India's UCAV To Fly In 2015, Says DRDO. High Hopes?

[mautkimaut]

We dont even have a proper propeller driven UAV and we dream of having a jet powered stealth UCAV in 3 years? What was this guy smoking when he wrote this?



Why do I see a Cyrillic'G' om those markings?

Because we are working with NPO Saturn for the engine..

 

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

We dont even have a proper propeller driven UAV and we dream of having a jet powered stealth UCAV in 3 years? What was this guy smoking when he wrote this?

Can kaveri help us here?

 

[Rang De]

and when is this thing gonna fly?

 

[Vibs]

Hmm..seems like a plan to run before you can walk. But if they do pull it off before the end of this decade, even if it isn't in 2015, hat's off to them.

 

[Dash]

Can kaveri help us here?

Then that will be dangerous, at best Kaveri is a separate project and we can link it to anything else only after its success.
and if you see it optimistically then even Snechma/Kaveri is not coming anytime soon.

 

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

Then that will be dangerous, at best Kaveri is a separate project and we can link it to anything else only after its success.
and if you see it optimistically then even Snechma/Kaveri is not coming anytime soon.

I recall reading that Kaveri can used for drones.

 

[Firemaster]

DIAT to provide eyes and ears for country

As India prepares to join the elite club of countries possessing Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV), a DRDO laboratory in the city has been working on conceptualising and designing the eyes and ears of India’s first armed war bird.

Scientists at DRDO’s Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), a deemed university, have been working on designing radars and sensors of Aura, the first indigenous UCAV currently under development at the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Bangalore.

In an exclusive interview, DIAT Vice-Chancellor Prahlada said, “Scientists at DIAT are working on development of radars for the UCAV programme currently under way at ADA. The expected timeline for development of a prototype is about a year-and-a- half from now. The radar will provide C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capability to the aircraft. Research is on on development of lightweight radars to reduce weight of the aircraft, save maximum energy and provide realtime feedback to the control centre,” said Prahlada.

Aura, a stealth UAV capable of firing precision-guided munitions at targets is expected to add teeth to the country’s existing fleet of UAVs. While the first flight is expected to take place in 2015, the targeted year of induction 2017. Prahlada added, “Work is currently on regarding selection of materials, components and technological aspects of the radars. We are currently working with our own budgets.”

It may be noted that DIAT receives annual funds of Rs 50 crore and is expected to get an increased funding of Rs 100 crore per year over the next three years. “DRDO wants to develop DIAT into a centre for basic research, which can then be implemented in technology being developed at DRDO laboratories and industries. World over, the basic R&D is outsourced to universities and that is exactly what is being implemented here at DIAT. The laboratory has already entered into an agreement with Naval Postgraduate School and professors there regularly interact with researchers here and vice-versa. Plans to enter into a collaboration with Israel are under way,” he said.

The laboratory has 200 MTech students and 50 PhD scholars. Future plans include introduction of a management wing to confer an MBA equivalent degree to personnel from the DRDO, Armed Forces and even civilian sectors. Prahlada also spelt out the need for starting an aeronautical programme at DIAT.

 

[angeldemon_007]

and when is this thing gonna fly?

First flight supposedly by Feb 2014...Designing of Rustom-2 has been completed and purchase orders have been placed. These figures they are talking about Rustom 2. Now there's confusion about Rustom 2 and Rustom-H. Rustom-H is what you can see in the above picture that blue color UAV which will be developed before Rustom-2 which will be the armed variant like Predator. So according to the information on the web and wiki, the first flight might of Rustom-H might be before 2014. These dates might be wrong because drdo always gets mixed up in such timelines.

 

[sancho]

Which country is good with dead lines?

As the complexity arise, there are chances of more failures. We blame drdo for lca

You guys are making excuses here! DRDO is not Indian defence industry as a whole, it is just one agency or company (how ever you want to call it) in our industry, so when we compare deadlines, we have to do it with comparable companies, that develops parts of new developments, not with the whole development!

Nobody is blaming DRDO for LCA, because LCA as a fighter is developed by ADA and HAL as well. But the prime internal systems should have been done by DRDO (MMR and Kaveri K9), so if we blame DRDO, we blame them for their complete incompetence to estimate how their own capabilties were and how difficult it is to develop things like that, because that's why they failed in these important developments! And please don't come with the excuse of, we did it the first time, because they knew that when they started these developments and if you know this, you think twice or three times about deadlines, partners or JVs to make this development easier.
Everytime when an DRDO official talks about a new development and calls it "ambitous" an alarm starts in my head! Why the hell do they always try things that are beyond their reach? Why not show some basics, that are less shiny? AESA radar before MMR works, AMCA before LCA works, AURA although Rustom is still under development, we are not even close to have an armed drone let alone the expertise for stealth airframes yet, Kaveri (which is meant to power AURA) needs to be size and weight reduced, which is even more cruicial for an UCAV, than for LCA...

DRDO thinks they can do it all and they can do it all alone and that's the problem, they should stick with thinks they can do and let others do the rest, even though they might get the credit then, but pride is a big issue right?

I still rate AURA as the most important aircraft development for IAF, next to FGFA, because it add tactically much capability, is more cost-effective and relatively easier to develop than a 5th gen fighter. What I fear though, is that DRDO makes the same mistakes again and want to do everything alone! Making it dependent on Kaveri engine is the first move to this direction and since they develop our indigenous UAVs mainly alone, they might want to do the airframe design alone too, instead of using HALs experience. Just like they won't ask for JVs with foreign partners or countries, although IAI or Israel in this field would be the most logical and likely choices, since they have the highest knowledge with UAVs, don't get stealth UCAVs from other countries and currently don't even have that much money to fund such projects.

Indias main advantage is our foreign policy and our independence, that gives us access to markets and partnerships that only very few countries have in the world. Our private companies had shown this at the last defexpo for example and HAL had shown this with their successful helicopter side, GoI and MoD knows it through MKI, Brahmos and FGFA developments. When DRDO also realises this, they will move forward and be better as well, otherwise they will show the same failures as well.

 

[angeldemon_007]

^^^
everthing went wrong in LCA...which includes banning of india after nuke test... then IAF was also responcible because of not proper and timely delivery of ASR...i agree with engine (GTRE overestimated themselves but it was their first time).

 

[Abingdonboy]

LCA program was sort of a victim of its own success. Initially the IAF laid down pretty basic requirements for the LCA to achieve to replace the outdated -21s but once the DRDO/HAL started to make some progress and made bold claims about what they could achieve in relatively quick time the IAF started to dramatically higher their requirements for the LCA to meet before entering into service. Consequently the IAF's requirements eventually ended up asking for an advanced, lightwieght 4.5+ gen multi-role fighter which was quite far removed from what had originally been invisiged at the start of the feasibility studies. Hence it has only been relatively recently when large amounts of funds have been available to DRDO/LCA program that any sort of big movement forward has been seen. But this hardship will pay untold dividends in the future when it comes to future indigenous design/development programs in the aeronautical sector.

 

[IND151]

I have a free advice for drdo. Complete the tejas mk1 first. Which is still dont have foc

surprisingly i found similar comment on livefist

BTW best luck to Aura