DRDO to test Swedish radar to spot Naxal IEDs
03 Jul 2010
New Delhi: With casualties of security forces in militancy and Naxal-violence hit areas mounting because of increased use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), Indian security forces are testing out a Swedish radar which is designed to sniff out such IEDs before they can cause damage.
India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is partnering Swedish company Saab in fitting its CARABAS (Coherent All RAdio BAnd Sensing) radar on the HAL-developed Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). This would allow the scanning of wide swathes of territory to detect deep buried IEDs well in advance.
Recently Naxal IEDs have been playing havoc in parts of central India causing extensive casualties amongst para-military personnel.
The CARABAS radar is designed to detect metallic components of an IED, even when it is buried deep below the ground. A computer scan of fresh images of a particular area, compared to previous images of the same area, allow the detection of any new metallic objects recently embedded. With such information in hand the IEDs can be defused of by bomb disposal squads.
The CARABAS radar deploys exceptionally low frequency waves that ignore vegetation and reflect only off man-made objects. This allows spotting of deeply buried IEDs.
The CARABAS radar comes in two versions, with the heavier (150kg) version soon to be tested on a Dhruv ALH. A lighter (50kg) version can be deployed onboard UAVs.