UAVs of INDAN ARMED FORCES
Q:- What is UAV ?
UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is an aircraft without the human pilot or passenger. They can be fully or partially autonomus but more often controlled remotely by human pilot. UAVs are used to reduce the human efforts while basically used for Military purpose but now as the technological advanced era UAVs are expanding to commercial, agriculture, scientifc, earth mapping and in many more fields.
Classification :-
UAV falls in Six categories-
- Target and Decoy – provide ground and aerial gunnery a target that simulates an enemy aircraft or missile.
- Reconnaissance – provide battelfield intelligence.
- Combat – provide attack capability for high-risk mission.
- Logistics – dilevering cargo
- Research and Development – improve UAV technologies
- Civil and commercial UAV – agriculture, aerial photography, data collection.
India’s aquisation of UAVs-
Indian armed forces operating UAVs for over two decades. The Indian army was the first to aquire UAVs in late 1990s from Israel and,then Indian Air-force and Navy.
The need for the deployment of the UAVs became necessary after the discovery of the pakistani intruders occupying the strategic heights of the Kargil so it become very important to keep constant vigil on the borders of the country.
While Defence Research and Development Organsiation has been trying to built indigenous UAV and produced a catapult launched UAV which was developed by its Aeronautical Developmental Esteblishment. Later on they developed Panchi , Lakshya,Rustom etc. more advanced UAVs.
UAVs in Indian Armed forces-
India is the biggest importer of UAVs and has built many indigenous UAVs. An overlook of these UAVs as follows-
UAV Nishant-
Nishant is a multi-mission UAV launched using a Mobile Hydro Pneumatic Launcher with day/night capability used for battelfield surveillance and reconnaissance, target tracking and localization, and artillery fire correction. It is highly mobile, compact and easily deployable system. It is recovered with Aero conical parachute and impace attenuation system.
UAV Panchi –
Panchi is the varient of UAV Nishant with capability of conventional take-off and landing. It carries daylight camera, infrared camera and laser designator and powered with indigenously developed rotary wankel engine. It has state of art, capale of surveillance, reconnaissance, target location detection and artillery fire correction.
UAV Lakshya-
Lakshya is cost effective re-usable high subsonic aerial target system powered with gas turbine engine and launched either from land or ship. It carries two tow target fo length 1.5km each having radar and IR or visual signature augmentation and miss distance indication scoring system. These tow targets are used for training of land or ship based gun and missile crew and combat aircraft pilot in weapon engagement.
UAV Rustom
Rustom-1 i all composit of 800kg class Short Range Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (SR-RPAS) having capabilities of intelligance, surveillance, reconnaissance, target Aquisation/tracking and image exploitation.
Rustom-2 is a medium-altitude long endurance UAV designed to carry out surveillance and reconnissance for Indian Armed Forces. DRDO carried successfull test flight on 25-feb-2018 but during the development trails Rustom-2 crashed on 17-sept-2019.
UAV Heron –
The advance system is fully automated take-off and landing even in adverse weather condition. Developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
Flying at a height of 30,000ft, Heron provides its operators with real-time information on enemy battlefields by performing surveillance and target acquisition over large areas.
UAV Searcher-
Searcher was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries in 1980s. It’s operating speed is 125mph, service ceiling 20,000 ft and range 18hours.
More than 100 Searcher II are being operated by Indian Air-force and Indian Navy.
Technologically advanced militaries across the world have incorporated UAVs as a new critical component that can possibly reduced the human casualties, provide the real time data mission, enemy movement and detecting improvised explosive devices (IED).
The absence of an onboard crew also have its obvious advantages in case of crash in enemy territory.
References : DRDO, Wikipedia, indiastrategic.in.
-Kuldeep singh