Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to Season three of
Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army,
Navy and Air Force to decode all things to do
(00:21):
with India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
is in our Defense. Welcome to Another Defense. For the
longest time on this podcast, I've been meaning to talk
about one aspect of the future of warfare that we
(00:46):
may have touched upon on various episodes, which is drone warfare,
especially in the context of Russia Ukraine, because whenever we've
talked about Russia Ukraine over the last three seasons of
Another Defense, We've always talked about how this is that
one sort of chapter in modern warfare. I'll be studied
across by by abilities across the world for information on
(01:09):
how the war of the future is to be conducted,
bringing some and busting some myths as well that future
awards will not be long. This has been going on
for quite a few years now, and one of them.
One of those aspects has been the use of drones.
And these are not your high tech drones. These are
your low cost, cheap, rudimentary drones that you can just
(01:32):
like sort of fire and forget kamakazi drones taking inspiration
from the Japanese offensive during World War two or how
they would strictly be called is loitering munitions. They were
also used by India during operations in Dure and very surprisingly,
especially for people who've been following this podcast and who
(01:54):
know that we have a very strong ecosystem for drones,
India does not yet make such drones in a large
scale capacity. Why is that? What are these groans? Where
does this term kamakazi come from? For that, we have
Santean Hey, san Deep, or should I say, hey, my
friend san Deep? Looking at what's happened in the world
of geobotics today, right, good to be back there. Yeah,
(02:17):
you know, sandipon a tangent right now. As Jahankar when
he must have been beginning his career in diplomacy and
when he was learning the ropes, I really doubt that
he would have thought that one day in the future
he'd be India's top diplomat and he'd be having to
decide when to let your prime minister put out a
(02:38):
post on social media calling the US President my friend,
because the use of that term in the last few
weeks has become very very controversially.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Very controversial. Indeed, Dave, I mean, who would have thought that,
you know, the Indian Prime minister and the US President
would reach where they are today, that even if you
said something as innocent as my friend, it would you know,
trigger off the stock market, you know. Yeah, but that
tells you how unpredictable global geopolitics has been in the
last couple of not years, but I would say days,
(03:11):
because we're talking of T twenty of geopolitics. Actually actually
every single day. I mean, we hear Sita all around us.
You're talking of one thing in the newsroom, and the
next minute, you know, Israel has launched a missile attack
on Katar, you know. So it's it's it's bizarre the
way things are moving and how fast there. You know,
change is happening even as we speak. There's something or
(03:32):
the other going on in some part of the world.
I think it has to do with social media. Yes, yeah,
the speed of this. I saw this very interesting video.
I'm not sure who it was, a young man who
was talking about this phenomena of young shooters in the US.
Right in about a year's time, you had three white
(03:54):
male shooters, all from privileged families, one attempted assassination of
Donald Trump, one killing off a CEO, a very prominent
healthcare CEO, and now this assassination of Charlie Kirk and
all three white male, privileged kids in their twenties. And
he said that, you know, you're looking at a time
when half of the administration is content creators. And then
(04:17):
when it struck me, yes, you know, it's a drum
the Trump administration or content creators. You have talk show hosts,
you guys who have headed reality shows, you know, So
it's real time social media and content creation that's going
on right now.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
In fact, maybere talking about this topic a couple of
episodes ago.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
The dipp in ties.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Between India and the US. We were expecting them to normalize,
but I don't think we were expecting normalists so soon
and so quickly, and in such a fashion, by the way,
where you have the US president putting out such posts
and then you have the Indian Prime minister, responding again
on social media.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, you want to hear a military analogy for that?
What we what we just saw, what's that conventional military
offensive begin with an artillery bombardment, then the tanks move
in and then the infantry moves to capture space. So
here in the scenario of India US ties, the infantry
being the negotiating team, the artillery being social media, and
(05:14):
the tanks of course being social media, and you have
this massive bombardment of the Indian side by the United States.
Say you know you're doing this, You're ripping us off,
you're doing that, so all of them. Yeah, yeah, that's
the bombardment on social media, right, and so that the
infantry that is a negotiating team can move in and
get the best deal, you know, out of us. That's
(05:35):
how it's playing out.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
That's what's playing true that but us. Something that we're
discussing in our morning edit meeting today which sort of
reminded me about what we've discussed, is that the two
civilizational nations, China and India, they've shown some wisdom that
other countries perhaps have not when it comes to dealing
with Trump. And it is something that you've been advocating
on this podcast is just the patients. Yah, keep calm,
(05:56):
carry on, don't worry about what, don't worry about rushing
into negotiations, will worry about having to sign deals and
under gunpoint, stay cool. Things will sort of eventually, And
that's exactly what's happening with India and India and the
US China another mattern of the story. But we'll see
how that goes. But anyway, that's something we'll cover in
(06:17):
future episodes because like some keep saying that we have
three and a half years more of president.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, possibly one one more year if you look at
the midterms.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Next interesting, right, So let's talk about the topic at hand, drones, kamkazones.
