New Delhi: Aviation regulator Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) will issue regulations within a week to counter any rogue drones in the country, a senior official said Tuesday.
BCAS Deputy Director General Maheshwar Dayal said the ‘anti-drone’ specifications will be released in ‘less than a week’s time’.
“It is in the final stages. I think it will be a quantum leap towards secure skies in a very literal sense,” Dayal said at an event ‘Smart Safe Secure Skies’ organised by FICCI and French electronics conglomerate ‘Thales’.
BCAS Director General Rakesh Asthana had said August 1 that the Civil Aviation Ministry had constituted a committee to find out the best available counter-drone solutions to safeguard civil aviation against possible drone attacks in India.
The number of illegal drones in India is likely to be between 50,000 and 60,000, co-chair of a FICCI committee on drones Ankit Mehta said. He is also the co-founder and CEO of IdeaForge Technology Private Limited.
“The OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) which manufactures those drones right now has no interest in complying with a country-specific law. So, that is not going to change,” Mehta said in an apparent reference to Chinese drone company DJI.
As per the rules in India, companies have to obtain a Unique Identification Number (UIN) from aviation regulator DGCA to operate drones.
Mehta said anti-drone technology is still an emerging field and there is no full solution. “One has to be very conscious of what is the nature of the threat and the intensity of the threat that you want to solve, because the costs of deploying this (anti-drone systems) could also be extremely prohibitive,” he pointed out.
Anti-drone technology currently consists of RF (radio frequency) monitoring, as almost 99 per cent of drones emit some type of RF.
PTI