IN PICS: New UAVs will aid intelligence, says DRDO

In contrast to the US which is "doing a lot of work" in developing and manufacturing Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), India is more focused on developing UAVs as it considers intelligence gathering more challenging in future wars, Defence Research and Development Organisation said on Friday.

"We have no mandate to develop UCAVs as of today. If the government gives us the mandate we will take up the project," Chief Controller R&D (Aeronautics), A  Subhananda Rao, told reporters on the sidelines of the International Conference on Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (ICAUV) 2012 in Bengaluru.

As future wars would be fought on the basis of intelligence gathering, the government is more focused on developing UAVs that would help intelligence gathering, Rao said.

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"Future warfare is going to be on the basis of intelligence gathering. That is where we are concentrating on gathering intelligence and able to give it back to the military base in real time," he said.

Combat portion of developing UAVs would come in the next stage, he added.

DRDO's present mandate was to develop Unmanned Aerial Vehicles which would give a performance of 300 km range and an endurance of 24 hours, Rao said.

Soon the organisation would take up twin projects of solar-powered UAVs and Unmanned Helicopter, he said, adding that defence forces had shown an interest on micro-vehicles.

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All the three defence wings have also shown keen interest on UAVs such as Lakshya, Nishant and Rustom 1, he said.

Earlier addressing an ICAUV gathering, Rao said India has launched several technology development programmes to achieve the level 4 'onboard flight path replan'.

DRDO is working on aerostats and airships and also plans to develop large size aerostats of approximately 17,000 cum and airships, Rao said.