Cooperative Hunting for Kashmir’s Security: Analysis of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Application

Hello World,

I have been pondering over this for over an year now as to why not our security efforts in Kashmir use Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) extensively to carry out regular recon missions and when needed, appropriate air raids. I am working on military avionics right now and thought, it would be worth the time discussing my thoughts on this topic.

Feel free to download the pdf version of this post by clicking here.

If we were to use a Swarm of RPA’s and execute the Cooperative Hunting mission over the high risk regions of Jammu & Kashmir, what would that look like and what will be the key elements of such a system? How will the Swarm function as a single unit and what type of technology do we need to make that possible and efficient? Let’s dig.

Out of the total land covered by Jammu and Kashmir, only 17% is reported for land utilization, out of which 53% is classified as forest cover. Out of the total forest cover, 59% of the forest cover is comprised of Very Dense Forest and Medium Dense Forest. Also 57% of the total forest cover exists at altitudes greater than 2000 meters. This leaves the security efforts in those regions vulnerable to natural adversaries including extreme weather, unreachable terrains and limited or no visibility.  

Border security is always top priority and securing the borders of high altitude landscapes with dense forest cover just makes the work more dangerous and complicated. Unmanned systems is definitely an option that will save a whole lot of tax payers’ money and the lives of the soldiers we risk by deploying them in those regions which are notoriously famous for unlawful entry and terrorist activities. 

The current trend in the RPA domain is Cooperative Hunting or more commonly known as Swarm Operation, where multiple RPA’s are engaged in a collaborative format to achieve a common objective. The critical element of this application is the concept of RPA’s supporting each other to achieve the mission objectives.

Here’s a baseline formation scheme that I have in mind for our Cooperative Hunting Convocation (CHC), shown in Figure 1 below:  

Figure 1 Formation Concept for a Cooperative Hunting Mission

For the sake of this discussion we will assume the CHC (shown in Figure 1) begins the mission with incomplete knowledge of the terrain and target locations. Before we proceed to the mission, we need to understand the roles of each member of the CHC.

Scouts:

These will execute the pre-mission survey of threats and also as decoys during the mission. These will be lowest in altitude and be the first eyes to look over the target area for a preliminary assessment of the region (weather, visibility and threats). 

Spotters:

These will be the navigational wing of the convocation, scanning the target area, detecting the targets and tracking their movements. The spotters will serve as the primary eyes of the convocation. These will stay above the scouts in altitude as per the mission needs from the navigational standpoint.

Shooters:

These will be the attack wing of the convocation, executing the attacks on the targets as marked by the spotters. These will carry the largest volume of ammunition in the convocation and will stay above the spotters in the formation. These will get out of the formation as per the attack task allocated by the commander. 

Commander:

This will be the primary decision maker for the CHC. The commander will collect mission data from every other member of the convocation, process it and supply the members with appropriate information, eventually reducing the mission-level decision making workload for the other members. The commander will also keep track of mission objectives and derive tactical objectives for every other member of the convocation.

Signaller:

This will serve as the primary point of contact between the CHC and the command & control center that controls the cooperative hunting mission. The signaller will remain above the rest of the convocation at all times such that the rest of the convocation will be in contact with the command & control center as long as they are in contact with the Signaller.

Mission Algorithm at the CHC Level

The mission algorithm for a typical cooperative hunting mission will decide the decentralized interaction within the CHC, as indicated by the cross-functional process flow diagram in Figure 2 given below:

Figure 2 Decentralized Mission Algorithm within the Convocation

As we can see in Figure 2, the commander drives the cooperative hunting mission initiating the crucial steps of the mission and guiding the individual mission tasks as per the inputs from the members of the CHC. 

The interaction described in Figure 2 is specific to the ‘cooperative’ element of the mission and therefore the signaller is not included. In the broader mission algorithm, which will be comprehensive, the signaller will be represented as connected with all the members of the CHC since that will be the means to send back platform-level and mission-level data when direct links with the members get disturbed during the mission.

The primary mission computing will be executed by the commander where the platform level data from the members and their task status will be compared with mission objectives to determine each member’s suitability with the task to evaluate and revise mission task allocation in an ongoing basis. This way, the CHC, in a state of regulated autonomy, will be efficiently executing the mission objectives while preserving the safety of the members.

