Babatpur Airport Runs Drone and ATC Attack Mock Drill

Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport at Babatpur ran a multi-agency mock drill on Monday afternoon that simulated a drone intrusion followed by an armed attack on the air traffic control building. Eighty-four personnel from the Central Industrial Security Force, Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad, Airports Authority of India, police and allied units took part until the exercise was stood down around 2:32 pm.

The script began at about 1:26 pm when a watchtower lookout reported an unmanned aerial vehicle approaching the airport. The security operations control centre alerted ATC, AAI, police, CISF bomb detection and disposal teams, the quick reaction team and UP ATS. By about 1:35 pm the drill treated the drone as a potential threat to a critical facility and staged it as brought down toward the cargo side. CISF QRT and ATS cordoned the area while bomb dogs and detection teams examined the drone for a possible IED payload and then declared it safe under the exercise rules.

Minutes later, around 1:40 pm, the scenario shifted to three armed attackers forcing entry into the ATC building, with a mock civilian fatality and injuries to a passenger screening staff member and another civilian. CISF presence in the tower area was written into the script to keep the mock assault limited to the ground floor. Joint CISF and ATS teams entered, neutralised the simulated attackers, and extracted the mock-injured for medical aid. Bomb teams then searched the building and surroundings. The area was declared safe at about 2:30 pm, and the integrated command post ended the drill at 2:32 pm.

Officials described the exercise as part of a multi-agency sub-conventional aerial threat and annual counter-terror contingency plan mock. The point was speed of alert, cordon, drone examination, building entry and casualty handling across agencies that do not drill together every day.

The headcount broke down as roughly 30 CISF, 30 UP ATS, 10 AAI, five AAI fire, three UP police, two medical inspection room staff, two Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and two Intelligence Bureau personnel. That mix mirrors the real call tree for an aerial-plus-ground incident at a civil airport.

Babatpur handles scheduled passenger traffic for Varanasi and the wider pilgrim catchment. A drone over the fence line and an ATC assault are low-probability, high-impact problems. Practising them on a Monday afternoon, with a clear start and stop time, is how airports test whether radio nets and command posts actually talk to each other under pressure.

No real threat was involved. Flights and public movement outside the drill zones followed normal airport controls. What Monday produced is a timed rehearsal: watchtower to control centre in minutes, drone rendered safe, ATC cleared, command post closed. For city readers the takeaway is that CISF, ATS and AAI treated aerial and ATC scenarios as live training, not paperwork.