OPERATION SINDOOR TRIGGERS DRONE WARFARE RESET IN INDIA'S SECURITY DOCTRINE

Drone expert says Pakistan's swarms, Chinese tech exposed critical Indian defence gaps.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

India's belated realisation of the security vulnerabilities in its drone ecosystem—exposed starkly by Pakistani incursions and Chinese components—has triggered a reset in doctrine, procurement, and technology development.

Sai Pattabiram, Founder and Managing Director of Zuppa Geo Navigation Technologies, in an interview with The Sunday Guardian, explains how Operation Sindoor has become a turning point.

A Chennai-based deep-tech drone and navigation company, Zuppa is one of six global companies manufacturing micro-drones for Indian infantry and special forces, and one of seven with its own autopilot technology.

Q: In light of Pakistan's daily drone incursions and its recent deployment of Turkish SONGAR mega swarms during Operation Sindoor, how do you assess the threat posed by such large-scale swarm deployments, and what scalable, sustained technological responses does India need to counter this asymmetric warfare?

A: The deployment of Turkish SONGAR drone swarms was a well-planned move, which was an outcome of Pakistan's daily intrusions using hundreds of drones to deliver narcotics, arms, explosives, etc. over the past 3-4 years—practically going unanswered by India, barring a couple of instances where drones were shot down by sharpshooters.

Combined with the hacking of India's tactical drones from across the border by Pakistan—and earlier by China—this appears to have provided our adversaries with a fairly good knowledge of India's capabilities in this kind of asymmetric warfare, more specifically, the lack of it.

Having said that, in all fairness, security agencies in India realised the vulnerabilities of Indian drones only around August 2024 and have been addressing these vulnerabilities since then, with the formulation of the cybersecurity framework as well as an audit of Chinese components in them.