Before we do that, I want a deep life in
history because World War Two is a fastening chapter for
me and I've always wanted to see how on this
podcast we can have bits and pieces where we talk
(06:47):
about modern conflict but also go back to what happened
back then, because many of the technologies that we see
today can be traced back then. So this is not
exactly such a technology per se. This is the idea
and the concept kamakazi. This was an offensive launched by
Japan in the towards the end of the war, where
this was an authorized military operation where soldiers pilots were
(07:11):
told to go kill themselves. Yeah, special planes, planes were
made specially I'm sorry, but planes were fitted, especially with
some special munitions. They took off, mostly aircraft carriers and
then they just like you know, bank went into ships
and stuff like that. Some popular estimates say that around
two thousand, six hundred aircraft we used, around four thousand
(07:33):
pilots lost their lives, and more than seven thousand alight
sailors were killed using these attacks. Some pep are very
like a very basic question to begin with, why did
Japan feel the need to launch such an operation? And
in the larger scheme of things of the World War too,
(07:54):
where do you think this operation ranks in terms of
did meet what it shout up to achieve?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Absolutely not, you know they And the fact is that
you have to see it was basically it was the
Empire of Japan, and they had a very strict Bushido code,
a warriors code, which governed all of their fighting and
the way they fought the war. Indeed, and this towards
the end of the war, when they began to sense
that they were losing. That's when they started, you know,
(08:22):
selling all these young pilots in these suicide missions, you
know one way missions. You know, they would be chosen
from a certain you know batch of them, and they
were enthusiastic volunteers for this because you know, in the
Bushido code, where the thing of dying honorably that's given
very very big, great weightage. So you had these Kamikazi
(08:45):
pilots flying in straight into the path of US warships
because they all feared that massive invasion of the Home
islands that was coming, and they indeed planned for that
Operation Downfall as it was called, before they actually ended
up the Japanese islands with nuclear atomic weapons. So literally
(09:06):
thousands of these Kamikazi attacks went through and they sank
multiple US warships. I'm not getting the numbers now, but
several US warships were sung by that. But you know,
it's it was too little, too late. The fact is
that the Pearl Harbor attacks on the United States had awakened,
(09:26):
in the own words of Admiral Yamamoo, it awakened a
sleeping giant and filled them with a terrible resolve. And
once the American industrial capacity kicked into the war. They
were literally producing a ship a day, you know, a
merchant shape, one merchant ship a day. So that was
the industrial powerhouse of the United States. At the end
(09:46):
of the day, it was just about steel producing nations.
It was the US was the world's largest steel producer,
followed by the Soviet Union. So how stupid were these
three countries who have ended up making the first and
the second largest manufacturing countries, and the steel producers your enemies.
And once they combined, you had the Soviet Union, you know,
(10:09):
destroying the German Empire, and you had the United States
destroying the Empire of Japan. But you know, since you
raised the point about kamikazi drones, I want to take
your attention during the World War to another theater, to
the European theater. Right. So while the Japanese pilots were
throwing themselves at US warships in their one way missions,
and they're flying their fighter aircraft, and they had specialized
(10:31):
suicide aircraft as well. These were like they were called oakas.
They were like special human torpedoes. You had the kitins
I think they were called. And then you had these
special one person pilot rocket planes that were dropped from bombers,
you know, all kinds of very bizarre kind of things,
but took what the Germans were doing back then in
(10:54):
the mid forties that started the V one and the
V two missile programs. Now these were cruise missiles and
they were ballistic missiles. So V one was the cruise missiles,
slow flying, it had a turboprop engine, and it had
uh a warhead of fighting about fifty kilos. And then
you had the V two, which was the ballistic missile.
(11:15):
So the V one was was a fore erunner of
all cruise missiles that we see today, including the BrahMos.
And you have the V two, which is the forerunner
of all ballistic missiles, including the Scud and all its variants.
So this was actually German engineering at its best, figuring
out the most efficient way to drop ordnance on target.
(11:37):
And they wanted to bombard a lot of British cities.
From their launch pads in the Netherlands, they would fly
across the English Channel and they would literally shower, you know,
British cities with these V one and V two bombs.
Uh and and you know, the V twos were V
ones were, of course, uh, cruise missiles, and they've slow flying,
so they had uh they even had a maneuver where
(11:59):
the Royal Air Force would actually come and they would
tip these you know, they would tip these missiles off.
Course they were that slow you could you know, catch
up all them fighter jets with not jets, but you know,
turboprop fighters that they had direct the split fires and
the Hurricanes. But the WE two, of course was the
ballistic missile. It came down at much greater speeds, uh,
(12:22):
you know, supersonic speed, So then those could not be intercepted.
So you had the horrible thing of cities being bombarded
and targeted day and night. And of course the bombing
of Germany began strategic bombing, and of course as Germany
kept retreating away from the coastline, uh, those V one
and WE two attacks were completely nullified. But the Germans
(12:45):
were the forerunners of They were the inventors literally of
the cruise missile and of the ballistic missile technologies that
we are wrestling with even today and almost a century later,
eighty years later.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I mean, since you mentioned the Germans, I mean
there's a very strong argument and there's very strong belief
that if things had just been a bit different, the
Germans actually would have been the first ones to develop
that comic bomb and not the US. So, for example,
if Hitler had not managed to piss off many Jews,
under why Germany would have been the forcible in the
(13:17):
world to perhaps have the You know, I.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Don't think it would have altered the course of the war.
It would just have you know, because at the end
of the day, if you look at the size of
the Eastern Front, I mean, the sheer expanse of the
Soviet armies that were advancing on to Germany, you've angered
a very very powerful country and you've killed a lot
of his citizens. So they came back with a terrible
(13:42):
resolve and they destroyed the German army in numbers that
you cannot even imagine. You know, some of the most
titanic battles in all of human history have been fought
on the Eastern Front between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Army.
So these are numbers like boggle the mind. In the millions,
(14:02):
you're talking of entire armies being captured, encircled and captured,
and like the destruction of army group center, and so
I mean these would just have been even nuclear weapons.
I don't think Stalin would have paused that Red storm
would have gone right through and went right through the
heart of Berlin.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
And we are seeing glimpses of that in the Russia
Ukurain War. Actually, I mean, Russia today is not the
Soviet Union that it was back then. But for the
last four years Ukraine has held up. But Russia has
taken seemingly every blow that's been given to it. Resolve,
resolve results. It is there.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
It's it's a it's the Russian way of war fighting.
