Important Facts For Prelims
UAV Procurement by Indian Army
- 16 Jan 2021
- 2 min read
Why in News
The Indian Army has signed a contract to buy high-altitude drones from ideaForge for USD 20 million.
- ideaForge is a start-up founded and incubated by the alumni of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B).
- The contract is for a high-altitude variant of SWITCH UAV, an indigenous system used in surveillance operations.
Key Points
- Significance of the Contract:
- It marks a strategic shift of focusing on indegenous technologies in the Indian defence procurement process.
- This is an example of how government-funded start-ups can help the country grow.
- This is the biggest such order in terms of the contract value, for any Indian equipment manufacturer for drones.
- Importance of UAV for the Army:
- The Army has placed an order for the advanced high-altitude version of SWITCH UAV, a vertical take-off and landing drone. It is a fixed-wing hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Its features include:
- Advanced flight time with a range of 15 km.
- Around 2.6m long and 1.8m wide and weighs less than 6.5 kg.
- Higher safety and simple operation with additional fail-safe redundancies.
- Used for long-duration operations in harsh environments for day and night surveillance in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
- Used in Photogrammetry - the technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery.
- The Army has placed an order for the advanced high-altitude version of SWITCH UAV, a vertical take-off and landing drone. It is a fixed-wing hybrid Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Its features include:
- Other Uses: Crowd Monitoring, Disaster Management, Precision Agriculture, Mining, etc.
