Tonbo Imaging And Bharat Dynamics Developing Anti-Tank Missile
![Tonbo Imaging And Bharat Dynamics Developing Anti-Tank Missile](/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Untitled-design-8-min-2.png)
(This News Article Is Originally Posted on LiveMint by Malavika Velayanikal)
Highlights:
- Bengaluru startup Tonbo Imaging is co-developing man-portable anti-tank guided missiles with Bharat Dynamics
- Tonbo got traction at home only after the US special forces and Israel Aerospace Industries became its clients
Byzantine defence procurement processes make it hard for Indiaโs startups to pitch in their tech know-how to modernize the armed forces, especially in critical areas like anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), whose shortage was acutely felt during the border skirmish with China.
One outlier is Bengaluru startup Tonbo Imaging, which has landed a co-development deal with state-run firm Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) to produce MPAT-GMs (man-portable ATGMs). These lightweight precision missiles will be tipped with state-of-the-art imaging systems, enabling them to home in on enemy tanks and hit them at their most vulnerable points.
Itโs the latest twist in a long saga of the Indian armed forcesโ quest for modern ATGMs fitted with imaging infrared (IIR) seekers for night-fighting. A deal to buy 8,356 Israeli Spike missiles was dumped at the last minute in 2017 on hopes that the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), which had been working on indigenous ATGMs for over a decade, would deliver them. But despite periodic announcements of โsuccessful tests”, DRDOโs third-generation Nag missiles are yet to be inducted as doubts persist over their costs and capabilities. The army even had to place an emergency order for 240 Spike missiles to be deployed on the Pakistan border following the Pulwama attack and Balakot air strike in 2019.
Next-gen tech
Now, MPATGM capabilities have moved even beyond third-generation systems. For example, Tonboโs IIR seeker has an โuncooledโ imaging system, which lowers its cost by one-third to half because it doesnโt require a cryogenic compressor to cool the image sensors. โWe have used an uncooled imager to achieve the same thing as cooled imaging sensor technology. So, that gives us a great price advantage, not just because itโs made in India, but also because the technology we have chosen gives us an upper hand,” points out Tonboโs co-founder and CTO Ankit Kumar.
Thatโs how the agility and disruptive ability of a startup come into play. Israelโs Rafael, for example, is a leader in this space, producing Spike missiles for armed forces around the world for several years. Itโs harder for a behemoth like that to shift to new technology from cooling systems. And the same applies to DRDO, which announced the โfinal test” of its Nag missiles last year but may well find they are outdated even before deployment.
โTonbo has built an ultra lightweight uncooled seeker. Nagโs IIR seeker is a cooled, much heavier system. One of the big differences between a cooled system and an uncooled system is the cost. When you have a large expensive missile with long range, a cooled system might be acceptable. In an MPATGM, where the cost of the missile is expected to be as low as possible, using a cooled seeker doesnโt make sense. Itโs like putting a Ferrari engine for driving on roads where the maximum speed is 20kmph,” says Tonboโs founder and CEO Arvind Lakshmikumar.
Price and weight are not the only factors in contention. The โfire and forgetโ capability of an MPATGM or guided bomb or โkamikazeโ drone depends on its edge AI onboard image processing and real-time recognition of targets. Nine-year-old Tonbo, whose founder has a PhD in computer vision from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, has been building infrared image libraries of military targets to train the algorithms in its seekers to be able to do just that.
โThe problem with current missile-seekers of DRDO and also many of the international ones is that they are not terribly intelligent,” says Lakshmikumar. โTonboโs seeker is built on our deep learning technology that can automatically classify weak areas on a target. As the missile is fired, the seeker can identify the vulnerable parts of a target and reorient the missile to hit those parts. This allows an MPATGM to have an impact against armoured hulls.”
Unique eyes
Tonbo means dragonfly in Japanese as well as Tamil. The reference is to the dragonflyโs unique compound eyes with 40,000 lenses from which its brain derives a composite image. Similarly, the AI in Tonboโs seeker combines the image inputs from multiple sensors to home in.
Ironically enough, the startup first made headway with its intelligent imaging systems in foreign markets before gaining the trust of Indian defence. It got traction at home only after two of the worldโs most advanced entities, the US special forces and Israel Aerospace Industries, became its clients. Even Rafael is a Tonbo customer.
Now, finally, it may be Indiaโs turn to benefit from the deep tech startupโs expertise in something as strategic as missile systems, where the latest technology is often denied to buyers from developing nations.
Air Marshal Shirish Baban Deo, who was vice chief of air staff when he retired in 2018, has first-hand experience of how buyers from India are sometimes treated. โI wanted to buy a forward-looking infrared system from a US firm. They were asking, โWhat would you do with it? Why do you need this quality? Why donโt you take a lower quality one?โ I was paying good money, but they just didnโt want to sell that to me. It was humiliating,” he recalls.
He believes a push for self-reliance is overdue. โIf you have a crisis on your hands and you need something urgently, theyโll not give it to you. And if at all they give it to you, it will be at an absolutely exorbitant price. So, itโs extremely important for our national security that we make these things ourselves. This is where Tonbo has set a new benchmark for us, and the government is now backing the defence industry.”
He feels attitudes are changing towards Indian private sector involvement in strategic areas. โI can tell you that when I was in service, it was sort of not encouraged. People were very reluctant to trust things that were made in India. Tonbo is a pioneer in this. They had a different business strategy. They were very sure of their competence, so they focused on exports first,” he says.
Deo himself has now floated a firmโJSR Dynamicsโto make cutting-edge defence systems. โI am also thinking of making an ATGM that will compete with what BDL has made. The seeker is one thing but the ATGM has a whole lot of other components. Thereโs the warhead design, thereโs guidance and control and thereโs the ability to launch from a confined space, which JSR is doing.”
Imaging infrared seekers with edge AI processing on board are the eyes and on-the-spot decision-makers of modern warfare, whether itโs MPATGMs or a swarm of drones or โloitering munitionsโ, which are missiles that can hover over a target until itโs the right time to hit it. So, the MPATGM deal could be a game-changer for indigenization of critical defence equipment powered by a startup.
โThe procurement plan is for 2,300 pieces initially once we have demonstrated it. Then the total requirement is a few thousands every year because India is lagging behind in this capability,” says Kumar.