Border Security Force (BSF) Director General Rakesh Asthana on Friday said the recent incident of drones dropping bombs on the Indian Air Force station in Jammu is “very serious and very dangerous”, and there is an urgent need to develop technology to counter the challenge.
The BSF that secures over 6,300 km of India's land border with Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east, is faced by four main challenges on the security front, Asthana said.
These challenges, he said, are detection of underground tunnels along the international border with Pakistan, presence of electronic devices used by anti-national elements in the frontier areas, emergence of drones and issues of poor mobile connectivity in remote areas. He further said these scenarios directly impact the efficacy of operations and border domination activities of the Force.
“There is an urgent requirement to develop anti-drone technology to stop the menace of drones, being used for narco-terrorism and attacks on vital installations,” he said at a webinar during the day.
The BSF chief was speaking at the launch of a hackathon on finding cost-effective innovative technology solutions by startups and premier institutions for the force.
The event was organised under the banner of the BSF High-tech Undertaking for Maximising Innovation (BHUMI) in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
The event was a follow up to the DsGP/IsGP conference organized by the Intelligence Bureau and attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi had advised tapping the potential of the startups to fill technological gaps faced by the border guarding forces.
“Recently, you all must have seen on TV channels the attacks, first time in the history, through drones on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Jammu,” the DG said.
“The drones have been used by the enemy country and by the criminal elements for bringing in not only weapons, ammunition and narcotics, but now since they are used for carrying payloads that are being used to drop bombs also which is something very serious and very dangerous,” Asthana said.
The BSF had shot down a hexacopter drone carrying arms and ammunition in June last year in Jammu apart from thwarting many such flight reconnaissance bids majorly in the Punjab and Jammu areas along the India-Pakistan international border (IB).
Drones posed a challenge “not only on the western borders but are being used off late by Naxalites also in left wing extremism affected areas,” he said.
Stressing that anti-drone technology is a “key area” of work for the largest border guarding force of the country with about 2.65 lakh personnel, he admitted that the Force has not been able to find solutions to detect tunnels.
As many as 17 tunnels have been detected by the BSF along the Pakistan border area in the last two decades.