'Persistent surveillance' is the need of the hour

Siddharth Sivaraman

 Churchill said India wasn't a nation, just an "abstraction". John Kenneth Galbraith, more affectionately and more memorably, described it as "functioning anarchy". Both of them, in my view, underestimated the strength of the India-idea. It may be the most innovative national philosophy to have emerged in the post-colonial period. It deserves to be celebrated-because its is an idea that has enemies, within India as well as outside her frontiers, and to celebrate it is also to defend it against its foes.Salman Rushdie 

India's stature on the world stage has risen significantly in recent years after the country moved on to a high-growth trajectory. It now commands a much bigger say in the global affairs. However, its internal security remains a serious concern in the face of growing activities of Maoists and secessionist forces in a large swathe of the country. Aided and abetted by powers inimical to the Indian  interests, these forces are constantly defying the State's authority. Underlining the gravity of the situation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently said the Maoist threat is the single biggest security the country has faced since Independence.

It is not that the government has been lax in dealing with this security threat. It has ordered military operations whenever these forces seem to be going berserk. However, this strategy has so far proved ineffectual in eliminating the security threat as these forces go underground and wait for the operations to be over. Once the military offensive is over, they resurface and start their activities. Since there is no  surveillance mechanism in place to monitor their movement on a regular basis, they get enough time to replenish their depleted resources and attack and massacre innocent civilians.

It is in this context that the need to adopt the emerging 'persistent surveillance' technology assumes urgency.

Maoists are now active in a large swathe, ranging from Nepal to southern India. India’s chaotic democracy and the lackadaisical attitude of its elected leaders towards economic development are driving the disenchanted poor rural youths to join the Maoists movements. For these young men who never had any support in life or access to jobs, power certainly flows from the barrel of a gun.

In recent years, India has been a safe place for Nepal's Maoists leaders like Prachanda to plan and run campaigns against the Monarchy and the government of Nepal. In King Gyanendra's death, India lost an important ally.  And now that Maoists have taken over the reins of power, India risks losing the traditional influence it has wielded with the Nepal State. If that happens, China will be only too happy to fill the vacuum created by India.

In India, the states of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh are vulnerable with the Maoists in a position to launch attacks with absolute impunity. In recent years, their attacks have led to the death of hundreds of policemen, paramilitary forces and innocent civilians. The Maoists' ability to get away with misadventures like prison breaks, raiding of police stations with the sole intent of killing policemen for their weapons, smuggling of narcotics clearly point to the fact that the governments in states and at the centre are unable to maintain the constant vigil required to take effective pre-emptive action.

India also suffers recurring attacks in the North East from groups like the ULFA and NSCN, which are believed to operate from their camps in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The militants have in the past promised to stop their activities several times after negotiations with the central and state government. However, they have failed to keep their word.

It is because insurgency in the North East is no longer driven by secessionist goals. It has now become a business, with groups like ULFA indulging in kidnapping of local businessmen, hijacking of trucks and passenger buses for extortion on a regular basis.

The Maoists and the secessionist groups are getting support from neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all of which harbour deep distrust of India. The militants are openly operating from their bases in these countries. But when confronted by the Indian government at the diplomatic level, they deny the existence of militant camps.  Perhaps, no other country in the world except Israel is faced with such serious threats on all its borders.

Because of the flagrant proliferation of nuclear material and technology by the Dr. A.Q. Network and Pakistan government's inability to safeguard the same, the threat of nuclear devices falling into the hands of terrorists has become real. And India cannot afford to turn a blind eye or maintain wilful ignorance about this grave danger.

The perpetual low intensity conflicts that affect India are also a result of local politics in neighbouring countries to gain votes, political mileage and the simple geo-political design of draining India of its wealth. Under these circumstances, it is naïve to assume that these troubles will go away anytime soon.