The scouts and spotters will be following a flight pattern similar to that of a ‘sweep’ protocol, except, their flight loops will be so designed as to make sure, the areas they together sweep will under their view at all times until the end of the mission. This way the CHC will have a constant wide angle view of the target area within which detecting, tracking and engaging the targets will be more reliable than in the usual case where the mission command has to wait until the designated RPA gets over the target area. 

The data from the scouts will also drive the CHC’s overall mission profile, touching all critical elements such as the flight patterns, flight speeds, sensor sensitivity/modes and task sequencing. This indicates the dependence of the CHC on distributed data, centralized computing and subsequent platform-level flight planning to meet the needs of mission-level ‘cooperative’ task executions. Also this way, when one member of the convocation goes down, the others can redistribute the mission objectives among themselves and the CHC can restructure itself to the changing mission conditions. This element of ‘cooperative restructuring’ will enhance the reliability of the CHC which in turn will substantiate the investment made on the CHC assets.

Regulated Autonomy

The very concept of cooperative hunting mission refers to the element of autonomy the system will execute mission objectives. The significant feature here will be the regulatory element of the autonomy, which will keep the cooperative system architecture from exceeding any limits. In other sense, the command and control centre from where each of the RPA will be piloted by trained pilots, will decide when to let the system attain the autonomy. 

In operational terms, the autonomous mission will be executed in batches of ‘Autonomous Mission Executions’ where depending upon the mission requirements, the RPA’s will be precisely controlled by the pilots. The continuos state of autonomy for the CHC will depend on the health of the platforms, the compliance of the cooperative architecture with the mission commands as issued by the command & control center  and level of degradation of the system functionalities irrespective of the states of their health. 

Fault Tolerant Cooperative Control 

The RPA’s should have fault tolerant control systems which can reconfigure to make the RPA suitable (as far as possible) to the mission objectives, making it eligible to execute tasks based on the level of system degradation it might be subjected to (by enemy fire or extreme weather). The system health data will be used by the commander to continuously asses the RPA’s ‘fit’ for specific mission tasks and will only be allocated tasks that are within the capabilities of the concerned RPA. This way, the CHC architecture is embedded with an element of fail-safe operational mode where the individual members will not act beyond their level of competence. 

At the platform level, each RPA (scouts, spotters and shooters) will be broadcasting its health status while calculating its capacity to executing mission tasks. The commander will be constantly monitoring the members’ health status and use that data to compute the mission status, success probabilities and alternate task allocations (active system restructuring options). Figure 3 given below presents a brief overview of data-links between the members of CHC among themselves and with the command & control center:

Figure 3 Control-Specific Data-Relay Scheme

The fault tolerant control system depends heavily on the computation of the platform-level data being relayed to the commander from the members as indicated in Figure 3. 

Mission Computing

The CHC needs robust & intuitive mission computing capability and this narrows down to custom-designed, verified and validated software built into the mission systems. The processing modes and methods must be specific to the operating conditions in Jammu & Kashmir. The software platform must be able to provide opportunity to integrate multiple sensors across platforms and allow the systems to share data as designed. The transformation module will be a crucial element of the system as it will translate data from sensors into formats and values that other systems can easily receive and use in their computations. 

Seamless Connectivity

Needless to say, high throughput connectivity is the basic need for the CHC to function. Air-to-Air links will remain prominent in the architecture as the convocation will share and process large volume of data among themselves. High throughput connectivity will let the system enjoy the luxury of distributed sensing & storage while also implementing centralised computing. Besides, majority of cooperative hunting missions in Kashmir is going to be beyond line of sight and therefore high throughput is just absolutely necessary.

Sensor Versatility

Multimode sensors capable of adjusting to Kashmir’s extreme weather conditions must be integrated on to the RPA’s. The sensors should provide configurable operating modes such that they are optimised to suit the mission needs. With a large section of forest cover over high altitudes, visibility issues are going to be a common affair and therefore the sensors should be developed with strong high altitude very dense forest cover as part of the operating conditions. 

