Peshawar Safe City links drone unit and anti-drone radar to command room

The Peshawar Safe City Project has connected a drone unit and an anti-drone system to its central command room, police officials said, describing the step as the first time a Pakistani Safe City project has integrated both capabilities. TechJuice and ProPakistani both carried the report on 28 October.

According to the officials, the anti-drone component can detect and track drones within a five-kilometre radar range and automatically raises an alert at the Safe City control room when it picks up suspicious activity in the air.

The drone unit is to provide aerial surveillance around sensitive locations, traffic and suspected criminal or militant activity, the officials said, and will operate around the clock. Live feeds from the drones will let staff watch field operations as they happen and pass information to officers on the ground.

Police officials said the arrangement will function in four districts: Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Lakki Marwat. The feeds will also be used to support the Counter Terrorism Department's operations, they added, with the stated aim of improving coordination across the region.

Neither outlet named the police officials who described the system, and neither report gave a cost, the supplier, the number of drones, or a date on which the system became operational. Skardu Times could not independently confirm those details.

Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu and Lakki Marwat are districts where police and security forces have repeatedly come under attack in recent years, and where movement of militant groups has been a persistent concern for the provincial government. Peshawar, the provincial capital, has hosted a Safe City camera and monitoring network for several years.

Safe City programmes run by provincial governments combine camera networks, sensors and a central monitoring facility, and have been a standing item in provincial security spending. The scale of the Peshawar drone deployment, whether it covers the whole city or selected points, was not described in either report.

Both reports were based on the same set of official briefings, and the technical details they carry, including the five-kilometre radar range and the list of four districts, could not be checked against an independent source.