Centre pumps in Rs1,500 crore for advanced drones

The Centre has approved a budget of Rs1,500 crore for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to develop India’s latest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Rustom-H.
This was disclosed by the chief controller, research and development of DRDO, W Selvamurthy, in Pune on Thursday.

He was speaking at a press meet held on the sidelines of the second national symposium on robotics and autonomous vehicles held at the Research and Development Establishment, Engineers, R&DE (E).

Selvamurthy said the Rustom-H would be India’s latest medium altitude (20 km), long range (24 hours endurance) and heavy payload (500 kg) UAV and would be developed over five years. “We are keen to develop a micro UAV the size of a cockroach,’’ he added.

Emphasising that future wars would increasingly see the use of unmanned vehicles, Selvamurthy said the US Army had projected that by 2035, one-third of their hardware would comprise only unmanned vehicles.

The Rustom-H would be developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment, a Bangalore-based DRDO laboratory. Selvamurthy said a special UAV centre would be soon developed in Chitradurga (Karnataka) to facilitate all test flights and demonstrations of Rustom-H and other UAVs of the future.

On the Agni-5 missile, Selvamurthy said it would have a range of 5,000 km and would be test-fired in March 2012. Two variants of the light combat aircraft Tejas, one a trainer and the other a naval aircraft, would also be developed. Also on the DRDO’s drawing board is an advanced medium combat aircraft.

He said DRDO, which had delivered 101 Arjun main battle tanks (MBTs) to the army, had received orders for another 124 tanks. The newer version of the Arjun MBT-II with 13 new features would be ready for formal demonstration in June 2012. The new features include better missile firing capability, better penetration of ammunition and thermal lighting for the tank commanders.