Eyes on the Ground

Smruti D

Over the decades technological innovations have found their way into military establishments of a number of countries. The widening purview of security-related challenges have internally and externally compelled military establishments to develop and induct Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their systems. This technology, which initially aided operations, has now become the key to intelligence gathering. The growth of unmanned ground systems (UGS) is a result of the same.

Russia’s URAN-9 unmanned ground vehicle

Unmanned ground systems include unmanned ground vehicles and sensors. They help in situational awareness, reconnaissance and surveillance, target acquisition, disarming explosives and logistics support. They are fiercely important as they carry out man-power intensive and high-risk functions.

In the Indian context these equipment could prove to be of immense measure to counter terrorism and Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) operations to the road opening parties of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) that are deployed in regions affected by these issues. Buried mines pose a huge risk to the lives of security personnel. Data by National Bomb Data Centre revealed in 2017 that India ranked first in the number of improvised explosive device (IED) bomb blasts in the world, surpassing countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Thailand, Somalia, Syria and Pakistan.

While mine-protected vehicles, radars and UAVs (on a smaller scale) are now made available to security personnel, UGVs could be of unparalleled advantage. UGVs can disable, detect and destruct without human assistance. They can also be armed, saving human contact or confrontation in warfare. They can detect the texture of the terrain and obstacles that they come with.

In India, there is huge potential and the requirement for UGVs. The Defence Research and Development Organ