There was plenty of commotion when UK’s Mail Online quoting Anatoly Serdyukov, Russian Defence Minister, revealed that Russian arms procurement programme 2011-2020 would encompass introduction of super weaponry including weapon development based on new physics principles; directed energy weapons (DEWs), geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotropic/psychophysical weapons and the like.

The ‘Zombie Gun’ based on psychotropic principle of ‘mind control’ evoked most frenzy. Others quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to use the ‘Zombie Gun’ for achieving political and strategic goals (for use against enemies and dissidents), dubbing this development strange, alarming and morbidly intriguing. The insidious design of the Zombie Gun aims to attack the brain cells and central nervous system to either make the recipient perform according to the attackers will or alternatively turn the victim into a senseless moving object, perhaps behaving like a mad animal.

With such a weapon, it would be possible to transmit suggestions and a command directly into the victim’s thought process. These guns will use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens. Putin reportedly said that such high-tech weapons systems will be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons, but will be more acceptable in terms of political and military ideology.

While the western media has been agog with the scare of such a weapon, it can be safely assumed that similar weapons would be planned to be productionised at least in the US and China and may be some other countries, if not already part of their offensive inventory — ‘cognitive weapons’ in the US? Research into electromagnetic weapons has actually been secretly on in the US and Russia since the 1950s. Two years back western media had announced Russia possessed plasma weapons. It is unthinkable that US was not running parallel in the race, if not ahead.

Moreover, the overall concept of attacking the nervous system or attacking internal organs is hardly new and was has been worked upon continuously. After all that is what the nerve gases did decades back. Nerve gases have been used in conflict situation without compunction in the past. Incidents have also been hinted in media of low dose microwave weapons having been used for incapacitating recipients temporarily. A high dose microwave weapon on the other hand can kill the eyesight or heart of the victim.

Interestingly, some clubs in the US are already offering Zombie Survival Courses where instructors teach how to cope with zombie attacks. Such courses are designed to teach participants real-world survival techniques necessary to survive a zombie apocalypse. This includes choosing and setting up survival gear, first aid, equipment, firearms selection and group organisation for defence. Going a step further, Kansas has been witness to the first ever Zombie-Proof Condos that have been all been sold out like hot cakes at $2 million per floor.

Consequences of application of psychotropic / psychophysical weapons can range from mass psychological diseases with both lethal and incapacitating outcomes, creation of an obedient mass of humanity through latent violent manipulation of behaviour and consciousness, and even mass ecological accident because of irreversible genetic mutations if infringement at gene level is resorted to.

Should India take note? It must, considering the Chinese (and its protégé Pakistan’s) penchant for the asymmetric. Research must go into both defence and offensive defence through requisite counters. In the field of robotics, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while inaugurating a new building of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in 2006 had announced that India will be pursuing technologies for developing a robotic army. The impetus obviously was the realisation that transnational actors and unconventional forces pose a growing threat when compared to the risk of a traditional inter-state conflict, plus robotic plans announced by other nations like the Killbots Army planned by the Republic of Korea:

How far has India progressed in robotics is not very clear but the pace appears rather slow. Though the DRDO recently announcement development of the ‘Sarap’ robot, it has taken many years to develop it. On the lighter side, Manas Chakravarti wrote in the Hindustan Times of June 26, 2011, that our Prime Minister was a robot, considering the deadpan expression, the glazed look and the monotone he makes during speeches and that the actual Manmohan Singh was elsewhere — one speculation being he being sighted on a Tahiti beach, stretched out on a hammock between two palm trees, sipping nimbu pani while reading a book.

Mercifully, he did not speculate that Manmohan was the victim of a zombie attack and the gun was fired by someone from within India to keep his mind permanently under the attacker’s control. But jokes apart, we have to leapfrog technology if we are to overcome our asymmetric infirmities and tilt them to in India’s favour. No doubt MoD’s 2010 Technology Perspective & Capability Roadmap identifies DEWs and ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons as thrust areas over next 15 years but given DRDO’s track record, how much will actually be delivered by 2025 is anybody’s guess.

There is need to accelerate the pace of optimising lasers as well. Presently, only the Laser Dazzler that impairs vision temporarily to control unruly crowds is being operationalised albeit DRDO’s Laser Science & Tech Centre (LASTEC) is developing Aditya - a vehicle mounted gas dynamic laser-based DEW system as a technology demonstrator and a 25-kilowatt laser system is under development to hit a missile in terminal phase at a distance of 5-7 kilometres. In terms of technology, India needs networked elements of national power, information dominance and information assurance, riposte ability to paralyze enemy C4I2 infrastructure, stand-off weapons to pre-empt enemy attack, adequate mix of DEW, PGMs, ASATs etc, ability to disrupt enemy logistics / sustenance, mix of hard kill and soft kill options, layered strategic air and theatre missile defence, competitive cyber warfare capability and ability to exploit cyberspace and electromagnetic domains.

Besides lasers, we should be able to exploit technologies like steerable beam, wideband / SDRs, network security, common GIS, data fusion and analysis, alternatives to GPS, dynamic bandwidth management, camouflage, etc. Space combat, cyber space combat, radiation combat, robotic combat, nano-technology combat will add to existing forms of combat, zombie war being the latest addition. We must be prepared to win such conflict situations. Leapfrogging technology requires special emphasis.