And we look at the Russians and we think, oh,
you know, they don't have a NATO style air force,
they don't have glitzy jets, they don't have sleek tanks,
and you know, the infantryes look slovenly and you know,
therefore they can't win a war. But then they are
like boxers. They have the ability to put up with
(15:00):
a lot of punishment. And maybe it has to do
with the kind of extremes of temperature that they undergo.
You know, if you've seen the ice dipping that they do,
and they sit in the banyas in the superheated steam
baths and then they go and jump into a ice
cold lake. I mean, I don't think there's any race
(15:20):
on Earth that has the ability to take such extremes
of temperature. But that's the Russian people. And I think
that is translated into their resilience, into their fighting spirit,
and at the end of the day, it's actually Russians
fighting Russians if you look at it the Slavs versus
the Slavs. I mean, however much the Ukrainians may say
they're different, they are essentially the same people. So if
(15:44):
the Russians thought that it would be the Ukrainians were
a walk over, certainly not the case, because they are
the same resistance that held out against the Germans as well.
So that's that's how the Russians fight. There was, and
they have the ability to absorb horrific numbers unimaginable even
in the twenty first century. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Right, one last point on the Kamakazi warfare of World
War two, and I think that sort of also let
us lead to where we are and what we want
to talk about is is it do you think this
this this this idea, it's just something that is so
sensational that you know, that's why we like talking talking
about it. Or has have military historians really placed any
(16:30):
value to this concept, to this idea? Has it really
impacted thought in terms of how to fight a war
in the years since?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Then?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
One of the reasons I ask this is because you know,
I understand war, and I understand the fact that almost
every soldier is trained and prepared to die. Special Forces operations,
for example, they when they embark on them, they have
this thought in the back of the head that they
might not be coming back, but that is still up
to chance. There's still that one person chance that you
will all eventually, you know, end up coming back. This
(17:02):
one is guaranteed. Right, this is a plan you've made
to go and sacrifice your soldiers. Do you this this
idea it's very fashion to talk about, right, because it's
very unreal. But has it really impacted military warfare thought
in any ways in the years since? Or is this
it's a one small chapter of World War two that
you think does not really deserve that much attention.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Well, it is a small chapter. I mean it's a
very poignant chapter. It's you know, because there is the
thing while all warfare I mean, as terrible as it is.
All warfare, as you mentioned, has that element of extreme
risk to life and the fact that you might not
come back from conflict, especially the soldiers in the front,
(17:43):
in the in the forward thing of an offensive. But
here you have a concept where you have soldiers being
deliberately sent to their deaths, right, primarily because they didn't
have any other means of directing these weapons onto their targets, right,
They didn't have the sophisticated you know, mid coast correction
(18:07):
that possibly the Germans had. The Germans were far ahead
technologically off the Japanese. So this was the only sure
short way of getting ordnance onto target, which is to
send a man piloting this bomb. It's essentially a flying
bomb with a propeller in it, and the pilot basically
(18:27):
flies it into the target. Right. So that's the concept
that the you know, Japanese came up with, and their
whole idea was that to use this as a bigger
message to the invading forces that if this is what
if they tried an invasion of the Japanese home islands,
the entire country of Japan would commit collective suicide. Right.
(18:49):
You saw that in the brutal battles of Ibojima and Okinawa,
where the entire garrison literally you killed themselves. And they
were prepared to do this on the Home Islands. And
this is when the Americans said that they were going
to take heavy casualties if they attempted an invasion. And
which is one of those which is one of the
(19:10):
logic that is made for using the atomic weapons. As
terrible as it is, I mean, I don't buy that personally.
The fact is that you don't need to bomb to
Japanese cities to do that. Even the threat of an
atomic explosion would have done that. But the Americans were
very keen on studying the impact of this, and the
weapon was not so much on the Japanese as much
(19:32):
as it was meant as a warning to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah right, right, let's come to today, Let's come to
the modern war. Let's come to kamikazi drones. Similar concept.
You have pilots piloting a warhead, sorry something that is
carrying a bomb into a target. But the pilot is
not on that, flying on that, on that piece of equipment.
(19:56):
He's far away somewhere. Using technologies that we'll talk about first,
person U and stuff like that. I think one of
the good examples of this such an attack was the
very recent one, Operation Spider Web by Ukraine, where it
bombed Russian fighter Russian of jets in their in their
home bases.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
But before we get to.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That, the history of what actually is known as loitering munitions. Yeah,
what are these? When did they start taking shape?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Uh? And why? Well again, they've loitering munitions because they're
the cheapest way of getting audlins on target. And the
story again starts with the Germans in the nineteen eighties.
The Germans being the technological geniuses that they are in
the nineteen eighties, when they're faced with during the Cold War,
(20:45):
when they're faced with this prospect of a massive Red
army surge across Europe, they come up with a concept
called the drone anti radar DAR. Uh. It's developed by
a German company which is still around. It's called Dornier,
and Dornier develops a delta wing design which is the
(21:08):
best way of you know, flying a fifty kg charge
onto the target. Not about uh. I think the first
Dornier drs were about fifty or sixty kilometers. It's essentially
a pilotless aircraft with a explosive in its nose. It's
a push propeller design and it's a delta wing because
(21:30):
it's the most efficient way. It's got very good left
characteristics and it can you know, when it's doing that
death dive onto the target. It's absolutely rigid. You know,
it can withstand a lot of g forces and all
exactly the reasons why a lot of aircraft designers prefer
delta wings. The French, for instance, they love their delta
wings on their Mirage fighters and all that. So Dornier
(21:52):
came up with this concept of the DAR but it
wasn't put into large scale production. It was a great concept.
It was to attack enemy radar sites. So what to
do is just fly up. It'd be launched in large
numbers and it wouldn't blind the enemy radar sites and
it would basically home on to these radars. It's a
(22:12):
very inexpensive anti radiation missile. It would lock onto the
signature emitted by a radar site and destroy the radars.
