on modernizing fishing fleets, improving cold-chain infrastructure, and tracking biomass yields. In these traditional models, the fishing labour force is usually treated as a fixed operational cost. To address this analytical gap, the Fisher Health Capital (FHC-F) model extends the foundational concepts of original agricultural health capital theories directly to maritime operations. This framework treats a fisher’s physiological and psychological endurance not as a standard welfare variable, but as a core piece of depreciable economic infrastructure.


A healthier workforce is not merely a social-policy outcome; it can influence how long people can remain economically active, how safely they work and how effectively they respond to changing environmental and market conditions.


When small-scale fishers experience continuous physical and mental strain without institutional mitigation, the resulting health deficits directly drag on economic output. The FHC-F framework disaggregates this human asset into three core operational areas.


First, physical asset stabilization handles the intensive physical labour required under highly unpredictable marine environments. Coastal workers deal with persistent musculoskeletal strain, deep-water diving hazards, and waterborne health issues. When community health is supported by targeted, localized healthcare access, the long-term harvest capacity remains stable, directly protecting the catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) metrics that define cluster efficiency.


Second, mental resilience and economic planning address the fisheries sector’s high-risk nature. Constant income volatility from seasonal shifts and fluctuating daily yields drains cognitive resources. Protecting primary producers’ mental capital from acute financial anxiety provides the baseline stability needed to plan for the future, making fishers far more likely to adopt long-term, eco-friendly conservation gear and transition to selective catch technologies.


Finally, socio-institutional connectivity recognizes that small-scale fisheries depend on shared regional assets like local landing docks, cooperative storage facilities, and organized markets. Investing systematically in the well-being of these fishing clusters preserves community ties, helping fishers navigate volatile market rates and engage fairly with broader supply chains.


Seen this way, a fishing community is itself a form of productive infrastructure. When health, income security, cooperatives and market access weaken together, the resulting loss is not confined to individual households; it can reduce the resilience of the entire local fisheries economy.

 

Policy Laboratory

India is well-positioned to present this human-centric perspective to the FAO because its domestic policy landscape already mirrors these principles. Through the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), the Government of India has consistently advanced the socio-economic security of fishing communities. By integrating extensive insurance frameworks, providing direct livelihood support during mandatory fishing ban periods, distributing safety kits, and building robust harbour infrastructure, domestic initiatives have successfully shifted focus toward protecting the worker alongside the resource.


This gives India an important advantage in the international debate: it can link the proposed framework to programmes and institutional mechanisms already operating on the ground, rather than presenting health capital as an entirely theoretical construct.


With New Delhi leading the FAO sub-committee, these domestic success stories can serve as practical blueprints for global policy through three main interventions

The first shift should be in how international development agencies measure returns from fisheries investments. Rather than relying primarily on aggregate tonnage and GDP contribution, project appraisals could incorporate Health-Adjusted Return on Investment (H-ROI) benchmarks, capturing the economic value of healthier and more resilient fishing communities.


The second should be to bring preventive healthcare closer to fishing communities. Drawing inspiration from India’s experience with digital public infrastructure, maritime nations could develop localized health registers for artisanal fishing hubs, enabling basic preventive and occupational healthcare to reach fishers where they work - at or near major harbours.

 

The third should extend the idea of human capital into international trade and environmental standards. Certification systems and trade agreements could incorporate standardized human-capital protection parameters, recognising that the sustainability of global seafood chains depends not only on the fish being harvested responsibly, but also on the people doing the harvesting being adequately protected.

 

Long-term conservation and market stability cannot be achieved by monitoring fish stocks alone; they depend fundamentally on the physical and economic resilience of the fishers themselves. Under India’s current leadership at the FAO, introducing the Fisher Health Capital framework offers a practical, constructive, and forward-looking path toward global food security and sustainable blue growth.

 

(The writer is a member of Maharashtra Agriculture Price Commission. Views personal.)

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