The Indian Air Force (IAF) wants 10 anti- drone systems that can be armed with laser directed energy weapon to bring down rogue drones in wake of the attack on the Jammu Air Force station where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were used to drop bombs.
A day after the attack on June 27, the IAF floated a Request for Information (RFI) to seek responses from Indian companies for Made in India counter-drone system called Counter Unarmed Aircraft System (CUAS). As per the RFI, the IAF would be deploying these systems at different air bases across the country.
“The CUAS is intended to detect, track, identify, designate and neutralize hostile UAS. Laser Directed Energy Weapon (Laser-DEW) is essentially required as a kill option,” the RFI says.
The RFI mentions that the systems should be equipped with Global Navigation Satellite Jammer System (GNSS) and Radio Frequency jammers as a soft kill option and Laser based Directed Energy Weapon (Laser-DEW) as a hard kill option to destroy the drones.
“It should provide a multi-sensor, multi-kill solution to enforce effective no fly zones for unmanned aircraft while inflicting minimal collateral damage to the surrounding environment. It should generate a composite air situational picture for the operator and generate alerts based on user defined parameters,” the requirements in the RFI say.