Cooperative Architecture Evolution

The CHC architecture for Kashmir’s security measure has to be evolved and not bought as a plug-and-play toy-set. The platforms should be bought along with the systems, integrated and verified at platform level. The mission computer software needs to be developed in parallel such that the Indian forces in Kashmir can operate the Cooperative Hunting Convocation in their own terms. Troop familiarisation with international systems will compromise the quality of the desired command and control capability. This will also drag the architecture’s efficiency down. 

The CHC Architecture should be evolved such that, moving forward, Indian forces can integrate any number of RPA’s and manned platforms to the system and they should function as one collaborative unit or multiple cooperative hunting convocations. Open system architecture will have to be the basic assumption behind this entire effort. 

Improved Border Security

There has been multiple infiltration attempts along the line of control in Kashmir and many lives of Indian soldiers have been lost along the borders, just so a bunch of militants wanted to conduct a short-term sieges along the border in a demonstration of intent to claim segments of Indian borders. The last time I worked on Systems Tool Kit, the Indian border was not even a closed loop. The north end of the Indian line-of-control is a segment of dotted line with a visible gap, indicating uncertainty over the extent of the border in those regions. The geography and weather conditions of those regions are not human-friendly and the Indian forces have to risk more to even make a presence there.

With custom-designed Cooperative Hunting Convocations comprising diverse types of remotely piloted aircraft, the Indian forces can take the war to the adversaries with enhanced capabilities any given time. Hoping to see a secure border and technologically advanced border security measures.

If you wish to discuss more on what the system requirements might be from the supplier's standpoint, do join the discussion on my LinkedIn post.

Do share your comments and suggestions in the comment section below. Thanks for taking time to read my post. Have a great day!!!!!

On a very different note [a shameless plug], if you are interested in unique tamil short films, feel free to visit https://www.summamovies.com/. I couldn't tolerate the mass masala entertainers anymore and decided I will do my best to produce content with substance. I have a long a way to go as a producer and a start-up founder, but I am glad our journey has begun. I look forward to your support. Each film on our site costs INR 15. Thanks!!!

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Image Sources:

Command & Control Image in Fig 3: 

http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/norad-control-center-300x225.jpg

Icons in Fig 1:

http://www.coolinfographics.com/storage/post-images/Drone%20Survival%20Guide.jpg

http://www.freelogovectors.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/airplanes-sideview.jpg

STATUS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATON IN TAMILNADU: A REVISIT FROM 2005

Hello World,

I haven’t been around here for quite some time as I have been active writing on LinkedIn. However, this is something I have been wanting to write for well over an year now. 

During 2005-2006, I wrote a paper titled ‘STATUS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN TAMILNADU’ and submitted that to an ISTE Student Chapter Conference at a college near Hosur, India. I was surprised to see my paper selected for presentation. During my presentation, the students clapped, whistled and laughed while the teaching/management community got pissed off. My paper basically called every element of the engineering educational system (in Tamilnadu) wrong and how we were digging our own graves. 

About 8 years later, that is right now, I am revisiting the trends that I had predicted will happen. At that time, everyone disagreed with me and said I overestimated the flaws. Based on my discussions with different stakeholders in the engineering education business, I would like to make it very clear that I had heavily under-estimated the impacts. They have all happened and have now gone above and beyond what seemed to me as a probable extent of failure.

For more than a year now, I have been discussing with engineering students, engineering graduates, lecturers/professors and family of current/past engineering students. Here are my observations and what they mean to me.

Money Over Everything Else

It was the time for lab-practical exams and everyone was there to take their exams. The examiner was there with an external-examiner (a trend followed around here for no freakin reason) to run the day’s proceedings as planned. All the students were told to leave their cellphones out of the lab. One of them had taken pictures of his book and sneaked his cellphone inside the lab and used it as cheat-sheet. The examiner caught him red-handed and confiscated his paper and cellphone. As he was proceeding to execute disciplinary action, the student confidently offered him a bribe saying he can ask his dad to pay any amount to let him be allowed to copy and pass the exam. The examiner got furious and demanded to speak with the student’s father. On the phone, as the examiner conveyed the inappropriate behaviour of the student to the parent, the father interjected and suggested he is ready to pay any amount so his son can copy and pass the exam. The examiner had no words to say and he took it up to the Head of the Department. The HOD (as we call them around here) was very considerate of the examiner’s situation and kindly advised him to not take much notice of this and let the boy do what he has to do. Apparently, the student had paid a huge sum of money for his engineering seat in that college and he was being considered a ‘Paying Customer’ who deserved his money’s worth. The examiner, handed the student, exam papers and the cellphone and  left the rest of the disciplinary action take place under the HOD’s supervision. The disciplinary action included the student do the rest of his exam in the HOD’s office in a rather ‘conducive’ atmosphere. 

