The Indian Army’s support to the indigenous drone ecosystem is based on the principle that ‘good available indigenously’ is better than the ‘best available globally’. However, gradual enhancement in technology demanded by defence forces is likely to incentivise manufacture of better and more capable drone products.”

The indigenous industry has adequate expertise to develop world class products in this field. Latest procurements by the IA are indicative of its efforts to further encourage the indigenous drone ecosystem.

The push came after the a domestic company like ideaForge demonstrated its capability for military grade drones to the Indian security forces, including the Indian Army.

The ‘Him Drone-a-thon’ programme is a pan India sustained connect between all stake holders including industry, academia, software developers and drone product manufacturers. It will be conducted in stages with quantifiable parameters (like altitude, weight, range, endurance etc) being progressively enhanced based on demonstrated capabilities.

Indian Army has planned broad activities. interactions & ideation between users, development agencies, academia etc, seeking of industry responses.

The development agencies will visit various operational locations to understand the ground perspective & requirements, handholding of development agencies for internal development & on-ground trials and actual conduct & evaluation of drone products.

As a start point, various categories are defined for the development, including the Logistics/ Load carrying Drone in High Altitude Areas and Autonomous Surveillance/ Search & Rescue Drone. Beside, Government has also announced the design and develop drones micro and nano drones for fighting in built up areas.

Military Drones

In the early 1990s DRDO developed the Nishant UAV for reconnaissance and surveillance. But the project failed. India ended up importing a wide range of Israeli drones, including the medium-altitude long-endurance Heron I, the Searcher MK II, and the Harop loitering munition. In 2021, the Army procured a set of new surveillance drones which have been deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh.

Currently, the Indian Drone ecosystem is at threshold where various domestic entities are in process of fully expanding their scope across industries, leveraging emerging technologies like AI, AR/ VR, IoT and 3D modelling.

The development of drones is largely based on software which integrates the sensory elements for data extraction and analysis. The ban on import of drones was based on experience in the civilian space sector. The time has come for the domestic industrial ecosystem to demonstrate capability to design and develop advanced unmanned and autonomous systems.

The post Army Pushes For Indian Combat Drones appeared first on IMR.

The round also saw participation from the company’s existing investors Celesta, a prominent technology investment fund, Infosys, Qualcomm and Infina, along with the Exim Bank of India.

Founded in 2007 by IIT Bombay alumni, ideaForge has over 15 years of research and development (R&D) history and it owns more than 20 global patents. Its customers include the Indian military, Adani group, L&T, Indian Oil, Survey of India, Indian Railways, among others.

“ideaForge has grown 10X in the last two years and we will use this funding to invest in R&D, international expansion and building a world-class team. We want to continue to create high performance, reliable and autonomous drones that inspire the adoption of this technology,” Co-founder and CEO Ankit Mehta said.

The post ideaForge raises $20 mn from Florintree, Infosys appeared first on IMR.

The start-up beat top Israeli and Indian drone manufacturers to get the coveted contract, will be providing an undisclosed number of drones that can operate at higher altitudes, to the armed forces. A high-altitude variant of the company’s Switch UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) will be delivered over a period of a year.

The company, ideaForge, was incubated in 2007 at the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE). While initially, they built hand-cranked chargers, the enterprise soon shifted gears to building a hovercraft and eventually entered the drone manufacturing market. The company is a licensed manufacturer of UAVs approved by the Ministry of Defence.

Based in Mumbai, currently, the company offers seven UAVs that are used in a range of applications including mapping, traffic management, surveillance, crowd management and security. Some of these drones are already in use by the armed forces.

The Switch UAV is a fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing UAV that can be deployed at high altitude and harsh environments for day and night surveillance in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. It is man-portable and has the highest time on target compared to any other UAV in its class.

The advanced high-altitude SWITCH, with vertical take-off and landing, is a fixed-wing hybrid UAV. It’s 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 harsh environments for day and night surveillance in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions

The post IIT-Bombay’s firm bags deal to supply drones for Indian Army appeared first on IMR.