‘Dhurandhdrone’?

Wodehouse to warzone…and a sexy JV   

It used to bee a lazy insect;  then came PG Wodehouse’s Drones Club members, as gainfully unemployed but with sharper tailoring. After lying dormant for decades the term has undergone megamorphosis, to emerge as hyperactive stealth machine, scrambling defence budgets and power balance alike. These nimble guerrillas have not only hobbled vaunted warhorses; they have upended the tactical hierarchy with Chanakyan subterfuge.

All this Star Performer dazzle obscures the fact that a  drone was once the most unproductive segment of  both apiculture and Brit aristo-culture, contributing nothing  to domesticity or GDP but happily consuming community resources. The insect’s sole job was to ensure genetic diversity by mating with a virgin queen from another colony; after which it  dropped dead from unaccustomed exertion or was unceremoniously evicted. Drones Club members faced no such blackballing even if the seeded recipient wasn’t queen or even virgin. 

Erm, penetration is also the war-drone’s main task, but unlike the previous lay-abouts, it unrelentingly keeps going up and swooping down. Heineken beer’s iconic advertising line was, ‘Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach’;  this wunderkind ‘breaches the parts other systems cannot defend’.  

Even more jaw-droppingly, it’s ridiculously cheaper than the armoury’s conventional workers or even its queen- bees. This also means that less than $3million spent for a hundred drones will cost the enemy $300mn in defensive ditto. In today’s warfare, economic attrition counts as much as physical damage. 

So-ji, why not make the drone undergo another sexy change?  Deploy apna  honed jugaad to make this  hardware wower add josh to our soft power? Best JV would be with our own superhero, Dhurandhar. Far-fetched? Bakwas. The fit is far better than the gross ways every leader and his poodle have squeezed onto this super-grosser’s  bandwagon. 

So much the two Ds are having in common. 

War drone’s unblinking ‘eye in the sky’ equals filmi hero’s  all-seeing awareness.

Neither needs to be seen to be feared. 

Both express power by pinpoint accuracy, not noise. 

Both are indefatigable. They endure  pressure – and exert it – beyond known limits

Finally, Dhurandhar hero’s challenge is: ‘Can you face me?’; the  drone’s is, ‘Can you escape me?’. 

See, told you no, both same-to-same. 

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Alec Smart said: “In this war, or any, there is no Trump card.”