We would expect the Chinese to act with magnanimity of a great power towards its neighbour after it tasted economic success. But that has proved wrong. China is still harassing India through serious border incursions and the sale of weapons to militant groups operating in the North East. Not only that, China also wields influence in the internal politics of India through it proxies. It is feared the Left parties are working to scuttle the nuclear deal just to protect the Chinese interests. Otherwise, why would they oppose a deal which is so vital to India's infrastructural development.

India has nearly 5422km of main coast line. It shares around 3310km of border with Pakistan and nearly 3917km with China. India also shares borders with Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The terrain is also highly diversified -- marshlands in Kutch, shifting desert sand dunes in Rajasthan, network of canals, rivers and rivulets in Punjab and the most difficult terrain the Himalayan mountain range which covers the entire nation in the north from the state of Jammu and Kashmir to the North Eastern States of India. In south, the Indian mainland is separated only by a few dozen miles from Sri Lanka.

With this varied nature of terrain, which is also extremely porous, the need of the hour is “Persistent surveillance”, also known as persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); persistent stare; and pervasive knowledge of the adversary. This is an often-used term to describe the need for and application of future ISR capabilities to qualitatively transform intelligence support to operational and tactical commands.

Sun Tzu observed: “The highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy’s plans”.

The idea of PS  surfaces in many forms, but each idea envisions a system with the ability to achieve near perfect knowledge of the enemy or the target area, thereby removing any uncertainty in war. Persistence surveillance, essentially a concept envisioned for the military, has equally important and numerous civilian applications. Monitoring natural disasters, providing real-time imagery and communications for law enforcement agencies, detailed telemetry for urban planning, High-speed broadband communication links are some of the non-military applications that are also part of PS systems concept. PS can play a crucial role in assisting GOI agencies such as the NTRO, BSF, RAW and other law enforcement agencies to effectively monitor actionable intelligence and take timely action. The role of persistence surveillance can dramatically increase the efficiency of the disaster recovery management systems that come into effect once a disaster has taken place. If a PS system were to be put place in a holistic manner, an ideal PS environment data could be shared in parallel with other users including the ones at the lowest level in the organization. No longer will lengthy reports on actionable intelligence be sent up the chain of command instead the end users can demand the type data needed to make informed and on-the-spot decisions. Networking tools will connect analysts and end users.

Elements in the persistent surveillance network can also provide a robust alternative communications infrastructure during breakdown, damage or even total annihilation of the existing communication system as a result of a terrorist attack, man-made or a natural disaster. The use of High-altitude Airships with large communications payload can be used to re-route internet traffic in case of a disruption in underwater fibre optic cables, in a situation similar to the one that   occurred recently affecting large parts of India. Week-long disruptions can cause huge losses to the tune of millions of dollars a day.

'Persistent surveillance' is not just the development of the various intelligence gathering elements but a sustained government initiative to implement a policy that would integrate the proposed surveillance systems and the ones currently deployed to arrive at a common operating picture (COP).

India is now firmly entrenched in the information age with the world's second largest and the fastest growing mobile and fibre optic network. It can make use of its large enterprise systems and integrate them in a holistic manner with the existing and proposed surveillance systems to arrive at a COP. All the connected analysts and end users will look at one single COP and access tailor-made information most relevant to each agency. India will have to design it own COP relevant to its threat scenario and surveillance capability.

India has various systems in place for surveillance of its borders. Apart from forces like BSF, the coast guard and the Navy, India also boasts of an ever-growing constellation of satellites and aircrafts guarding the airspace and maintaining constant vigil on strategic assets. There are also several other technologies that come into play starting with unattended ground based sensors, which can be planted on the ground individually or as a network of cheap and robust UGSs to detect incursions by utilizing infra red, sound, seismic, magnetic and other sensing methods and relay information to the control station linked via satellites. Ground-based sensors have been traditionally used to detect the movement of the enemy forces, friendly or enemy fire, trajectory of artillery shells at the edge of the battle fields.

