Draft drone rules are pro-technology and pro-safety

After the recent drone attack at the Jammu air base, there were concerns that the government would drastically curtail drone use. However, draft rules released by the civil aviation ministry, reportedly with inputs from the top of the government, are liberal and forward-looking. Drones above a certain weight need to have unique ID numbers, which can be created on the digital sky platform. Airspace is divided into colour-coded zones, permission is needed at certain heights in specific areas. New rules also relax some onerous regulations, and focus on countermeasures like real-time tracking beacons and geofencing. Businesses will find it easier, with single-window permissions, and smaller non-commercial drones will be free to fly without elaborate security clearances.

While drones are a new frontier in warfare, and terror drones like the one in Jammu must be deterred, a blanket ban is no solution and cannot effectively halt an advancing technology. Drones, like any piece of tech, are neutral tools, and have benign uses in farming, mining, relief operations, disaster management, photography, package deliveries, research and much more. They are easy to buy and soup up.

They can also be put to destructive use, to slam into critical targets, destroy infrastructure and so on. There cannot be any one policy to address all these uses. Combat drones are a whole other story, and India needs to invest in its own UAV systems and counter-drone technology to detect and track threats, especially around critical assets. There are soft-kill and hard-kill methods, jamming the drone’s communication systems or crashing it, using missiles or other drones to shoot it down, or using pulses and lasers. Given these complexities, new drone rules strike a balance between security and openness, keeping pace with an evolving and now-essential technology.

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