The rise of drones during warfare
How battlefields have turned into video games
Earlier in May 2025, India and Pakistan played a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with swarms of drones and missiles flying across their borders. Entire towns flipped their switches off by 6 PM. A battle raged along the borders - yet no soldiers walked across the battlefields, no tanks rolled in, no troops dug trenches. Instead, this war was fought with drones, jammers and AI.
As I type this, the dust has settled, the lights are back on and the world has let out a sigh of relief.
Every week on The Lighter Side, I break down one news story to help kids and families understand our world a little better. This week, we’re exploring how technology has changed warfare.
Picture this: A soldier sips coffee in a control room while steering a drone to blow up an enemy bunker. If the drone is unlucky and gets destroyed by the enemy, no sweat! The coffee is still hot in the soldier’s hands and another drone’s ready to launch.
Today’s post on the Lighter Side is a quick history of how drones have gone from being flying cameramen 70 years ago to soldiers in a battlefield, in 2025.
Kashmir Terror Attack - how it all started
April 22, 2025: Terrorists strolled through a park in Pahalgam, Kashmir. They asked tourists their names. Non-Muslim? Bang. Shot in 15 minutes and the terrorists escaped from the area. The local Kashmiri Muslims were horrified by what had happened and rushed to help the wounded.
India glared furiously at Pakistan: "You trained these guys and sent them over to attack tourists!"
Pakistan, shocked: "Who, us? Never!"
Nobody believed Pakistan. Why? Because Pakistan’s favourite hobby is hosting terrorists and training them. (Remember when the US went looking for Osama bid Laden-a terrorist mastermind-guess where they found him? Happily strolling in a villa in Pakistan.)
May 6-7 night: India decides to send Pakistan a message that it needs to end supporting terrorism on its soil. India shoots missiles to land precisely on nine terrorist training camps in Pakistan. Explosion.
India: "Message delivered."
Pakistan mourns. Big funerals for the "totally not our terrorist friends" are held. Many senior army officials of Pakistan attend the funerals of these terrorists. Very subtle.
Pakistan is angry. (a) Because India killed their terrorist friends (B) Because their air defense systems failed to warn them about incoming missiles when they were fast asleep.
May 7-8: Pakistan sends its drones to attack India. India says "Nope," shoots most of them down. India retaliates, wrecks Pakistan’s air defense system in Lahore. Pakistan in turn shoots down an Indian fighter jet.
May 8-9: Pakistan fires missiles at 15 Indian cities. India claims "All missed. We shot them all down. Try harder." India retaliates by sending drones and missiles to destroy Pakistan’s airfields.
May 10: Pakistan finally calls India: "Wanna stop?" India shrugs: "Sure."
Indian Prime Minister announces: "We won!"
Pakistan’s army chief on Pakistan TV: "WE won!"
Both sides celebrate.
With that brief summary of what happened out of our way, onwards to our story of drones.
1950s: The Rise of Drones
World War II had ended. People were tired of fighting. Everyone wanted some peace and quiet. Yet, the US and the Soviet Union weren’t friendly to each other. But they didn’t want to start another round of fighting. The US military thought ‘Aha! why not use drones!’. The U.S. used them to spy on the Soviet Union, taking secret photos of missile sites. Just like the ones at weddings and concert venues, these drones flew overhead, snapped candid pictures, and zipped away.
Israel thought, “Hey, we want drones too!” By the 1970s and 80s, they were using drones to spy on enemy territories. The drones worked so well that they helped Israel spot enemy troops hiding in tricky places during the 1980s Lebanon War.
The Soviet Union and Britain also started building their own spy drones. At first, their drones were slow and glitchy, but soon they got better cameras as well.
1980s: The rise of the 24/7 surveillance
By the 1980s, Israel and the U.S. had teamed up to advance drone technology. They built a new drone model called the RQ-2 Pioneer and the RQ-4 Global Hawk. These two drones changed the way drones were used substantially.
