Bhubaneswar: The prolonged delay in procurement of long-endurance drones for the Indian forces has always been a part of talks in Indian defence circuit, and the recent agreement between India-US on the procurement of 31 General Electric MQ-9B drones has made this necessity quite evident.
The MQ-9B procurement deal will be for 31 drones for the tri-services, out of which 15 MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones will be allotted to Indian Navy and 8 MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones each to the Indian Army and Indian Air Force.
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The Indian Navy is already operating 2 MQ-9A (Predator A) unarmed drones taken on lease from the United States since November 2020. Both the UAVs have already served for more than 12,000 flying hours and Indian Navy is even planning to extend the lease further considering the performance of the UAVs.
In addition to these developments, there are media reports saying that the Indian security forces are now planning to acquire as many as 97 multirole long endurance ‘Made-in-India’ drones. According to the reports, the requirement is for a medium altitude long endurance drone with a maximum operational endurance of 30 hours.
Though there is no official confirmation on the name of the drone, but there are a few surfacing for the contendership ever since the reports breakout.
Israel Aerospace Industries’ Heron (Machatz-1) is among the front runners, with 90 UAVs already in service for the Indian forces. Reliable with its surveillance expertise the Heron UAV has an operational endurance of 52 hours.
As per reports, 4 Heron TP variant UAVs of Indian Army will soon be upgraded by Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL) under ‘project cheetah’, which will allow to operate weaponry through the platform. The upgradation will be done as per the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) guidance, where 60% of the components will be indigenous.
The other contender for the deal could be Defence Research and Development Organisation’s indigenous TAPAS BH-201 drone. The UAV platform has recently completed its developmental trials and currently undergoing the user trials. A tri-service team has visited facility to see the 200th flight demonstration of TAPAS, where DODO briefed the team of the developments regarding the platform.
June 16, 2023, DRDO also successfully conducted a trial where the command & control capabilities of a TAPAS UAV in air was transferred from a remote ground base to Indian Navy’s INS Subhadra, which was located 148 km away from the Karwar naval base.
#DRDOUpdates | DRDO and @indiannavy team successfully demonstrated transferring of command & control capabilities of TAPAS UAV from a distant ground station to onboard INS Subhadra, 148km from Karwar naval base on 16 Jun 2023. @DefenceMinIndia@SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/sHzpaZB1Qt
— DRDO (@DRDO_India) June 18, 2023
There were reports regarding procurement of 76 TAPAS BH-201 drones, 60 for the Indian Army, 12 for the Indian Air Force, and 4 for the Indian Navy, which has further raised the chances of TAPAS UAVs for the deal and DRDO will definitely try to push their platform.
Though the possibilities of acquisition of either of the drones in accordance with the current requirements are high, but nothing can be said until the official confirmation comes out.