New Delhi (Defence Correspondent): In a grave matter of concern for India’s security set up, some time around in August this year, an Indian Army drone operating near the northern border was reportedly hijacked by Pakistani authorities. The incident led to loud echoes as far as the vulnerability related to usage of drones with Chinese-made components and their assembly is concerned.
Subsequent investigations into this incident led to revelations exposing how several batches of drones employed by the Indian military have China originating components incorporated in them.
Not only the procurement of such drones was temporarily halted but also India turned towards home manufacturers and private players already racing ahead in the field of security and advancement of modern warfare technology.
But this incident also brought into the limelight the fear of drone hijacking. Given how aggressively Russia has been deploying drones against Ukraine or use of highly advanced drone technologies by the US, time and again, the fact that drones are the next war wining factor needs no validation.
At the same time, how vulnerable are drones to hacking?
The harsh truth is that drones can be hacked from as much as a mile away. Hijacking the command and control signal between the operator and the drone can deliver full control of the drone and its systems to the hacker.
If we talk about the amount of access one can gain into an alien drone, not only a hacker can plant malware on the drone itself or on the drone’s control unit, but they also can use GPS spoofing to gain control of a drone.
There have been incidents where hackers also have jammed the radio signal, leaving the drone unable to navigate itself.
Along with the global players who excel in drone technologies, Indian Army is also working to improve the security of its drones. The Army is in talks with some private security equipment manufacturers to deploy its mechanisms designed specifically to protect drones from malicious attacks.
India is already using a variety of combat and surveillance drones from the IAI Heron, a medium altitude drone with a range of 350 km and an altitude capability of 9 km to IAI Harpy, a loitering munition designed to attack radar systems.
While IAI Heron has synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical/infrared sensors for real-time data transmission, another of India’s drone, Netra UAV, developed by the DRDO, is used for surveillance and reconnaissance. It has already been deployed for security operations, including during major events.
But other than defence vulnerabilities, why drones are a must to be secured is because these can be hacked allowing hackers to intercept and steal sensitive data, such as pictures and videos. Hackers can also use drones to maliciously destroy files or retrieve private information.
Additionally, drones can be hacked in flight, causing them to crash and be used as a hit weapon.
Hence, in today’s modern combat world while drones have proven to be an asset, they also have become a weapon that can adversely be used back at a drone’s country of manufacture itself.
