From drugs and guns, drones may pose new terror challenge in J&K

That drones were being used to drop consignments of weapons, explosives and high-grade heroin from across the border with Pakistan was fairly well-known to the security establishment, but if Kashmiri militants were beginning to use drones in mounting terror attacks it may well represent an evolution in the militants’ terror tactics, writes senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah

New Delhi: That drones were being used to drop consignments of weapons, explosives and high-grade heroin from across the border with Pakistan was fairly well-known to the security establishment, but if Kashmiri militants were beginning to use drones in mounting terror attacks it may well represent an evolution in the militants' terror tactics.

Two blasts took place at about 1:40 AM and 1:46 AM early on Sunday at the IAF station at Satwari which adjacent to the civil airport. The blasts took place near a helicopter parking area. While no IAF assets were damaged, one IAF warrant officer and one airman were injured.

Intelligence sources told ETV Bharat that preliminary investigation indicated that the bombs were dropped most possibly by drones based on two facts—lights were seen hovering and that there was a big hole in the roof of the building where the bomb exploded.

"If at all it was an aerial attack by drones, it would have originated from somewhere nearby. There is not much chance that it flew in from Pakistan as it would be very difficult to escape undetected by the robust observation and detection systems in place near the International Border (IB) with Pakistan," said a senior source in the security establishment.

The IB is only 15 km aerial distance away from the IASF base with Sialkot being the nearest Pakistani city across the border. The IB is about 190 km long in Jammu while the (Line of Control) LoC is about 860 km long across the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

This year, alarm bells were ringing in the security establishment when about 15 'magnetic bombs' were recovered in a raid in February in Kashmir.

'Magnetic bombs' are popularly used by Taliban militants in Afghanistan and used for mounting terror attacks on targeted individuals. On March 26, 2020, magnetic bombs were used by suspected Islamic State of Khorasan (ISK) militants to target people from the Sikh community near a funeral ground in Kabul.

Of late, 'hexacopter' drones have been found to have been used to transport weapons, smuggle drugs and help with the logistics to aid the infiltration of terrorists from across the IB and the LoC. Priced cheap, these 'hexacopter' drones are found freely in the open market and can be bought off-the-shelf.

Each of these drones can carry several guns like AK-47 and Chinese origin rifles, M14 / M16 rifles, and pistols in a single weapons-dropping operation or several kg of drugs mainly comprising brown sugar and heroin traditionally sourced from Afghanistan, where about 90 percent of the world’s opium is produced.

The drones also come in handy in pinpointing the deployment of Indian troops or in determining the border security grid in place through fixed high resolution cameras—vital information for a terrorist trying to infiltrate over to India.