How India’s Hidden Kamikaze Drones Could Transform Contemporary Warfare

 

How India’s Hidden Kamikaze Drones Could Transform Contemporary Warfare

According to specialists, affordable drones and loitering munitions have come forward as essential force enhancers in today’s battles, as demonstrated by the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Known as loitering munitions, these “kamikaze drones” have elevated the concept of warfare. These sophisticated armaments merge the reconnaissance abilities of a drone with the accuracy of a guided missile.

These weapons do not merely adhere to a set flight path; they hover, monitor, and strike when the moment is right. A loitering munition (alternatively identified as a suicide drone, kamikaze drone, or explosive drone) is a type of air weapon equipped with a warhead that can hover around a target area and wait until a target is identified; it then engages by crashing into the target.

Loitering munitions allow for quicker responses to concealed targets that appear briefly, without the need to position high-value assets close to the target, enabling more selective targeting as well. The earliest systems for loitering munitions were deployed in the 1980s for Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) against fixed installations of Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs). Over time, the application of these munitions expanded to short range (2-15 km), medium range (15-50 km), and long range (50-100 km) for various mission tasks, including actions against personnel, bunkers, armored vehicles, and the neutralization of vital enemy installations such as airfields and missile sites.

Loitering Munitions in Combat

In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, both Azerbaijan and Armenia utilized drones for reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and precise strikes. The deployment of drones, which encompassed both UAVs and loitering munitions, significantly influenced the conflict by offering real-time situational insight and enabling targeted strikes on enemy forces. Azerbaijan, particularly, made use of a range of drones, including Israeli-manufactured options such as the Harop loitering munition, along with Turkish-produced drones like the Bayraktar TB2.