So what you do is you would create huge holes
at very very inexpensive rates. You would just punch holes
(22:32):
into the enemy's air defense cover and allow for your
fighter jets then to move around freely. And that's exactly
the concept that the Indian Air Force also is adopted
when about two decades ago, we bought the Harpies, Yes,
from Israel, the Harpy and then later the identical configuration,
a delta wing pilot list kind of aircraft which is
(22:55):
about six six feet eleven feet by about four feet wide,
and it carries a charge of twenty five CAGs fifty
CAGs and that flies to a distance of about three
four hundred kilometers. Those are the early variants, but of
course you have the newer ones which fly much further,
much faster.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Right the Russia Can War what's been going on with
these drones? Because we keep hearing about how they have
been used in a massive manner by both sides. But
that's more as what we year about because I think
after a point of time, Russia Can also has become
a bit let's say, boring for people to read. Right,
so you have you know, you don't really have so
many headlines happening, but for people like you who've been
(23:37):
following it off and on, who've been following it closely,
when the need arises in the last four years, what's
been happening in this war with respect to these drones
that you and which makes you think that this is
something that we absolutely talk about today.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Right, No, absolutely, you know. So, the war, as you mentioned,
is entering its fourth year now a couple of months,
in about four or five months, we're going to be
in the fourth year of the war. Right. Never thought
this war would last this long, Right, And I'm sure
neither did the Russians nor the Ukrainians. But here we
are entering the fourth year of this longest war in Europe.
(24:12):
And when the war began in twenty twenty two, began
as a conventional war. You had tanks, you had artillery,
you had fighter aircraft, you had special forces, infantry, all
of that those regular you know, assaults that we were
talking of, and these were beaten back. They fought to
a stand still. The Ukrainians inflicted heavy losses on the
(24:34):
Russian armor, they shot down a number of their aircraft.
All of that happened, and then what you saw then
was in twenty twenty three, the Russians then moved back
to there they started playing to their strengths, which was artillery.
So Russia, what a lot of people might have forgotten
is always been in utllery, heavy army. If you're looking
(24:54):
at ordnance on target, Russians prefer dropping that ordinance through rockets,
tube artillery, rockets and guns. So the war then began
moving towards artillery. So you saw the Russians at one
point were firing between twenty and thirty thousand shells a day.
And to give you an idea what twenty and thirty
(25:16):
thousand shells is, the Indian army in the course of
the Cargill War over three months they fired two and
a half lack shells. The Russians were doing that in a
little over a week. They were literally firing millions of
rounds of artillery, and so whatever gains they've made was
on the back of artillery. But then in twenty twenty
(25:36):
three we saw very interesting phenomenon unfolding, which is drones
started entering the battlefield. And this is primarily because they've
kind of exhausted most of their other stuff, right their
tanks are being their artillery guns. They don't have enough ammunition.
So then they say, hey, listen, this is the best
way of getting ordnance on target. And so you have
the FPV drones the first person view drones coming in
(25:58):
where you have guys literally taking these hobby drones which
were built for racing, and attaching an explosive onto it,
in this case RPG seven shells, which is trapped down
to FPV drones and they were literally piloted into targets.
So that was the one rone at the lower levels,
that's for the battalion level. At the top end, you
(26:19):
saw the Russian Federation going to Iran and taking their
Shahid one three six drone. Now, the Shahid is an
interesting drone. It is a copy of the same German dar,
the dor Near anti radar, which the Germans had developed
in the nineteen eighties, and of course the Israelis had
picked that up as well. So Germans Israeli Is, they're
very good engineers, and the Iranians just took it. They
(26:44):
copied it, reverse engineered a lot of the components, and
because they didn't have an air force, they started producing
them in the tens of the thousands. So then when
the Russians went to the Iranians say hey, listen, you
have this tech, help us set up our own production line.
So you have a factory today in Tatarstan in the
(27:05):
Russian Federation, which is far north. It's about one thousand,
five hundred kilometers plus from the Ukrainian War battlefront and interestingly,
just up the Caspian. So if you see the Iranians
can actually sail up across the Caspian and go up
a river and you land up at that factory in Yalabuga,
(27:28):
and they've helped set up this massive plant. They've given
them transfer of technology and they're building these Shahid one
three six licensed product produced versions which the Russians called
the Gharan, the Gharan one and the Gharan two. Gharantu
is the identical to the Shid. And so in twenty
twenty five, when you had tens and twenty drones being fired,
(27:48):
cruise missiles being fired. In September, you've seen two massive
attacks where these drones have been fired in close to
one thousand a day. Right, eight hundred drones are being
fired in one go. Now you just imagine that salvo
of drones coming in. How many can you shoot down?
Twenty thirty percent will get through, right, and they will
(28:09):
hit your targets, they'll hit you know, your buildings, they'll
hit command posts, they'll hit vehicles do all of that.
So that's a lot of damage that can be caused
at a cost that is just about fifty thousand dollars
a drone, that's all it costs. And you're looking at
a pilotless aircraft which is about, like I said, about
(28:30):
eleven feet tall and about six feet wide. It carries
a fifty kg explosive to a distance of almost two
thousand kilometers, so that's a you can launch them in
very large numbers. And of course, like the Russians are
producing them at scale. They're producing them like ten and
fifteen a day, which is coming out of the factory.
(28:52):
So there are those visuals that the Russians produced, you know,
this year to show this production line that was buzzing
with all of these big, big drones, the black ones
that are coming out of the Yaran twos, just to
say there as psychological warfare Russian style. So we've got these,
we're producing them at scale. Can you imagine the kind
(29:14):
of damage that will cause? And of course the Ukrainians
are doing the same as well, So both sides have
this and this drone, this particular configuration of the call
it the Dorniar Dhar or the shahid Wan three six.
Literally every country in the world is producing it now.