My friend says this is not a rare case and so many instances like these occur in engineering colleges in Tamilnadu where, ‘Money’ is being used as reason to skip procedures, make leeways and potential engagement in will-full malpractices which allow the students to get through the educational system without having to make the necessary effort. As long as the student pays, the managements want them to go out with a degree, one way or the other. 

Commissions for Cooperation

Engineering college managements are collecting exorbitant amounts as tuition and other fees. Some of those fees cover extra-curricular activities involving external organisations teaching the students, specific professional skills. The current trend is that the college managements are charging large amounts and are only spending a fraction of those for the purpose. Those who approach college managements with proposals for such programs, have to go through individuals who demand a ‘Per-Student-Rate’ as a commission for that business to be chosen for the specific program. In most cases, the fees paid to the external businesses are well below 25-50% of what the managements charge the students for the purpose. The ‘Commission-Collectors’ demand between 10%-20% of the fees quoted by the external business.

In another case, which is happening right now, the college management has made it ‘mandatory’ for all the students to take the software-training classes conducted by external organisations. Those students who will not agree to pay for the extra-curricular classes will not receive his/her hall-ticket (a nonsense we still practice in India) and eventually won’t be able to take the exams.

It is almost as if nobody really cares if the program will benefit the students. The businesses such as external training organisations get tossed around by the ‘Money-Laundering-Bureaucracy’ designed and practiced by the college managements. The governing bodies don’t seem to notice the obvious realities for some valid reason, possibly corroborated by mutually beneficial material exchanges, in every unlawful way possible. 

Don’t-Fail-Too-Many Policy

Lecturers going for ‘Paper-Correction’ is a common affair around here. The universities have the affiliated colleges pool the exam papers together and have a centralised evaluation process. 

When the lecturers fail a student for not writing the right answer or for not writing anything at all, their ‘evaluated papers’ are ‘revised’ by senior lecturers and most often the students who make a 30 (fail) out of 100, end up with up to 80 marks. The senior lecturers and professors school the junior lecturers that every time they take a bundle of exam papers to grade, they should make sure they don’t fail more than 4 or 5 papers. This way, the engineering college’s ‘Pass-Percentage’ does not get affected.

This is almost a cultural affair where colleges extent their friendly gesture of ‘Don’t Fail Too Many’ to each other, eventually rendering the centralised paper evaluation process nonsense.

In colleges which have gained the ‘university’ status, the trend is to fail the student, make it compulsory for the student to join the compartment/complimentary classes, pay an additional fees and retake the exam. The concept is that the students pay more and they mysteriously pass their complimentary exams after failing it miserably the first time. The catch however is not that. Those lecturers who refuse to divulge the exam questions to the students who take these complimentary/compartment courses are not given the opportunity to handle those courses, even if they were the ones who handled the course during the main semester. 

In a specific case, the department’s ‘Re-Evaluation Team,’ incharge of grading the papers of those who have applied for revaluation, denied participation to a lecturer who refused to ‘pass’ all the failed papers that were handed to him the previous time. The very purpose of that exercise is to make sure the students pass the exam, no matter what, and maintain the ‘fake image’ of the college. 

The college managements have made a ‘Return-Business Model’ out of failing students and don’t want to engage those members of the teaching community, who wish to practice their profession with integrity and passion. 

Joining Engineering Colleges

The admission process is shared by the governing university and the affiliated colleges where the university will send a certain number of students and the colleges are free to recruit students on the town to fill the remaining seats. It’s big business. 

