After a period of aggressive shelling from Pakistan during the last few months, shelling
has considerably reduced from Pakistan side.
As pointed out by some experts, this has something to do with change in Pakistan’s army chief,
latter being seemingly more practical and mature. But there is more to it than that.
A new weapon introduced by India has turned the table on Pakistan. It’s the DRDO SWATI
Weapon Locating Radar (WLR).
Let us go into the details of this interesting system.
The SWATI is mobile artillery locating phased array radar developed by India. This counter-battery
radar is designed to detect and track incoming artillery and rocket fire to determine the
point of origin.
The radar is also capable of guiding fire from an artillery gun attached to it, meaning
thereby that the radar can not only locate artillery guns on the enemy side but also
ensure their destruction.
SWATI has been jointly developed by DRDO's Bangalore based laboratory, LRDE and the Government
owned Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). The sub-systems have been fabricated by BEL based
on the DRDO designs and delivered to LRDE for integration.
Currently 4 radars deployed along the Line of Control (LoC) for trial have already proved
their effectiveness, since artillery fire from Pakistan's side has reduced after their
deployment.
The Indian Army has at present ordered 30 such radars.
Here is the overview of its working:
1. An artillery gun fires shell across LOC towards Indian Territory.
2. SWATI which is constantly scanning the sky, detects the incoming projectile.
3. The system starts tracking the path and feeds it to the onboard computers.
4. The computers generate the virtual path, and backtracks to the origin.
5. The inception point of the shell is provided to the attached offensive system.
India has multitude of response options to fire back:
1. This includes artillery guns like Bofors, M 7 7 7 howitzer.
2. Multiple rocket launcher like indigenous Pinaka system and Russian origin Smerch 9K58.
3. Self-propelled artillery like FV433 Abbot SPG.
These system will require 1-2 mins to respond back after getting information from SWATI,
which is too little a time for the Pakistanis to change position of their artillery unit.
Hence, the Pakistani units will almost surely be damaged or destroyed completely by India’s
counter fire.
Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said, "Swati could be a great equipment to ensure
adversaries do not use artillery fire. If the L O C is devoid of any artillery fire
in the near future, you can be sure Swati radar has gone there”.
He said, the radar, however, used a "passive array", and suggested the DRDO develop radar
using "active array" in a couple of years.
Active array radars are more versatile, have higher accuracy, and have a lesser detection time.
He added further:
"The passive array radar can then be exported, after the Army gets enough numbers”.
This underline his clear intent in achieving the target to raise India’s defense exports
to $2 billion in the next two years from the current $330 million.