For The Fifth Time, Indian Navy Scouts Shipborne Drones

(This News Article is Originally Posted On LiveFist by Shiv Aroor)

The Indian Navy was cleared today to pursue a purchase of 10 shipborne drones. As we reported in August, this will be the navy’s FIFTH attempt to acquire such a capability.

Part of a raft of military hardware acquisitions being processed under ’emergency procurement’ rules in the backdrop of border tensions with China, the Indian Navy is reported to be keen on the rapid acquisition of 10 unmanned air systems for frontline warships deployed in the Indian Ocean.

While shipborne drones can be both rotorcraft or the fixed-wing variety, the Indian Navy has always leaned towards the former and even tested several products over the years. In that title photograph you see above, an Austrian Schiebel Camcopter is seen being tested off Indian Navy patrol vessel INS Sujata back in 2007. It was the second fruitless attempt at nailing down an order contract. Since the mid-2000s, the Indian Navy has considered or been pitched an entire raft of shipborne drone systems, including, notably, the Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout in 2009-10 and Saab’s Skeldar. On the fixed-wing front, Boeing has maintained the ScanEagle as a naval shipborne opportunity with the Indian Navy for years, though the customer appears inclined toward the rotorcraft variety.

The Indian Navy’s eagerness for the capability over the years once saw it partially fund a joint attempt by HAL and Israel’s IAI to convert the Chetak helicopter into an unmanned drone platform. Going with the working title naval rotary UAV (NRUAV), the project literally failed to lift off over technological roadblocks. In 2011, IAI even offered to attempt unmanning HAL’s popular Dhruv helicopter platform, though this hit a roadblock with the Indian Navy itself. You can read all about the navy’s unseemly new tryst with the Dhruv here.

In 2017, years after the NRUAV faded into the sunset of closed projects, it emerged that India’s DRDO had taken up the mantle of unmanning the Chetak helicopter, under a project designated R-UAV. It is unclear if work has progressed on that front, though there has been little by way of even a peep from the program or in published literature from the DRDO to suggest it’s still alive. You can read more about the DRDO’s effort here.

Years after the NRUAV project ended, last year India’s HAL unveiled a 200-kg RUAV, with plans to begin testing it in the coming year.