A southern Indian state is using trained birds of prey to take down rogue UAVs as part of local policing
With its terrifying talons, enormous wingspan, piercing gaze and cunning hunting tactics while gliding high in the sky, the majestic eagle leaves its prey no chance. One of the planet’s fastest birds is now doing what it has never done before in India: intercepting rogue drones.
Police officials in the southern Indian state of Telangana have successfully trained five eagles to identify and down drones that could pose a threat to the visits of Very Very Important Persons (VVIPs) or to large public gatherings.
The ‘Garuda’ squad, named after a Hindu mythical Sunbird, took more than three years of painstaking efforts to materialize. It is now part of the Telangana police’s Intelligence Security Wing (ISW), a specialized force overseeing VVIP security.
This is India’s first and only bird squad and the world’s second, after the Netherlands.
The training has been a success, and the state police’s top brass has received queries from the Army, the Coast Guard and the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), each of which is eager to induct similar bird squads.
Tafseer Iqubal of the Indian police service heads Telangana’s ISW and is closely associated with the project. He told RT that the idea to train eagles against rogue drones was mooted in 2021 after several rounds of discussion about similar attempts by the Netherlands’ Army.
In 2016, the Netherlands had trained eagles to intercept drones but discontinued the project after a year as the squad was inefficient, the maintenance of birds was expensive, and the eagles were prone to injuries by the drones’ propellers and sharp blades.
The Telangana police, however, decided to give it a try.
It scouted for enthusiastic falconers who could prepare a roadmap to train eagles and handle them during operations. Eventually, Mohamed Fareed of Hyderabad and Abir Chaudhary of West Bengal were recruited.
After requisite permission from the Forest Department, three eagle chicks, about three months old, were inducted at a cost of a few thousand rupees ($1 = 86 rupees), police sources told RT. (Service rules prohibit informal police interaction with the media, hence it is done anonymously.) Later, two more were added. According to Indian Wildlife Protection laws, hunting or catching wild birds such as eagles is prohibited and requires permits.
Due to the diversity of environment, climate and prey access, India has a variety of eagles.
“There are some species which are found in limited parts of the country,” sources said. “The Golden Eagle is one that does not go beyond the Himalayas.”
Many other aquiline eagles and the Pallas’s fish eagle are also in India, but during the non-breeding season. The life span of eagles in the wild is generally around 30 years.
Since the eagles were procured at an early age, they did not know their parents and grew up thinking they were human. “This made the bond (with humans) stronger,” sources said.
Hand-reared eagles are aggressive because they are fearless. Eagles have excellent 20/5 vision, meaning they can see things from 20ft (6 meters) away which humans can only see from 5ft (1.5 meters).
In the initial months of training, the eagles were made to understand their trainers through a readied set of commands. Once well-versed, they were trained to identify drones. Eventually, drones were launched for them which they brought down successfully. The tremendous power in the eagles’ talons enabled them to destroy the drones easily.
“With eagles, it’s all about the food and trust,” police sources told RT. “Once it starts to fully trust you, they will come back for food. So training for intercepting drones was about food. When they successfully intercepted a drone, they were well fed.”
The birds were given a specialized diet comprising fresh meat such as rodents, fish and poultry – crucial to maintaining their health. The birds, from the dense Nallamalla forest spanning Telangana and neighboring Andhra Pradesh, were also fed rabbits, bats and other birds. Regular veterinary care was provided even as the falconers developed a bond through consistent handling and positive reinforcement techniques.
“Eagles are wild birds but they work well with humans,” sources told RT. “They find the human voice soothing. The key aspect is to talk to them regularly, particularly while training them.”
The police were reluctant to name the species of eagle, concerned that terror groups could train the same birds to pull down surveillance drones on India’s borders.
Telangana Police
Birds, dogs and surveillance
The birds were trained for up to two hours daily at the Integrated Intelligence Training Academy (IITA), about 30km from Hyderabad, the state capital. An aviary was set up to give them ample space for flying and perching. The IITA is where dogs are trained to detect explosives and help pick up clues at a crime scene, besides accompanying policemen in operations. Since its inception in 2006, the IITA trained close to 800 canines and over 1,100 handlers.
“The rate of interception of drones by the eagles is very high,” Tafseer Iqubal said. “The birds are an important component in VVIP security now.”
Recently, a demonstration was also held before the top brass at IITA. A video showed an eagle sitting on a shed suddenly taking to the skies and towards an object. In a split second, it grabbed the object and flew back. It was a drone and the task was accomplished with precision.
The birds have also been trained for surveillance. They are equipped with cameras that provide high-quality images. “They give us a birds-eye view of the goings-on both in the sky and on the ground, to enable better surveillance,” Iqubal said, without going into specifics.
He added that the training of eagles was cheaper than procuring anti-drone detection systems. It is believed that only a few hundred thousand rupees (a few thousand dollars) was spent during the past three years. “Investment in nano- and macro-level drones for such projects involves millions in expenses,” Iqubal said. “By comparison, our initiative was economical as we spent only on the birds and the training.”
But there are limitations.
As the eagles cannot differentiate between home and rogue drones, they are used only in the “red zones” or no-fly zones. They can interdict nano-drones (up to 250 grams) and micro-drones (250 grams to 2kg) but not beyond. And drones are now equipped with anti-collision sensors that might sense the birds and change course. “We are closely monitoring all aspects,” sources told RT. “It’s a new project and we will wait and see how it turns out.”
Rogue drones and sophisticated technology
In recent times there have been recorded instances of rogue drones being launched from Pakistan into India, to drop weapons, ammunition, IEDs and drugs. They have also been launched to attack. In a bid to thwart infiltration, the army recently deployed a counter-drone system along the Line of Control (LoC) between the two countries.
India’s northern regions of Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab have witnessed multiple drone attacks in the last few years. The BSF either shot down or recovered 107 drones from along the India-Pakistan border in Punjab in 2023, and in 2024 it took down 125 drones.
“Radio frequency and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) jammers are the most common directed-energy method for interdicting drones,” an army official requesting anonymity told RT. “With Telangana achieving success with eagles, the Indian Army is definitely interested in it.”
In 2024, a fast-growing defense start-up, Big Bang Boom Solutions Private Limited (BBBS), got an order worth over 2 billion rupees ($23.24 million) from the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Army for its counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) technology. C-UAS systems are intended to counter the growing threat from technologically simple, inexpensive, commercially available drones that can inflict disproportionate damage.
BBBS’s Vajra Sentinel is a state-of-the-art, anti-drone system designed to detect, track, and neutralize drones at extraordinary ranges. Its sensors and jammers meet military-standard specifications for durability and reliability.
“Jammers work either by severing the connection between the drone and its operators or increasing interference to make it difficult for the drone to locate the correct signal,” a senior official said, adding that the system’s core sensor is built around artificial intelligence (AI). Computer vision algorithms enable precise identification, classification, and location of drones.