India Quietly Begins Combat DRONE Project

India is quietly going ahead with an ambitious programme to develop its own stealth UCAVs (unmanned combat aerial vehicles) or ‘smart’ drones capable of firing missiles and bombs at enemy targets with precision.

Talking about the secretive AURA (autonomous unmanned research aircraft) programme for the first time, Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) told TOI that the aim is to develop the UCAVs for IAF in seven to eight years.

“With Rs 50 crore as seed money, a full-fledged project team with 15-18 scientists has already begun work on the UCAV’s preliminary design and technology. With on-board mission computers, data links, fire control radars, identification of friend or foe, and traffic collision avoidance systems, they will be highly intelligent drones,” DRDO’s chief controller R&D (aeronautics) Dr Prahlada said.

“Capable of flying at altitudes of 30,000 feet and weighing less than 15 tonnes, the UCAVs will have rail-launching for the missiles, bombs and PGMs (precision-guided munitions) they will carry,” he added.

DRDO, on its part, is confident of developing the UCAVs mainly on its own, with “some foreign consultancy or collaboration” in fields like stealth as well as autonomous short-run take-off and landing.

Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) at Bangalore is the main nodal DRDO lab for the AURA project, with others like Defence Avionics Research Establishment (Bangalore), Defence Electronics Application Lab (Dehradun) and Gas Turbine Research Establishment (Bangalore) chipping in.

With the addition of AURA to IAF a new equation has started for India with her neighbouring countries. Specially with Bangladesh and off course Pakistan. This addition will bring new challenge for these two countries and will develop new tension in this region. From Bangladesh perspective this is going to create enormous pressure to its defence system and severity. Bangladesh yet does not have such anti-aircraft radar system to detect such high tech DRONE. AURA will surely influence Bangladesh to rethink about her defence mechanism in the coming years.