These drones had two superpowers: (a) they could fly for nearly 30 hours nonstop. This was a massive deal for militaries. Unlike planes with human pilots that needed to take a break once in a while, these drones could spy on enemies day and night without stopping. This allowed the U.S. military to monitor entire countries non-stop and track moving targets like terrorists or missile trucks.
(a) The second superpower was that they could fly at 60,000 feet—twice as high as commercial jets. This made these drones nearly untouchable by most missiles.
2000s: Drones became weapons
2001 was the year when drones stopped being cameramen, and became weapons. In 2001, the U.S. strapped a missile to a drone (called the MQ-1 Predator) and fired it at Taliban and Al-Qaeda targets, hiding in Afghanistan.
Israel decided to follow the example of the US. They too armed their drones with powerful bombs and used them to strike precise targets in Gaza and Lebanon.
2022: Armed drones made from simple gadgets
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russia had more soldiers, more weapons and more ammunition. But, Ukraine had a tech-savvy population. Their soldiers quickly bought cheap drones (the kind that you could get on Amazon) and figured out how to strap small bombs on them. With these drones, Ukraine dropped grenades on Russian trenches and blew up enemy tanks.
Russia saw great power in Ukraine’s idea and retaliated by doing the same. But they went a step further. They imported swarms of low-cost, military-grade drones from Iran, far superior to anything on Amazon. These were built for the purpose of surveillance and striking enemy positions. In other words, Russia’s drones were a lot more precise in where they hit.
The Russia-Ukraine war took drone warfare to unprecedented levels. Thousands of low-cost drones swarmed across the border from both sides.
2025: The age of hi-tech drones
The Himalayas—the world’s highest mountain range—dominate the India-Pakistan border. Picture a store-bought drone from Amazon, trying to navigate those jagged peaks and drop a bomb. Not happening.
Unlike Ukraine’s battlefields that are mostly flat and open plains, India and Pakistan clashed in extreme, high-altitude terrain in the 2025 May conflict. Ukraine had been ill-prepared to fight Russia when the invasion began and Ukrainian soldiers were forced to innovate on the fly after Russia’s invasion. Whereas India and Pakistan are two military powers that have spent years developing hi-tech weapons and AI-powered defenses.
In the early phase of the conflict, India used powerfully armed drones (Heron TP) that could navigate precisely through the Himalayan ridges and strike targets. These were the drones that were used by India to hit enemy terror camps. Since these drones are equipped to be very precise on where they drop their missiles, they avoided casualties in civilian houses nearby.
Both armies deployed jammers. Jammers are defenses to stop enemy drones. They blast radio noise onto the drone, which then does one of three things (a) forces the drone to fall down, (b) forces the drone to return home (if pre-programmed to behave this way), or (c) or forces the drone to hover helplessly in the same place in air till its battery dies. In all three cases, the drone can’t spy, drop bombs, or follow commands. India and Pakistan’s military jammers knocked each other’s drones out miles away!
India also used high-altitude drones in the Siachen glacier for surveillance and sea drones flying above the Arabian sea to monitor Pakistan’s coastline (Karachi port).
Unlike the Ukraine war, which saw the battlefield flooded with cheap, disposable drones, the 2025 India-Pak conflict saw very powerful, smarter and harder-to-jam drones that work in complex mountainous terrains.
The story of the drone began as a humble tool to snap photos of enemy territory. Today, it has emerged as a powerful weapon that can weave through the jagged ridges of mountains and strike targets with terrifying accuracy.
Whatever next turn the drone takes, one thing is certain—our skies will never be the same.
Podcast - How does the world get a new Pope
1.4 billion people (roughly the population of 17 Frances) all take career advice, life tips, and moral guidance from one man in a very fancy hat. He is also called the Pope - the leader of the Roman Catholics (a branch of Christianity).
He’s not just a religious leader. He talks to world leaders, tells organisations how to be more environmentally conscious and even tells countries how to resolve wars and conflicts.
When a Pope dies, how does the world pick a new person for this role? Is there a divine job interview? Or a poll on the internet? I asked 11-year-old Dheer from Surat, and his ideas were gold.
Listen to this 15 min podcast episode at
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