Indian Defence scientists working on future weapons: e-bombs, laser weapons and hi-tech soldiers

Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, Nov 24: Indian Defence scientists are now working on the
state-of-the-art futuristic high power laser weapons and e-bombs as
powerful as 1000 lightning strikes, and equip individual soldiers with
wearable computers.

According to Dr VK Saraswat, scientific advisor to the Defence
Minister, work is going on high power laser weapons that could provide
India a distinctive defence advantage by numbing the enemy targets.
“Research is at technological level. Efforts are on to graduate from
physics portion to technological part to produce these top-notch
electronic warfare
systems,” he added. Since these technologies are “denied” (they are
not given to the country by other nations), India is working on
indigenous systems for future defence needs.

Dr Saraswat was delivering a lecture on “strategic electronics” at the
inaugural session of the 22nd annual conference of Indian Nuclear
Society here on Thursday. Later, he interacted with mediapersons.
About the e-bomb, he said it would have explosively pumped flux
compression generator. It will produce electrical impulses in terawatt
range equivalent to 10 to 1000 lightning strikes.

Stating that India now has radars that can detect objects as high as
500 km and capable of finding out even satellites, Dr Saraswat said
research is on to improve the radar detection range to about 3000 km.
“This is being done taking into account the targets that may emerge in
the future,” he added. Work is also going on active electronically
scanned array radars, battlefield surveillance Doppler radars, through
wall radars that could see what is hidden behind a structure, and
antennas that cannot be seen.

“We are looking for future technologies that will help in equipping
army soldiers with wearable computers providing them night fighting
capabilities, health monitoring and personal area communication,
besides GIS. “We are equipped to provide solution to almost every
platform, whether ground base or airbase,” he said. Referring to
exo-atmospheric kill vehicles, Dr Saraswat pointed out that defence
scientists are developing 600 sq km radius satellite systems.
Specialised technology like built-in redundant aided integrated chip
system (brains) will be ready by 2014 while effort is also on to bring
entire avionics on a chip.