I have had the opportunity to remain dumbfounded in front of a parent who proudly claimed he had ‘Booked’ engineering seats in 5 different colleges with suitable ‘Advance Payment’ and wanted my advice on how to choose the good one. People are booking college seats like flight tickets these days. The colleges have long been paying students, commissions for the students they bring in. The cut comes from the ‘capitation fees’ paid by the incoming student.

There have been cases where the college management set ‘targets’ for each lecturer in terms of the number of students they should recruit (who will pay for their seat) and the failure of which resulted in delayed salary disbursements. In some cases, the college managements demand the students who pay for their seat to attend the centralised admission process and bring a confirmed admission in any stream in exchange for a seat in the stream of their choice. This way, the management gets one more seat to sell. 

The governing bodies are there and they do conduct elaborate procedures but all end in money. So none of the systems and procedures are capable of serving their purpose. The mindset behind such state of affairs is very similar to the view which approves a minor sexual assault as ok compared to a full-fledged rape.

We need to remember that most engineering colleges are run by wealthy individuals, most of them with a criminal background. They are in this business because they have the money to build a college and get its approvals from the university (by paying of course). They are not entirely fit for running an educational institution and so they depend on people who will promise them a standard revenue stream year after year. They are thriving because the gullible parents and students chase them for an engineering degree, hoping their life will change with one.

Studying in Engineering Colleges

Students often are forced with tough projects by their advisors. A deeper look reveals that the lecturers who are working towards their PhD’s split their project into multiple smaller projects and force their students to do it, most often against their will. Those who are full-time PhD students do housekeeping tasks at their advisor’s residence in exchange for their work to be approved by the advisor. The activities include, taking the professor’s kids to school, getting the professor’s wife’s clothes dry-cleaned and buying groceries for the professor’s family. The money for the expenditure is often not given and the student will have to bear it as a ‘Respect Fee’ for his PhD. Also the PhD student has to pay from his/her personal account, for the expenditure on the committee’s travel, lodging and meals. There have been cases where the visiting professor (who has to approve a publication) openly asked for ‘Gold-Gifts’ in return for a ‘No-Scrutiny-Approval’ of anything the student presents.

The current trend indicate that universities from far off states within India are offering value-added PhD’s where the students have multiple packages to choose from. The comprehensive option involves a payment of around Rs. 300000 for everything. The university will prepare the attendance records, exam papers and other documentary trails for the successful graduation of the student. All the student has to do is pay for it. The student may have to make a few visits from time to time but it is not mandatory. 

Those who have paid heavily and went through humiliation of all kinds are proudly walking around with their Paid-For-PhD’s and some have openly claimed that they will charge their students to cover what they had to pay when they were a student. Now that’s consistency. 

When encountered with a question of why, these fake-educated money sharks say it is ok since everybody does it and this is how it has been for a long time. 

This get’s us to the question: Just because prostitution has been around for a long time and women are being sold in almost every country, is it ok to sell our mothers, sisters, daughters and wives for a good deal? Those who do things just because they believe everyone else does, will they sell women from their family just because prostitution is everywhere? After all, it is consistency we are trying to keep up to.

Current Impact on Engineering Industry

The companies in India are struggling to hire engineering graduates since they have developed a very bad habit of stereotyping engineering graduates. They have all come to believe that anyone from an engineering college in Tamilnadu (barring a few exceptions) will have a degree but absolutely no knowledge in that domain. Apparently, they have some real world cases to substantiate their claims. 

The colleges are not being fair with their evaluation and this has led to unfit engineering graduates entering the job market. Students are going to training institutions to ‘Buy Certificates’ which they submit as proof for learning something and the recruiters eventually end up finding it out. Parents are ready to pay for their kids’ degrees simply because they have lined up a job for them at a friend’s place.

There are so many jobs out here that are not being filled only because the employers believe they are not finding their right fit. Simply put they need candidates who can at least learn the job. The sad state of affairs inside the engineering college have let the engineering industry stagnate. The recruiters are skeptical about almost everyone and the candidates are not sure of what they want to do. After all, most of them joined an engineering college mostly because their parent was affluent enough to grab a priority seat for them. 

