Faced with growing threats from drones and loiter munitions that are now dominating the contemporary battle space, the Indian Army is set to procure Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS) to protect its tanks.
The Army plans to procure an initial consignment of 75 C-UAS, that would be retrofitted on its T-72 and T-90 tanks. The project is expected to be completed within 36 months.
According to a Request for Information (RFI) issued by the Ministry of Defence om April 5, “The current conflicts have highlighted that anti-tank threat is not limited to frontal arc. The proliferation of various types of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) has made the threat omnidirectional.”
Since the tank design based is based on the equilateral triangle of lethality, mobility, and survivability, and offers limited scope for enhancing armour protection, the Army believes that there is an urgent requirement of equipping the current generation of tanks with a platform-based C-UAS to defeat drones.
The Army has a fleet of about 1,650 T-90 tanks with another 460 on order, and over 2,400 older generation T-72 tanks, both of Russian/Soviet origin. While these tanks are heavily armoured and equipped with explosive reactive panels to deflect threats from traditional weapons like rockets and anti-tank missiles, they are small rectangular canisters attached to the tanks hull and turret which explode when a projectile hits them, destroying it before it can penetrate the tank’s armour.
The C-UAS can detect all types of flying objects, such as first-person view drones, swarm drones, loitering munitions, and kamikaze drones, through active, passive, or hybrid detection methods. The systems include both soft kill measures, like jamming the UAS’ radio links, and hard kill options, like integration with the anti-aircraft machine gun mounted on the tanks.
These systems should function effectively across India’s environmental conditions prevailing, including deserts, plains, and high-altitude regions, under all-weather and day-night conditions.
In addition, the system should be lightweight, modular, and should not compromise the operating capability of the tank and its crew. They must not require the removal of existing fitments or expose the crew to harmful radiation.
The Ministry of Defence is looking at original equipment manufacturers, defence public sector undertakings, and private industry players under the Make in India initiative for production of these systems.