The Russians have it, the Iranians have it, the Chinese
(29:36):
certainly have it. North Koreans are building them, and even
the United States the Lucas, which is the low cost
uncrewed system, which was just shown to the US Secretary
of War Pete He said just a couple of months back,
identical configuration as the Shahiduan three six. So everybody now
(29:57):
is going towards these because he drones bladering munitions as
a means of, you know, overwhelming the enemy with large
numbers of these drones and basically causing entire air defense
networks and Gridge to collapse under the weight of these
you know drone waves.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Right, we'll talk now about what India has been doing
with them, and I'll be a fun segment, I think.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
But after a quick bring.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
In a world of contested potters and silent battles, one
voice cuts through the noise.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Was Israel able to achieve its aim when Israel bombed Iran?
Do you think that Chinese army is at war with itself?
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Joined veteran war correspondent God of Saban, one of India's
most trusted voices in defense journalism.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Navaskar and jahand I'm God a seventh.
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Listen to Chuck Review with Gor Savar on India Today Podcasts, Spotify,
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Stay alert. The war for truck starts here.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Before the break, Sandip and I were talking about kamakazi rones,
how they've evolved since World War Two, not as they
were used in World War Two, but how the idea
of kamakazi attacks, which was made popular by the Japanese
during the end of World War Two, sort of reached
to pirate list thrones that can be sent into into
(31:49):
an over animated raditor and basically then take out redars
or whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Basically, Uh, I want.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
To talk about now what India has been doing with them.
But before we do that, the one quick tangent what
you were describing before the break, It sounds like it's
a very simple concept. It sounds like a simple concept,
and you also describe that at the end of the day,
no matter which side is fighting home, both of them
are using the basic core tech. It's not as there's
(32:16):
a major advancement being made in this field.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
Because you don't need it's load tech. It's low tech exactly,
it's not rocket science and there's no involved, there's no rockets.
It's just a push proper ex.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Ludi minut technology for that, which makes it so so
so so enticing. So why is it that we're talking
about it only in twenty twenty five? Have they been
used before or maybe in a smaller skill that's why
we don't know, we haven't talked much about it, or
perhaps there was no need for them to be used
before this.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Well, it's it's just like one of those things that
have been around and no one's really figured out a
need for it, and it so happens that someone who's
you know, fighting asymmetric war decides to pick up this
tech and use it like the hood. For instance, the
Huthis proved that in twenty twenty one with that attack
on the Saudi refinery and those who were of course
(33:07):
Iranian one way attack drones which they used. So it's
always you know, these guys who come up with these
innovative solutions and who will pull it out because they
have no other ways of dropping ordnance on target and
they look for the simplest solutions, and the simplest solution
happened to be this pilotless you know, drones that would
(33:28):
drop ordnance do to these targets, and of course in
the number no Karabak. You've seen them in a smaller
scale in twenty sixteen, almost a decade ago, but in
twenty twenty one with these attacks on the Aramco refinery,
that's when it finally came off age. And then when
you're left with nothing, when you don't have your fighter
jets like the Ukrainians, you don't have fighter aircraft, you
don't have a navy to speak of, then you go
(33:50):
for the most efficient way of attacking the enemy, and
that is you have these capabilities, you have these very
rudimentary technologies. What does it take, just need some basic
aerodynamic structures, yes, you know, you have to have the
cability to build those wings. You know, you put one
of those crewde two stroke engines onto it and you
(34:11):
flight off with the GPS and and explosive you know charge,
that's all they do, and you just make them on muss,
you know, on scale. And that's what both sides have
been doing literally and it's just the way warfare has evolved,
and also the fact that when you're fighting a war
of attrition, you know, think of it like a really
(34:35):
bulky person who's running a marathon, right, what will happen
to his body as he's going running running, running, his body,
his you know, his his fat, his muscle, everything starts
breaking down beyond a point when he runs. And this
is the metaphorical marathon, of course. And this is what
has happened in the Russia Ukraine War, where you're actually
(34:55):
seeing how combat is progressed from your conventionals structures. Your
conventional fighting formations are all breaking down and they're being
replaced almost entirely by these new structures, right. And the
Ukrainians so the first to master it because they were
of course the underdogs in this battle, so they had
(35:16):
to improvise and fight with what they had to. And
then the Russians speedily innovated as well because they also discovered, look,
they were getting hit by these drones, so they started
doing the same. So now you have drone warfare there.
So you're looking at the entire evolution of warfare over
three four years. And now a lot of the other
countries are saying we are stuck with all these legacy systems,
(35:39):
especially the Taiwanese. If we don't go drone on the
first day, you're not going to wait for all your
legacy systems to be overwhelmed and all that before you
say no, I'm going to fight it. Firstly to be
Ukraine Russia at twenty twenty two, then it's going to
be Russia Ukraine twenty twenty three, and then finally I
will you know, launch my drones around. So that's what's
happening literally now countries are figuring out, look, we have
(36:02):
to launch very large numbers of these drones to overwhelm
the adversary before he overwhelms us. So it's become a
you know, kind of a technology leveler across the world.
It doesn't cost a lot. I mean, if the Huthis
can do it, any country in the world can do it.
That's a good thing. And it's a very bad thing
(36:22):
as well. It's a destabilizing thing because if you're looking
at it, all depends on the kind of mindset of
the country that's involved. If it's a country that's got
evil intent, it will it is bound to use this
to you overwhelm its adversaries, give it to non state
actors and all of that. Whereas if it's a country
that's got a defensive mentality like I mean, I would
(36:44):
say India is primarily a defensive thing. We don't attack
anyone unless we have provoked, right. So it it irrespective
of whether you're an offensive or a defensive thing. It's
you know, woken up a large number of countries to
the possibility of creating these very large drone forces at
at at a fraction of the cost that it would take,
(37:06):
for instance, set up an entire air force or an
entire navy or you know, an entire land forces. Thing
is this is not to say that they will replace them.
