SPECTRUM DOMINANCE

India is rapidly indigenising Electronic Warfare (EW) systems across air, land, and sea, modernising Russian-origin platforms and strengthening battlefield survivability through DRDO, BEL, and private sector efforts, highlights

- ATUL CHANDRA

India’s domestic defence industry is developing a growing range of indigenously produced Electronic Warfare (EW) systems which are transforming the capability of in-service defence equipment. This is the particularly the case for the large quantities of Russian supplied defence equipment, which are being updated with modern and more capable EW systems to defend and protect against current and upcoming threats.

Developing credible EW capability requires significant amounts of time, effort, and expense. Apart from extensive testing, the traditional installation of new sensors and countermeasure subsystems requires the identification of locations around the airframe and making modifications to fit physical hardware components where they provide the desired coverage. The development of indigenous EW capability is especially important as they can be updated regularly at far lower cost as compared to imported systems and also have lower Life Cycle Costs (LCC).

Some of the important airborne EW systems developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) include the ‘Sarang’ Electronic Support Measure (ESM) system developed for Indian Navy Kamov Ka-31 Airborne Early Warning (AEW) helicopter, ‘Dhruti’ digital Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) and Advanced Self Protection Jammer (ASPJ) pod developed for Air Force (IAF) Sukhoi SU-30 MKIs. DRDO has developed several important EW/ESM projects under Programme ‘Samudrika’ totalling seven different products across three ship-borne systems — EW Suite ‘Shakti’, COMINT system ‘Nayan’ and ESM suite ‘Tushar’ and four air-borne systems — COMINT system ‘Sarvadhari’, ESM suites ‘Sarang’ & ‘Sarakshi’ and ESM & COMINT system ‘Nikash’. One of the most important land-based EW projects of the DRDO, is the Integrated Electronic Warfare Systems (IEWS), developed as part of Project Himshakti for use in Mountainous terrain.