Defence tech startup Hawking Defence Services, on 19 April, said it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Australian UAV Technologies, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and electronics company based out of New South Wales in Australia.
The two companies have partnered to establish a joint venture company which would enable technology transfer, joint research and development and licensed manufacturing of unmanned systems between these two entities.
The MoU was signed at the Austrade office in the Australian Consulate in Chennai and is one of the first such partnerships between defence industry companies since the Australia-India Free Trade Agreement came into effect.
Vijayanarayanan Rapalli, MD, Hawking Defence Services, said he has a vision of building an environment for advanced R&D of defence products through investments into critical areas such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and chip development.
Timely investments into the above-mentioned areas would enable India to become an epicentre for research thereby increasing its global share of defence exports, he added.