Of course, they augment the firepower that's available as of now.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, right, so what are we doing with it? During operations,
we had both the thrones that you mentioned, the drones
and harp making head headlines. I mean, they were in
the news. We got information that they were used, especially
in the second half of where decided to target installations
and the first step for that was to take out
(37:40):
the redars so that you're brom go and hit those targets.
Drones is something that you know, on in our defense
we whenever we talk about drones. That's that one area
where I've always felt that, Okay, we can be happy
about that, we have that foresight. You know, air Force
has this incubator program, if I'm not wrong, for startup
spirits sort of as in funds startups, that it has
(38:02):
potential and prone warfare. A couple of years ago, if
I'm not wrong either, Yeah, a couple of years ago
the Republic Day meeting, the retreat ceremony, you had this
fantastic display of drone drones done entirely by startups of India.
But I was very surprised to know that, I would
rather I was very surprised not to be able to
find a lot of information about India producing these drones.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
On their own.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
I mean, there's some one name I got which I
forgot to note down unfortunately, but that is still a
prototype face by the electronics.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
The easy if I'm not wrong, explosive is something whatever? Yes, yes, yes,
that one. Yeah, anyway, So what's up with this?
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Well, you know, as you've mentioned, they've we've got plenty
of startups. They're all doing their thing, they're producing these
Kam drones. But you know the thing is that the
bigger vision is missing. Like all these countries that we
just discussed, whether it's even North Korea, China of course, Russia, Ukraine,
(39:11):
the United States, they're looking at procuring these drones in
the tens of the thousands, if not the thousands, right,
which means that you have to place large orders and
you have to build factories. You have to indicate that, look,
this is my drone plan for the next five or
ten years, and then the industry comes in, they bid
for it, you hand out contracts. We're not doing any
(39:34):
of that nothing. It's just small, little penny packet buying.
There's five drones from here, ten drones from their one
small company with fifteen drones or twenty drones. It's very
very small scale. It's like you're trying to fill up
a small piggy bank with you know, change. Whereas the
(39:57):
serious countries who are involved in this kind of war,
they're looking at building drone numbers in the tens of thousands, right,
And we're caught unfortunately, we're looking at drones as being
you know, we're still in the pre twenty twenty two
stage that yes, drones are important, but we need our
(40:17):
fighter aircraft, but we need our tanks, we need warships,
we need submarines, all of those things which will come
five ten years down the line. These are all futuristic acquisitions,
right whereas these drones exactly that we discuss, something like
the Shahid or the Jaran or the Lucas. These are
(40:39):
systems that can be built acquired in two years. It
can come out of factories which you can set up
literally in two three years and commence production and you
can have you know, these weapons with the services in
a very short span of time. But you have to order.
You have to have that vision to say, I envisaged
(41:01):
the Indian military or the Indian Rocket and drowne Force,
which people are talking about having ten thousand drones in all,
and I will produce them at the rate of five
thousand a year. And this is how much I'm going
to set aside for it. This is how we're going
(41:22):
to procure it, and that is going to energize the
whole system. Not if you go with emergency purchases. So
I'm going to buy you know, ten from yere, ten
from there, and you when you buy in such small numbers,
two things happen. A your cost goes up, right the
economies of scale never kick in. That's what happens, and
(41:43):
that's what's happening here. And because we're not ordering them
a number we have not there is no big Indian
Shahid one, three six, or a Lucas or a guarant
To Program two. Because I mean, like I said, it's
not rocket science. If everyone in the world world is
buying this kind of a design, is building their own
type of design even we have it. We've imported them
(42:06):
from Israel at great cost. It costs one hundred thousand
a piece. Harpy and a Harrop. These are good drones,
but they're expensive. We need to build them on our own.
We need to build them at scale. We need to
bring down the cost. We aren't doing that unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
You know, if you were to take the example of
the many things that we've discussed on this on this
on this podcast, when it comes to like you said,
if we don't have enough fighter jets, we don't have
enough aircraft carrier, we don't have enough rifles. Yeah, how
(42:45):
do you think a low cost piece of tech can
can help you fill that gap in the immediate obviously
not people to give you the full long term.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, it's a good question, you know it is. It
is a gap filler. I'm not saying that the future
of warfare, It possibly isn't. The future of warfare is
possibly AI driven autonomous drones that are taking their own decisions.
God forbid if we get to that part. But this
is the present state where warfare is today, and it
(43:17):
is these low cost, uncrewed one way kamikaze drones. Call
them what you want, but this is the way wars
are being fought today and in the short term. If
you want to fill your gap in numbers, if the
air force has a fifteen or twenty score in shortfall
in fighter jets, possibly you could induct ten fifteen thousand
(43:40):
of these and that would immediately take away that much
of pressure off the air force to attack enemy targets. Right,
how many targets would you need to do a realistic
as a you know, assessment of your enemy countries and
how many targets you need to hit in that and
then draw up a list of how many drones you
need to trike it all because I'm assuming all your
(44:03):
enemies adversaries are on your borders, and if they're on
your borders, then you can strike at them using these
kind of solutions. Right, I'm not saying you don't need fighters.
You need fighters, but those are going to take time
to come. They will take five, ten, fifteen years to
be delivered. You're talking of a fifth generation aircraft that
will come a decade from now, the indigenous one. You're
(44:24):
talking of nuclear power attack submarines that will come fifteen
twenty years into the future. So all of these platforms
will come so far in the future that they're not
going to help you today to fight the wars of today.
If you're looking at an OPS in there your which
is an ongoing operation by the way, you would need
something in the short term, in the next one year
(44:45):
or two years, and it would be you know, solutions
like this which Indian industry can make very easily. You
don't even need to go and get an imported solution.
