Indian Army Officer Develops NABH AI, An Intelligent System to Prevent Friendly Fire Incidents

Colonel Prashant Thakur of the Indian Army Air Defence has developed a groundbreaking AI system called NABH AI (Next Generation Aircraft Recognition for Bharat by Harnessing Artificial Intelligence) designed to prevent friendly fire incidents. This innovative system accurately identifies aircraft within seconds, addressing a critical challenge that has plagued militaries worldwide.

NABH AI works by capturing images of aircraft and feeding them into an advanced AI program trained on a vast database of aircraft models. The program analyzes the image and identifies the specific aircraft within 6-8 seconds with 80% accuracy. This rapid and accurate identification is crucial in the heat of battle, where split-second decisions can have life-or-death consequences.

The need for such a system is underscored by the numerous friendly fire incidents that have occurred throughout history, including a tragic incident in 2019 where the Indian Air Force accidentally shot down its own Mi-17V5 helicopter. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has further highlighted the devastating consequences of misidentification, with losses exceeding $1.77 billion due to friendly fire.

Colonel Thakur recognized the urgent need for a solution, particularly with the increasing use of UAVs, which pose significant identification challenges. He spent a year developing NABH AI, creating an image database and training the AI program to process and identify aircraft models quickly and accurately.

Initially intended for the Army Air Defence (AAD), NABH AI is poised to revolutionize air defence operations. The technology is being further developed for integration with various anti-aircraft gun systems, including the Zi-23mm, Zu-23mm, and upgraded L-70-gun systems. This will provide gunners with real-time aircraft identification, minimizing the risk of misidentification and friendly fire.

Colonel Thakur's innovation has been recognized at the Inno-Yoddha 2024-25 event, where NABH AI was included among the top 10 innovations. He was also awarded a cash prize by the Chief of Army Staff. This recognition highlights the significance of NABH AI in enhancing the safety and effectiveness of military operations.

By providing a reliable solution to prevent friendly fire incidents, NABH AI is a testament to the Indian Army's commitment to leveraging technology for the safety of its personnel and the success of its missions.

 

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[Kailash]

This kind of responsibility and systems involved should be un-hackable. As long as every friendly missile has a kill switch, we might be looking at a friendly fire situation get worse than better.

 

[Radha Ramanan]

I'm trying to explain what little I know of the system.

1. All fighter aircraft and military aircraft have IFF (Identify Friend or Foe). It's basically a question-answer system.
2. It's called a transponder in civil aircraft, where a system gives out a unique identification signal called a squawk. Pilots are told to squawk on this frequency and so on.
3. Civilian radar in ATC at airports has radars that pick up aircraft from long distances. But without identification, they will not know other details of exact flight height, direction of flight, etc. So there is secondary surveillance radar (SSR), basically an IFF radar. This does the business of identifying the particular aircraft, which helps the ATC have better situational awareness of all aircraft flying inside their control region. That also helps them separate aircraft in 3D so they don't crash into each other.
4. Similar systems are in fighter aircraft to serve the same purpose but with added encrypted signal code secrecy because the enemy can always know the frequency and the pulse code with ELINT and replicate and transmit the same signal, fooling our radar defenses into thinking it's a friendly fighter.
5. Unfortunately, the IAF Mi-8 helicopter was shot down during Balakot because the IFF was turned off, and it was presumed to be an enemy aircraft. Why the commander did not turn on the IFF during the war is a million-dollar question. Again, why the commander of the Spyder missile battery opened fire on a slow-moving, low-height aircraft deep inside Indian territory is unknown. Some say he should have had better discretion, thinking how a slow-moving aircraft could be so deep inside Indian lines, and held fire to double-check the identity of the aircraft. He was court-martialed with others and fired. This is where the above product comes in.
6. There is something called NTR (Non-Cooperative Target Recognition) in modern fighter aircraft. The radar is the main sensor. If a target does not respond to an IFF signal, it could also be that the system has been damaged for some reason; it could be a friendly fighter as well. Every fighter has a database of radar signal returns from various enemy fighters. These, along with ESM, COMINT, etc., are used to guess what aircraft is out there. The above-mentioned system developed uses all these with AI to determine the target to avoid blue-on-blue or friendly fire.
7. The Pakistani F-16s don't have the NTR capability in their radars, as well as RFM (Radar Frequency Memory) on their ALQ-131 jamming pods. The US never gave them these purposely. All our fighters have it.

 

[Varaaah]

Will cloudy weather, smog etc not hinder the identification?
Plus the database must be up to date always.

 

[Sandeep]

Will cloudy weather, smog etc not hinder the identification?
Plus the database must be up to date always.

All military helicopters, drones and jets already have a device called the IFF or identification of friend or foe. On all of our radars the moment it detects a flying object then it shows up on the system as being a friendly aircraft. So automatically and very quickly we can detect any incoming enemy.

This new system they have developed is a quick way to find out what type of aircraft it is, aircraft identification number etc.

 

[Sandeep]

All of our jets, helicopters and MALE drones will have the indigenously designed, developed and manufactured IFF which lets our radars and air traffic controllers to detect all of our military flying aircraft.

This new program will allow us to automatically detect what type of aircraft it is, identification number, cargo transport or civil passengers etc.