India also has at its disposal a combination of space and airborne technologies for surveillance and recently India has joined a select group of nations to deploy dedicated military satellites for surveillance. But despite their successes, the scope of surveillance through satellites is limited because of the low rate of revisit which varies from a few days to a week. And sometimes, many passes over a target zone have to be made to obtain a proper imagery.

The latest tool in collection of intelligence data is the space-based radar system -- which can, in consonant with a GPS system, provide 24-hour surveillance of target area. The use of the latest in Infrared (IR) or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors gives satellites an all-weather capability. The only catch in deploying a space-based radar system is that enormous financial resources are required to put in orbit such a system.

India has also recently acquired a number of aircraft such as the PC-3 Orion for maritime surveillance and Israel will soon be delivering to India its own version of the AWACS, also known as Phalcon. Meanwhile, the DRDO has also revived its AWACS development program and it is only a matter time that India will boast its own capability.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are the hot items on any countries defence list, UAVs have the ability to stay aloft over designated areas for extended periods of time with minimum visibility to the enemy air defences. UAVs are deployed along the border with Pakistan to procure real-time information on infiltration. Pakistan deploys its own UAVs to counter India’s deployment. The success of UAVs during operation Parakram means they will have a significant role to play during military operations in the near future.

The outcome of space warfare in the future will depend upon who gets first actionable intelligence. After gathering actionable intelligence, armed predator UAVs can also verify the threat and eliminate the threat. UAVs have played a crucial role in the global war on terror and perhaps they are one of the main reasons that the Osama Bin Laden and his men have their movements severely curtailed.

India has also recently fielded aerostats, helium-based tethered airships with a surveillance capability ranging from a few dozen to 200 miles. Aerostats are, however, severely restricted by line of sight, weather and have limited deployment capability in mountainous terrains.

In the near future the world will witness the launch of an entirely new communications platform based on cutting edge high altitude airship (HAA) platform technology, a variant of UAV. These HAAs will be able to carry large payloads at the heights of 65,000 feet and remain geostationary over a designated area to carry round the clock persisted surveillance of the target area for up to a year or more. These airships can fly in all weather and serve multiple users spread over large areas. These airships will be able to generate their own power using a combination of solar and fuel cells, thus eliminating the need for refuelling. A HAA stationed over the state of Jammu and Kashmir will be able to provide surveillance and communications capability over the entire state and keep an 'unblinking eye in the sky. A network of up to 11 airships will be able to provide coverage to the entire nation of India. HAA can also provide a robust alternative communications infrastructure and help ease the burden of the ever-increasing traffic on the existing fibre optics network, satellite and the plain old telephone system.

An airship stationed over Bangalore can provide imagery of real-time traffic conditions, radio communications, television and high-speed broadband connectivity for industry and private customers. The deployment of HAA can turn an area with zero or no communication capability to an area with cutting-edge wireless connectivity. No longer will money have to be spent on acquiring land and permits etc. for erected cell phone towers or digging the ground to lay fibre optics cables. With each user connected directly to the airship, there is no need for the “last mile solution”. The HAA could be the end game in surveillance for years to come. Besides, it also has the potential to become the backbone of a large WI-FI network system envisioned by the EU. Consortiums such as the CAPNINA based in Sweden have conducted extensive tests with high-success rates to test broadband connectivity of payloads that will deploy on airships. The U.S. has offered India to be a partner in this dual-use, cutting edge technology. The HAA project in the U.S. is being pursued by Lockheed Martin under the advanced concept technology demonstrator (ACTD) with the first prototype flight expected by the end of 2009.

India simply cannot afford to reject this offer that should propel her years ahead of its adversaries in surveillance and communications capability. India must consider the emergence of persistent surveillance in the context of future combat and national-security capabilities and so, persistent surveillance should be nested in the higher operational capability it serves. Form follows function. The guiding vision—a globally coherent national-security system—requires a coherent operational system to exercise all elements of national power.