I-Day: With 1,000 high res cameras, anti-drone system, Red Fort turns into impregnable fortress

New Delhi, Aug 15

As India celebrates the 75th Independence Day with patriotic fervour and enthusiasm, police in the national capital have made stringent security arrangements, especially at the Red Fort, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered his address to the nation.

The police have installed over 1,000 high-resolution CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the Red Fort to prevent any threat.

Notably, the city is currently under a heavy security cover after the intelligence agencies received inputs of a possible terror attack in the wake of Independence Day.

The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has issued five fresh alerts, warning of a possible terror strike in Delhi and several cities.

The law enforcement agencies have been warned that terrorists could use IEDs during the flag hoisting ceremony on August 15 at the Red Fort.

A lot of drones might enter several cities including Delhi from the Pakistan border through Punjab. This was learnt during the questioning of terrorists who were arrested in the recent past.

A few terrorists had even claimed that a lot of drones had entered India through Punjab.

Subsequently, to counter any threat from sub-conventional aerial platforms and manned or unmanned flying objects, including drones, the Defence Research and Development Organisation has installed an anti-drone system near Red Fort.

A DRDO official said the system has the capacity to detect and deactivate multiple drones at the same time within a radius of around 4 km with the help of a jammer that has been installed just next to it.

With the changes in technology, the terrorists may attack the Red Fort through flying objects which could be in the form of flying kites. Due to this, it has been suggested to put a complete ban on flying objects near Red Fort.

Delhi Police, keeping in view all such threats, has taken adequate measures on ground to prevent any such incident.

"Kite catchers have been deployed with equipment on strategic locations who will prevent any kind of Kite, Balloon or Chinese lanterns from reaching the function area," a senior Delhi Police official told IANS.

Besides this, roof tops and window watchers on windows have been deployed who will keep a vigil and will inform the kite catchers staff, if any kite is noticed. Two rounds of training and briefing have been organised for them.

"Announcements are being made from religious places for motivating the general public not to use any kind of Chinese manjha and avoid kite flying during programme timings on August 13 and 15," the official said.

He further informed that one Beat Constable has been deployed in each beat to prevent kite flying at the time of function on August 15.

Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are flying objects which have a varied span of dimensions -- few centimetres to few meters, and payloads starting from few grams to few kilograms. The trend of using small drones to execute different tasks has increased over the last few years.

At the same time, the threat caused by drones to the society, public security and personal privacy is also becoming increasingly high. From the security point of view, drones allow an attacker to reach any target in any location without risk to personnel, and there is an ever-expanding domain of usage, ranging from weapon carriers to espionage tools.

To mitigate and negate the impact of drones, the Counter-Drone system comes into place which can detect, track and identify airborne drones using multiple sensors, transfer the information to associated systems and enable counter techniques to deny them the intended operation (soft kill) or destroy them (hard kill).

The detection of drones is conducted with the help of Radars and Radio Frequency based detection systems. The identification is done with the help of Electro Optic sensor and COMINT.

The soft kill is carried out with RF jamming and Anti GNSS technologies, and Hard kill with the help of Laser Directed Energy Weapon (DEW).

The police since August 14 night could be seen intensively checking all the vehicles coming towards the Red Fort area.

Apart from the stringent security apparatus, the security personnel also maintained the Covid-induced protocol at the Red Fort premises.

The people who came to attend the function were given masks and sanitizers even as the sitting arrangements were made in the way that there was a distance of at least 3 feet between two chairs.