NAVAL DRONES

India's  growing unmanned aerial vehicle fleet is being put through its paces in defending against a future Mumbai-style complex terrorist attack.  During a 48-hour long exercise, Gemini-2 , UAVs from the Navy’s 342 Air Squadron cued patrol boats and coastal police to thwart mock terrorists attempting to infiltrate Southern India's shoreline from the sea.  The first iteration of Gemini was held in November 2012 and other multi-agency coastal security exercises ( 'Sagar Kavach' ) have been conducted frequently since the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacks on Mumbai in 2008. India's ground-based tactical Searcher MK II and longer-ranged Heron UAVs are a component of a more comprehensive maritime observation network consisting of manned aircraft, cooperating fishermen, and coastal surveillance radars and cameras installed in 90 light houses along India's 7,500 km coastline.  India's army and air force are ...

Earlier this week, reports  indicated that India will spend nearly a billion dollars with Israel Aircraft Industries to upgrade its fleet of Heron UAVs with satellite communications gear.   Interestingly, this story coincides with the launching of India's GSAT-10 heavy communications satellite.  The satellite is positioned in geosynchronous orbit over the central Indian Ocean.  Similar to the way the U.S. controls Predator UAVs in Afghanistan from Nevada, the 12 Ku-band transponders may very well be associated with over-the-horizon control of the Heron UAVs.  The upgrades will likely enable the the Indian Navy's three squadrons of Herons to reach their maximum operating range of 3,300 km as depicted in our previous blog post on the subject.  The ability to perform surveillance from the East Coast of Africa to the Strait of Malacca would provide a significant boost in intelligence support to India's blue water na...

India has one of the world’s largest Navies, with bluewater responsibilities and more than 7,500 kilometers of coastlines and hundreds of islands to patrol.   Besides the ever-present concern of Pakistan and China looming to the east, the Navy keeps busy supporting international counter-piracy efforts and protecting her coastlines from terrorist operatives such as LeT, who infiltrated via the sea to attack Mumbai in 2008. With a 2012 budget just shy of $6.5 billion USD, the Navy makes up only 20% of India’s overall defense expenditures.   Nevertheless, unmanned systems appear to be an important component of the Navy’s ongoing modernization efforts to upgrade and from outdated Soviet-era platforms.   India’s Navy reportedly has over 100 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) flying since 2003 and deployed with three squadrons.   These aircraft will complement twelve manned P-8I Neptune maritime patrol aircraft entering service in 2013. Earlier this year, some of these UAV...