top of page

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.)

When Uddhav’s own party tied Maharashtra’s electoral hands

Correspondent
Oct 16, 2025
4 min read

A forgotten 1996 amendment has come back to haunt Uddhav Thackeray, crippling the State Election Commission’s powers over local polls.

It has come to light that when the (undivided) Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition was in power, a legal provision was introduced allowing the use of Assembly electoral rolls for local body elections. Nearly three decades later, that decision has returned to haunt the Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray. During the tenure of late Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, the state legislature had amended the relevant municipal laws in 1996, deciding that the same electoral rolls prepared for the Assembly would be used for local self-government bodies. What seemed then a simple administrative measure has now emerged as a major political and constitutional headache.


As Maharashtra prepares for long-delayed local body polls, the issue of defective electoral rolls has reignited political tempers. Leaders of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) recently met the Chief Electoral Officer, S. Chokkalingam, and the State Election Commissioner, Dinesh Waghmare, to demand corrections before any election schedule is announced. They claimed that thousands of names are missing or misplaced. Waghmare’s response was that altering electoral rolls did not fall under the purview of the State Election Commission (SEC). He pointed out that it was governed by provisions that date back to 1996.


The MVA, particularly the Uddhav-led Shiv Sena (UBT), has accused the Election Commission of failing to ensure a fair process while demanding that polls to Zilla Parishads, Panchayat Samitis and municipal bodies be deferred until the lists are revised. But the problem lies not with the present SEC, but with a decision taken when the Shiv Sena and BJP were in power together. It was one that had effectively clipped the SEC’s wings.


Controversial decision

The controversy stems from Sena-BJP government’s decision in 1996 to amend The Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, 1949, and The Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888. Section 7A was inserted in the former, and Section 19B in the latter. Both stipulated that electoral rolls used for the Legislative Assembly would also serve as the rolls for municipal elections, subdivided into wards.


This change, made during Manohar Joshi’s tenure, was intended to simplify the process by saving time and costs by avoiding the preparation of a separate list for local bodies. Yet, by choosing administrative convenience over constitutional clarity, the government unwittingly stripped the SEC of the very autonomy the Constitution sought to guarantee.


The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, enacted in 1992, gave local self-government institutions a distinct constitutional identity. Articles 243K and 243ZA specifically empowered State Election Commissions to supervise, direct and control local body elections including the preparation of electoral rolls. The spirit of these amendments was to insulate local democracy from state-level interference.


But by tying local rolls to those of the Assembly, the then government diluted that independence. The SEC could conduct elections but not decide who could vote in them.


The state did pass The State Election Commissioner (Qualification and Appointment) Act in 1994, laying down procedures for appointment, tenure and service conditions of the Commissioner. But the Act said nothing about the preparation or revision of electoral rolls.


Had Maharashtra enacted a separate law empowering the SEC to prepare and update electoral rolls, as Article 243K(4) permits, the present impasse would not exist. Instead, the 1996 amendments made the SEC dependent on the Assembly rolls prepared under the supervision of the Election Commission of India. The result is that the Commission is now responsible for conducting local elections without control over the very lists that determine their fairness.


Successive governments - the Congress-NCP coalition and the BJP-Sena as well as the erstwhile MVA - have all lived with this contradiction. None saw political advantage in changing the law. The SEC’s lack of authority suited ruling parties of every stripe, since it left local election machinery aligned with the state administration.


Uddhav’s irony

It is this legislative legacy that has now cornered Uddhav Thackeray. At a press conference this week, he accused the government of “killing” the State Election Commission. Yet, as critics pointed out, the real act of constitutional euthanasia was performed in 1996 - by the Shiv Sena-BJP government led by his own party.


By choosing to amend old municipal laws instead of enacting a new one, the Sena-led government effectively ‘killed’ the independent powers that the Constitution granted to the State Legislature and the SEC. Article 243K(4) explicitly authorises state legislatures to frame their own laws governing local polls. Maharashtra, despite being one of India’s most politically developed states, failed to do so.


Article 243K (4) clearly states that the State Legislature can make laws independently in relation to elections to local bodies. So, why was such a law not made in 1996, why was it decided to amend the existing laws and use the electoral rolls of the Legislative Assembly itself, is this a violation of the constitutional rights granted to the State Legislature?


The row over electoral rolls underscores how political expediency and administrative shortcuts can undermine constitutional design. The framers of the 73rd and 74th Amendments imagined empowered, locally accountable institutions. Instead, Maharashtra’s local democracy remains tethered to Assembly-level bureaucracy.

Comments

bottom of page