India To Buy 200 Mini Drones For Security, Surveillance In Jammu-Kashmir

[Zarvan]

Indian Air Force likely to get Mini Drones

Indian army is planning to buy 200 mini drones to deploy them for surveillance and detection of enemy movement in Jammu and Kashmir.

The country’s decision is to revive a four-year-old plan to purchase 200 mini drones in the wake of attacks on army camps by militants located in Jammu & Kashmir recently, Geopolmonitor reported Thursday.

The drones would likely to arrive in variants. The loiter time will be the same, the plain variant would have a maximum ceiling of 1,000 meters above take off altitude and the hill variant will have a maximum elevation of four kilometers. The army has requested drone manufacturers to deliver the security systems by December 23.

“The need for mini-UAVs for deployment along the Line of Control (de-facto border between India and Pakistan) has been felt for a long time because of persistent efforts by externally sponsored terrorists to infiltrate across the border,” said Brigadier Rumel Dahiya (retired), defense expert and former deputy director general of Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses.

“The mini UAVs will be deployed close to the border and will be operated by the troops on ground who will directly receive the information and act upon it thus shortening the Observe, Orient, Decide and Act (OODA) loop and filling up a void in the surveillance grid,” Dahiya added.

India is taking measures to improve its security facilities around military camps amid an increase in attacks on the camps located in Jammu & Kashmir.

An investigation on the attack on the Pathankot airbase camp attack by a high-level commission revealed that the lack of alertness allowed the entry of armed terrorist into high-value military facilities.

The commission suggested measures that include technology-based security systems in and around military establishments.

This week, a terrorist attack on an army camp in J&K, the second on an army base in two months, exposed the lack of technological tools with the Indian security forces. This year alone, the Indian army has lost 89 men to militant attacks in Kashmir.

http://www.defenseworld.net/news/17...y__Surveillance_In_Jammu_Kashmir#.WETET-Z95PY

 

[prateekindia]

Pakistan detained Hafiz Saeed, the 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind and a US-designated terrorist, after pressure from India, his brother and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Masood has said.

Masood also said Saeed's house arrest at his Lahore residence and subsequent ban on the LeT front Jamaat-ud-Dawa has not affected the proscribed charity that continued to function under the "supervision" of Punjab government in Pakistan.

"My brother is under house arrest and he will be kept under observation by the Pakistan government," Masood was quoted by CNN-News18 news channel as saying.

"All this has been done under pressure from India and the Pakistan government has given in to the pressure. They (the Indian government) want to send a message to the world, to distract attention from problems in Kashmir, to focus on Hafiz Saeed and Pakistan, so that India's misdeeds are kept hidden. India wants to create a terrorism narrative."

Saeed was put under house arrest on January 30, days after the Donald Trump administration took charge in the US. Last weekend, Pakistan listed him under the country's Anti-Terrorism Act -- a tacit acknowledgment of his links to militancy.

Masood said the Jamaat-ud-Dawa had nothing to do with militant activities in Kashmir as that the charity was a humanitarian organisation running schools and hospitals.

"We have nothing to do with Laskhar that is (operating in) Kashmir. It is indigenous and it is working there," he said in a telephonic interview with the news channel.

Despite his critcism of the Pakistan government for bowed down to the Indian pressure, Masood said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was "a peaceful man who is a friend of Kashmiris".

"Sharif has his own priorities. He has reached out to India in the hope of friendship. It is his strategy. He thinks issues will be solved through peace and friendship. But India has shown arrogance. India has seen Pakistan's gesture of peace as a sign of weakness," he said.

Masood said his organisation has been under pressure for a long time but there were no restrictions as such on the activities of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

"See, even then the United Nations has put sanctions against us. In Muridke (JuD headquarters near Lahore), the Punjab government is running it under its control. So the JuD has been under observation for long. So, we don't know what the next step is. We have not been told of any restrictions on our activities. But Hafiz has been put under house arrest to curb his support to the Kashmir issue."