ISLAMABAD: India has been intruding Pakistan’s airspace by operating its spy drones to collect “strategic information” regarding the army’s deployment, bunker positioning and movement of weapons along the Line of Control, military experts said on Saturday, warning that New Delhi’s activities can ultimately lead to a full-scale escalation along the international border.
The Pakistan Army has downed at least eight spy quadcopters of India this year that flew into its territory from across the LoC, a military control line that divides the disputed Kashmir region between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Both Pakistan and India claim the Muslim-majority territory in full but control only parts of it and have fought at least three full-scale wars over it. Tensions have also remained high along the LoC since August last year when India unilaterally revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir that offered the region a semblance of autonomy.
“India basically wants to crush Kashmir’s freedom movement by keeping us under pressure through different tactics, including intrusion of drones into our territory,” Lt. Gen. (r) Naeem Khalid Lodhi told Arab News on Saturday.
He described spying drones as a “dangerous thing,” adding they sent photos and data in real time back to their operators and helped forces engage their targets with greater precision.
“The modern drones are also cheap. It doesn’t make much of a difference to an army if a few of them are shot down by the adversaries. They are also small in size and difficult to detect on radar,” he said.
Lodhi maintained that militaries traditionally used highly trained humans for spying and reconnaissance purposes beyond the enemy lines, but modern technology like drones had radically altered this methodology.
Experts also believe that India’s intrusions into Pakistan’s airspace and unprovoked shelling across the border, especially on civilian population, constitute blatant violations of the November 2003 cease-fire agreement between the two countries.
Air Marshal (r) Shahid Lateef said that India might be checking Pakistan’s professional capability to detect “the smallest” target on radars by sending in the drones.
“We have shown our best professional capabilities to India by shooting down their drones recently. We also destroyed their fighter jets in February last year,” he said.
Lateef maintained that India would note troop movement and bunker positions along the LoC and update their military maps accordingly.
“India has been provoking us for a war through all these tactics, but we are exercising patience and discretion,” he said, urging Prime Minister Imran Khan to launch a diplomatic offensive to expose the “true face” of the neighboring country.
Another military expert, Maj. Gen. (r) Ejaz Awan, said that India had given reconnaissance drones to its forward units deployed along the LoC for spying across the border.
“These are cheap but valuable tools since they collect all the required information and transmit it back in real time,” he said. “The drones also don’t endanger human lives.”
Awan, however, said that military strategies and tactics were not easy to decipher through reconnaissance drones only. “These are cheap tricks, and our armed forces know how to respond to them,” he added.