Everyone, from senior retired military officers to defence aficionados, have been captivated by the evolution of drone warfare between Russia and Ukraine in the ongoing war. Operation Sindoor brought that reality closer home when a short, sharp conflict with Pakistan earlier this month gave us a ringside view of what drone warfare actually means and the potential it holds in warfare in the near future. But looking ahead into the future must be done with an eye on the past. In this week’s column, we will look back in history and see how air power in India took baby steps with an experimental balloon section in Rawalpindi in undivided India. Every incremental step from that day in 1901 to our domestic drone industry in present times is a testament to the ever-increasing reach of military aviation in various avatars. Writing in the Royal Air Force Historical Society Journal, Clive Richards, a historian and former researcher with the Air Historical Branch of the RAF, mentions that the origins of military aviation lie in the Indian Army’s experimental balloon section stationed at Rawalpindi in 1901. This section was carved out of the 4th Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers, which had been sent to China in 1900 under the command of Capt AHB Hume. In August 1900, a total of seven men of the 4th Balloon Section under Captain Hume were sent to Rawalpindi on their return from China, whilst the remainder of the Section returned to Aldershot in Britain. Richards writes that it was not until the end of that decade that attention turned to the employment of heavier-than-air craft for military purposes. In 1909, a branch of the Aerial League of the British Empire was established in India; the first president of this branch was the then Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, General Sir O’Moore Creagh. In the winter of 1910-11, three separate teams of aviators arrived in India to conduct demonstration flights. “The most significant of these parties in terms of the development of military aviation was that sent by the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company. The British and Colonial party arrived at Calcutta in December 1910 and in the following month one of their Bristol Boxkites took part in cavalry manoeuvres in the Deccan,” writes Richards. It was also in December 1910 that Captain Seaton Dunham Massy of the 29th Punjabis became the first Indian Army officer to qualify as a pilot with the Royal Aero Club. In 1913, Massy, along with three other Indian Army officers, travelled to the UK in order to attend a course at the Central Flying School, and on December 1, 1913, he was appointed to command the newly created Indian Central Flying School, then located at Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. “Captain Cuthbert Gurney Hoare of the 39th Central India Horse, Lieutenant Cyril Louis Norton Newall of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles and Lieutenant Hugh Lambert Reilly of the 82nd Punjabis were also posted to the school as instructors between November 1913 and April 1914,” says Richards in his write-up. The Indian Army was at the time dealing with the various uprisings in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and, therefore, the focus on establishing new airfields was in those parts of North Western India which helped deal with that problem. Also, the British were obsessed with the idea of a Russian invasion through Afghanistan into India. One of the earliest airfields to come up in Punjab in those days was in Ambala and which continues to be a mainstay of the present-day Indian Air Force (IAF). Among others in the region were Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Bannu, Quetta, Risalpur Chaklala (1936), Manzao, Parchinar and Dardoni. A few more landing strips were developed in Punjab close to the Second World War, and these included ones at Adampur, Halwara and Ferozepur. IAF historian Anchit Gupta has written in an article that the IAF reactivated two fair-weather airstrips from the colonial era at Adampur and Halwara. These new wings were designated 305 Wing (Adampur) and 306 Wing (Halwara), writes Gupta. In 1961, Pathankot, till then an advanced landing ground, was established as an air force station. “In November 1962, it was formally established as No. 18 Wing, albeit in extremely rudimentary conditions. Its runway was laid with Pierced Steel Planking (PSP) sheets, and personnel operated from tented accommodations,” writes Anchit Gupta. In Operation Sindoor, Adampur and Pathankot became household names, given the fact that both were targeted by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and battled out the missiles and drone threats most ably. Air power has indeed come a long way since the early part of the 20th century, when it was considered just an anti-insurgency tool for the NWFP by the Indian Army hierarchy, leading to an inter-service conflict with the RAF. It is ironic that not so long back, late General Bipin Rawat, the then Chief of Defence Staff, echoed the century-old sentiments of British Generals when he called the IAF a “supporting arm”. Some things never change.