You can you reach into your innovators or every single
service today has tie ups with industry, with startups and
(45:06):
all that. Possibly heere is something you can come together
and you know, come up with a program for you know,
an Indian shiad or an Indian locusts and then build them,
perfect the design and then build them in scale on scale,
you know, get them, get multiple factories going. There are
lots of Indian factories that are lying vacant, ordnance factories,
(45:26):
ex ordinance fact they don't have orders, right, They've been
created for a purpose which possibly doesn't exist. Convert those
into drone factories and start producing them. Produce them, get
them into your services, you know, possibly export them as well,
make in India, export for the world. Those those kinds
of things. So these are you know, I'm saying, these
(45:47):
are low cost solutions that are staring at you in
the face. You don't even have to invent anything. It
is very simple. It's queedy, it's a problem that you have.
It's a solution that you have. Both of these things
are there with you right now, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
So on the point of why don't we have them
right now? Where would you lay your finger if I
were to ask you to fight, to tell me what's
the reason for us not? Maybe perhaps going in that direction.
Is it that there is not much serious thought being
given to this concept in the first place, within the
forces or in the Ministry of Defense, Or is it
(46:26):
that while the officers are talking about it, while there
is some conviction that this is what we need. Maybe
it's not reaching the right levels in the government for
it to become a larger conversation, whereas, like what you said,
a proper vision and a policy can be made nationwide
for all the three services. Or is it something that
we briefly discussed about when we talked about rifles, that
(46:48):
this is such an un sexye, such a such a
very low sort of it doesn't it doesn't really like
you strike you as something that, oh, my god, is
something if you pay attention when you have Indi military,
you have some you have a plethora of problems, you
have very expensive problems to fix right right now. This
is this does not strike you as something like, oh,
this needs my urgent attention. Where do you think the problem?
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Like, I think it's a it's a combination of all
of this that you've mentioned, and the fact is that
there's nobody really batting for a drone force, you know,
because let's look at it very objectively, a drone force
actually threatens legacy systems. Yes, you know. So if you
have a force that is structured around manned aircraft, for instance,
(47:33):
or man warships or battle tanks, artillery, they will see
something like this as a threat to turf. Right, So
that to my mind is the most obvious answer. And
the fact is that nobody is really pushing for these systems.
I think everyone's waiting for a drone and a rocket
force to be set up and then they will do
(47:55):
the procurements and stuff like that. But you know, that's it.
I think the services are focused on their operational requirements
for now. There's nobody who's doing that big picture thinking.
You know that we need to have, say the vision
that the Prime Minister had on the fifteenth of August
when he spoke at the Red Foote where he said,
(48:16):
you need to have a shan chakra that which is
basically a ballistic missile defense shield with an offensive element
as well, which will defend our vital areas, vital points
from enemy missiles, drones and you know, attacks from fighter
aircraft and also strike at them. So I would imagine,
(48:37):
you know, a drone force like this, if you're to
acquire them in numbers, would be part of a shield
like this one. Right. But again, somebody else has to
do that kind of thinking, and it's not going to
come from the services. I feel, for precisely the reasons
I mentioned that it threatens existing forces, structures, turfs. What's
(48:58):
going to happen to my beautiful destroyers and my submarines
and my manned aircraft and my tanks and you know,
so military is it's not a very unique Indian problem.
Militaries all over the world have this problem because until
your feet are in the fire, you wouldn't really know.
So what I'm saying is that, look, we need I'm
(49:20):
not saying you don't need tanks, warships, submarines, fighter acome.
They will continue for decades, but you need to look
at a low cost solution to deliver ordnance on target
that could possibly allow you to use your high value targets.
Keep them in reserve. If the war escalates, for instance,
(49:42):
you bring them in at that point. But in the
opening salvos of your war exactly the way artllery is used.
Use these as you would use utllery shells. And that's
what the Russia Ukraine war has taught you. But you've
got to have them. You cannot, you know, have them
in twos and fours and ten and you know, buy
these little thing goose then they'll be like you know,
(50:04):
gold plated acquisitions. Because the producer you know, looks at
his at his order size, which is in two digits,
and then he tries to load his entire thing on
You know that that contract. Rather than if you had
a larger number, simple economics, larger numbers, cost of production
(50:24):
comes down, and you know there's going to be a
lot of downstream effect as well. When you do these
large numbers, it will kickstart a whole lot of other
industry innovation. It will bring down the costs substantially. It
will allow you to you know, build a whole range
of such products, not just for the military, but for
(50:45):
the civilian market as well. So this whole thing about drones,
it's no longer you know, that little fringe thing. It's
good to have, nice to have, and those kind of things.
Today it's an essential part of war fighting is Russia,
Ukrain has shown us. So you've got to have them
in numbers. You've got to use them in a way
(51:06):
that it returs the enemy from trying to you know,
surprise you and I say this because we are we
have a live situation on one border and the western
adversary is not sitting quiet for all, you know, he's
possibly shopping around to buy precisely this kind of technology
to produce these kind of drones in large numbers that
(51:28):
he will use against you in the next battle whenever
it comes right.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
One more point on this topic is how does the
use of such inexpensive drones that does not lead to
any any humans, like human lives lost on your side?
At least there's no threat of missing pilots, there's no
threat of down pilots. Yeah, and there is the very
there's the potential of causing widespread, if minor, but widespread damage.
(51:59):
So how does that fact what we've discussed when it
comes to warfare the escalation matrix, or does it at all?