This has essentially ruined it for the rest of the engineering community who are in this line out of their love for engineering. No wonder the jobs are being taken to other asian countries from India. I only hope they don’t stagnate. 

At this moment, those who are in engineering colleges in Tamilnadu, have no belief over the idea of them getting a job in their line of work. Irrespective of their stream, the engineering students’s only hope is the big bunch of IT companies who can practically take in any human and get them trained for their work. The bad part is even they are not preferring most of the engineering graduates these days.

A sample worst case scenario is the fact that in the recent past, about 58 colleges had all the students (1 batch) in all their streams fail all their exams. Those are colleges run out of randomly constructed 2-storeyed buildings in undocumented lands of wealthy loan sharks who have absolutely nothing to do with academics. Those colleges exist because someone got paid to let them run their business in such state. 

The bad design of educational system here and the obnoxiously unethical implementation of it has been the reason, India’s talent being mostly used for back-end fill-out jobs that are heavily standardised and require nothing more than a pair of hands and basic computer literacy. It is absolutely insulting to see those jobs considering our candidates unfit for them. 

I believe we need to ‘Wake, Break and Shake’ in India before we get to ‘Make In India’ because, soon they will be here to make and realise they don’t have much to make with. 

Back in 2005-2006, my findings indicated that we were forced with content without clarification of why we had to learn them in the first place. The main concern was students not being provided the ‘application’ side of engineering. I was opposed to the idea of assignments being entirely associated with pages of text we were required to copy from the textbook photocopies we were supplied with. I was annoyed at the fact that a lecturer scolded me for asking questions in class (In all fairness, I do agree I have the incredible talent of inventing stupid questions out of nothing). I did scratch the eye of the ‘Re-Evaluation Fee’ which was collected from students who filed for revaluation of their papers. Apparently, here in India, it was and it is considered absolutely normal for a lecturer/professor to wrongly grade an exam and fail the student. All the student has to do is apply for revaluation. The bill is often not issued and when issued will carry a mention of ‘Re-Totalling.’ Overall, failing the students and getting their money for passing them is officially the underground ‘Return-Business’ for the universities and affiliated engineering colleges. For those who are still not able to understand the intensity of the situation, when I joined an engineering college there were 240 of them and now there are around  550 engineering colleges. The number just keeps growing as we speak.

What was bad 8 years ago, is worse now and is in no shape for improvement at the moment. People are losing interest in engineering just because the engineering graduates are not getting jobs after their engineering education. This however, has not even made a freakin dent on anyone’s cognitive make-up that we need to pursue our interest and not what everyone else does. It’s been over 6 decades of independence and we are still being ‘followers.’ If we are going to join engineering colleges based on job-prospects, we are agreeing to the consequences of market characteristics. Apparently, a few lakh engineering graduates every year fail to understand this fact.  They can only go so far as their education has taught them to. If they are made to pay for their seat, passing exams and certificates, they obviously won’t know anything other than blindly following whatever pays them. This is taking the element of ‘innovation’ from our community and this is hurting us from all sides. We really need to get out of ‘This is India and this is how it is here’ mindset to look outside and let our thoughts evolve. 

Overall, if you are a student who is studying or looking to study engineering in Tamilnadu, you are running a combination of risks that can hurt you in so many ways. Please exercise caution when someone says they can get you a seat for cheap. What was once considered a boom for the development of this economy is now eating this economy from within, thanks to those who are in the business of ‘Setting Up Engineering College’ for those who have loads of money and know nothing to do with it. 

On a very different note [a shameless plug], if you are interested in unique tamil short films, feel free to visit https://www.summamovies.com/. I couldn't tolerate the mass masala entertainers anymore and decided I will do my best to produce content with substance. I have a long a way to go as a producer and a start-up founder, but I am glad our journey has begun. I look forward to your support. Each film on our site costs INR 15. Thanks!!!

Guess what, our first film is titled 'Theory of Engineering' and deals with the issue discussed on this blog post. Hope you like it. Thanks!

Image source: 

http://www.thehindu.com/2000/06/20/images/13200377.jpg

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/thumb/msid-32520809,width-300,resizemode-4/Corruption-Graphic.jpg

Regards,