Operation Sindoor: How Israel’s HAROP Drones Powered India’s Strike on Pakistan

India's defense systems thwarted Pakistan's attempted attacks on military targets in northern and western India on Thursday. India also targeted multiple air defense systems in Pakistan on Thursday and successfully hit one in Lahore. We understand that they used the latest Israeli HAROPs, a type of unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

HAROP is a kind of loitering munition. This category of weapons is named so because they loiter in the air close to the designated target. HAROPs cause destruction by crashing into their targets with the explosive payload they carry, thereby earning names such as "suicide drones" and "kamikaze drones."

Target surveillance and autonomous or non-autonomous precision strikes are also possible with loitering munitions. The Indian Armed Forces, in the last few years, have been procuring a range of drones, including loitering munitions.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations also claimed that India had used HAROPs. Defense manufacturer Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) has called it the "King of the Battlefield."

According to the website, HAROP possesses a nine-hour endurance that allows it to seek targets in a designated area, locate and identify them, plan an attack route, and then pursue the strike from any direction, whether it is shallow or steep. The system can also overcome challenges in communication with its immunity to Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jamming.

It is launched from canisters mounted on trucks or naval vessels and can be deployed from diverse terrains and environments.

The Israeli Aerospace Industries has said that it was the first to develop loitering munitions. In the 1980s, IAI introduced the HARPY—initially dubbed a 'Kamikaze Drone.' However, according to the IAI website, this definition often misrepresents the versatility of the HARPY weapon system.