Because if you have both the sides with the same
piece of tech, then it's like you said, were talking
about earlier, sort of a lever. So does this in
any way change a commander's point of view of how
do they wage warfare knowing what these can do at
(52:22):
a very low cost and without like I said, a
lot of damage at least on your side.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Well, you know, the fact is that the enemy is
going to be more conscious about your capabilities. It's finally
it's all going to be how many numbers you can
fire on the adversary. And if you're looking at the
western adversary, and say, for instance, if he's got two
thousand targets military targets, and we have the ability to
(52:49):
hit all of them simultaneously in a day, that would
throw him into a quandary. And if that kind of
were communicated, that would force him to rethink interesting any
any provocative So it acts as a deterrance. It acts
as a deterrence against any possible sneak attack or any
(53:11):
terror attack, and you know those kinds of things. But
having said that, you're at the receiving end of the
other adversity to the north, who possibly be thinking the same.
So you need to cater for this two front solution.
And I think in the short term this could be
the one thing that would actually be a game change,
if you can call it that. And you need to
(53:32):
look at it at three levels. At the lower level
you have drones. You have your FPV drones. Those are
being inducted in large numbers. They're inexpensive, and I think
it's they're at the battalion level and even above at
the second tire, you need to have these drones, which
will you know, be the shy type of variety of
drones which will add teeth to the navy, to the
(53:56):
army and to the air force. And then of course
you have at the upper tires, you you have your
BrahMos missiles, and you have and going forward the hypersonic
missiles has come in. So you're primarily looking at a
whole new way of war fighting where the first day
of the war which is the most dangerous days of
the war, because you're looking at an enemy that's fully
(54:18):
primed for conflict with the missiles locked and loaded, and
you won't have to send your man fighter aircraft into
harm's way. And we've seen that playing out in during
Operations Sindhur when the first initial salvos, it did cause
some casualties on our side in terms not casualties, but
the initial things suggest that there were some losses on
(54:40):
our side in terms of numbers. No lives lost, fortunately,
but we corrected our strategy, and this is going by
what the government and the Defense Ministry spokesperson and of
course the Chief of Defense Staff have mentioned that we
corrected our strategy, and of course we saw what happened
on the tenth of May, just a few days later.
(55:01):
It is technologies like this that will allow us to
deter our adversaries from carrying out attacks like this without
putting our pilots in harms way, putting our personal harms away,
and also carrying out these attacks to ensure there's no
collateral damage. Because these are very accurate weapons, they can
be flown very precisely to attack military targets, and since
(55:23):
we are never in the business of attacking civilians, and
our stated aims from day one have been very clearly
to first attack only the terror targets or whatever, the
terror training camps, and then finally the military targets when
we were provoked. So I think this adds an element
of lethality to your existing force structures, and that's one
(55:44):
of the reasons that they should go in for this. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
Like one quick final point is when I was looking
at the list of such drones and existence in the
world right now, and who has which, and who has
how many and who has not how many is way
difficult to find out, but who has which, I was
quite taken a back to see that the Israeli Harpy
and harrop actually very very very popular across the world.
So what is it about these two drones. That makes
(56:10):
them so popular across with all many countries well including
India by the way.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah, so you have to give to these rileies. I mean,
they're so ahead on the tech spectrum that I mean,
I remember seeing these. The concept of a loitering minition,
it was completely new to me, and I think it
was on a visit to Israel more than a decade
ago when we got a demo of this. The II
guys had pioneered some of these concepts and they said that, look,
(56:36):
a loitering minition is something that you can just think
of it as a weapon that you launch in the
air and it's literally circling over there waiting for a
target to materialize, and when it does, it swoops down
on the target and hits it. So this was of
course in the concept. This was in a time of
post nine to eleven. You're looking at the War on
(56:58):
Terror and all of that, so this was seen as an,
you know, an adjunct to that where you would want
to take out say specific targets like a pickup truck
or something like that. Right, But now, of course warfare
has changed. You're looking at countries now that are fighting
wars of attrition, you know, militari is fighting other militaries
and not non state actors. So there this would become
(57:20):
completely different. Then you would go into your traditional missions
like suppression of enemy air defenses, which is what alerting
minissions were developed by by these rallies. These rallies invented
developed then the Harpi and the Harrow precisely for this.
It's a very very devastating weapon. It's homes in it's
an anti radiation missile primarily, so it homes in on
(57:43):
radar emissions with great accuracy over one hundred kilometers away.
And they charged top Bollow for that, you know, because
they were one of the first to pioneer the concept
of that. But then a lot of other countries then
got into the act and they said that, especially the Iranians.
So the Iranians were watching this very carefully when the
Israelis came up with the harp and then of course
(58:05):
the Harrop and that that's when the Shahad kind of
entered the picture, when they started looking at this as
a possible low cost option for their forces, and that's
how they started, you know, buying the German technology. They've
got some of these two stroke engines from Germany and
rivers engineered those. So they've done a lot of jugaard
(58:28):
to existing designs and they finally perfected this and now
today they are literally one of the leaders that probably
one of the top five countries in the world that
have this capability the Shahid one three six. So it
was the Israelis who began with this whole thing and
they pioneered it. In the recent past. Of course, the
(58:50):
Germans invented it, these rallies pioneered it, and the Iranians
went to the mass production. They've mass produced it in
a way that no other country has.
Speaker 1 (58:58):
Right, So cool, Let's see what India does with it.
Because I think you're right, because when you're talking about that,
if you put your mind to it in technically do
it as well, you don't. This does not seem like
technology that requires years and years of research.
Speaker 2 (59:13):
Not a fifth generation fighter aircraft. It's not a nuclear
power attack submarine. It's and it's certainly not a you know,
a fifth generation of an advanced battle tank. It's something
that's already exists. It's just a question. The pieces are
all there's this a question of putting them together and
making them a scale.
Speaker 1 (59:32):
So let's see if Inda does that, and if it
does that will be more than happy to talk about
it all this on this podcast. Thanks and need so much.
Fantastic Chatter has always had great, thanks for having me there,
and thanks to all the lesters and viewers. That's it
for this week's defense does for more Tune in next year.
Till then, stay safe and not tossing the boundaries with
the possible