From helping in cordon-and-search ops, negotiating obstacles to lobbing grenades at terrorists holed up in buildings, the Indian Army will soon have robots to help it in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir, reports Livemint on November 14. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has started the process of procuring around 550 robotics surveillance units with minimum 25 years of service life for counter-insurgency ops in Jammu and Kashmir, sources said on November 13. An unnamed senior Indian Army officer told IANS that these robots should be capable of climbing stairs and negotiating obstacles apart from throwing grenades at terrorists in built-up areas. "These robots should be capable enough for water fording with minimum 20-cm depth," the officer said. During cordon-and-search-operations in the Valley, these robots will be the first line of defence, thus helping prevent casualties. "This would avoid casualty to our own troops during initial breach by terrorists," the officer said. The MoD on November 19 had called the Indian industries to make representations of their products about robotics surveillance. The ministry is pushing for indigenization to reduce dependence on imports of defence items.