India's 'eye in the sky' Netra to fly soon; will detect Internet keywords to prevent attacks

The Indian government will soon launch ‘Netra’, the defence ministry’s internet spying drone. The UAV is reportedly capable of detecting words such as “attack”, “bomb”, “blast” or “kill” within seconds of it being deployed, reports TelecomTiger. It can detect such words from almost all online communication, including, but not restricted to, tweets, Facebook status updates, emails, instant messaging chats, internet calls and blog posts.

Netra is a light-weight, autonomous UAV or a drone, designed for surveillance and reconnaissance operations. It comes with an on-board wireless transmitter that allows it to carry out surveillance in an area of 1.5 km Line of Sight (LOS) at the height of 300m, and for about 30 minutes on a single battery charge. It can fly up to a distance of 2.5km from the take-off point, once it is launched from a small clearing. Its operational altitude is 200 m. 

Netra, a spying drone developed by India’s DRDO (Image courtesy: DRDO)

‘Netra’ is currently being tested by Intelligence Bureau and Cabinet Secretariat. A note released by DoT revealed that the specifications of ‘Netra’ can be taken as frozen following tests by the Intelligence Bureau and Cabinet Secretariat, and can be considered for providing multiple user access to security agencies.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Netra has been jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Research and Development Establishment (R&DE), along with a Mumbai-based firm called IdeaForge.