Bharat Rakshak

>> $15 million for a Global Hawk

thats a steal considering its range, ceiling and payload, but likely just the empty cost...the uber sensors and kit going in will cost millions more.

The Global Hawk costs about US$35 million to procure each aircraft.[3] With development costs included, the unit cost rises to US$218 million

"The MFAS sensor is the first radar system to provide full 360-degree persistent coverage of both open oceans and littoral regions from extremely long ranges," said Paul "Buz" Kalafos, vice president of Surveillance Systems. "The MFAS radar sensor will set the standard in maritime surveillance."

The MFAS sensor operates with a rotating sensor that incorporates electronic scanning and provides mode agility to switch between various surveillance methods. These include maritime-surface-search (MSS) mode for tracking maritime targets and inverse-synthetic-aperture radar (ISAR) mode for classifying ships. Image-while-scan capability is used to interleave very short duration ISAR functions (ISAR snapshot and high- range resolution) during MSS scans. Two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) modes are used for ground searches; spot SAR for images of the ground and stationary targets and strip SAR for images along a fixed line.

Once targets are detected by MFAS, the data is sent to ground station units in the form of tracks, single frame snap shots, as well as high resolution snapshots while still maintaining 360 degree coverage.

BANGALORE: Solar-powered Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) and vertical take-off and landing of UAVs will be key developments in this field, DRDO chief controller R&D (aero) A Subhananda Rao said on the sidelines of the International Conference on Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles 2012 here on Friday.

He said while solar-powered UAVs will have high-endurance capabilities and operate at altitudes up to 30,000 ft, ship-borne vertical take-off and landing UAVs, which will have rotors, can carry out reconnaissance activities on the high seas.

"UAVs are gamechangers now. In recent years, UAVs have demonstrated their capability to perform missions from reconnaissance to surveillance as well as search & rescue in uninhabited airspace," he said.

The current mandate is for HALO (high endurance long range) -- the requirement by the government is 300-kilometre range and 24- hour endurance. "This project's first flight will be in February 2014," he said.

Rao said they have not been given the mandate to produce a combat UAV. "Tomorrow's warfare will depend on intelligence collection and transmission and we are concentrating on that. We'll also develop stealth technology for UAVs," he added.

"A key technology for UAVs to perform their intended mission is autonomy. All operational UAVs worldwide operate at level three of autonomy, equipped to adapt the mission to failure in flight and atmospheric conditions. With level 4, the most critical technology is to impart 360-degree situational awareness to an unmanned system which will enable it to replan the mission in reaction to threats and targets," he said.

ADE director PS Krishnan said Rustom-2 would be India's equivalent to US's drones and will be flight tested by 2015. They will have flight endurance of 24 hours and stay afloat for 24 hours. He said for Rustom-2, the government has allocated Rs 1,540 crore for development of the UAV and for building a test range at Chitradurga.

Army pilots have taken the lead in being trained on simulators and actual test flights of Rustom-1, which was developed earlier last year on a technology demonstration basis. These pilots have already taken Rustom-1 on 10 test flights.

The Nano Quad is a quadrotor, a helicopter with four rotors whose speeds are precisely controlled by microcontrollers 600 times per second to produce just the right lift, roll, pitch and yaw. Onboard sensors allow it to sense its attitude and respond with remarkable agility. In fact, it can perform a 360 degree flip in less than half a second with angular rates approach 2000 degrees per second.

I just read on another forum that Rustom MALE version has had a test flight.
Any other confirmations?

Two bits of information from the government landed today confirming that India's in-development Kaveri turbofan is being officially looked at, in modified form, to power the country's secret stealth UCAV, codenamed AURA, a programme that was first revealed here on Livefist.

First, Indian defence minister A.K. Antony told Parliament today, "Kaveri spin-off engine can be used as propulsion system for Indian Unmanned Strike Air Vehicle (USAV)." (Never a shortage of acronyms in Indian defence projects).

A few hours later, a few kilometres away at the headquarters of the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), as part of an annual awards ceremony, scientist Vikram Singh of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) received the Young Scientist Award for his "valuable contribution in design of a controllable flying wing UCAV configuration for KAVERI Engine."

Spotted the Rustom buzzing around the Sarjapur ORR area for a good 30 minutes with repeated passes.
Has a pretty distinctive sound of its engine...

X posted from Nukkad

One Dr Vijay Kumar has developed quadrotor robots. Claims he had flown 20 such quadrotors in tight formation only few inches apart of one another.

Will render UAVs useless ET reports.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatime ... nsors-uavs



More:

http://singularityhub.com/2012/03/08/fl ... -ted-2012/

Tehran said it had decoded hard drives and databases on board the RQ-170 Sentinel, in an announcement which increased fears Russia and China would also soon gain access to the top secret technology.

Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps aerospace forces, gave details of the aircraft's operational history as proof that engineers had successfully probed its records.

He said the drone had flown over Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan a fortnight before the al-Qaeda chief had been killed in an American special forces raid.

It had flown in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, in November 2010 before suffering technical difficulties and being sent for tests on its sensors to an airfield near Los Angeles.

"Had we not accessed the plane's soft wares and hard discs, we wouldn't have been able to achieve these facts," he told the Fars news agency.

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The Tehran-based Mehr news agency added that Iran had "started manufacturing models of the captured US spy plane", but gave no more details.

The aircraft, which is supposedly the CIA's unseen "eye in the sky", can carry a payload of advanced sensors capable of beaming back a trove of imagery and electronic intercepts.

Analysts believe Iran, China and Russia are also particularly interested in the stealth technology and wing coating materials which allow it to escape radar detection.

The unarmed drone was paraded on Iranian state television, apparently looking intact, after coming down 140 miles inside Iran's eastern border in December.

Tehran said it had been brought down by electronic attack after taking off from an American base inside Afghanistan.

America acknowledged the loss of the aircraft, but said it was more likely to have crashed through malfunction.

Analysts suggested at the time that data encryption, self-destruct mechanisms and damage sustained during the crash could all make it impossible for Iranian engineers to use or reverse engineer the technology.

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.

Yesterday noon from around 12:30 PM till almost 1:30 PM.... Am sure would have been visible from your IT-general office also

It would nice if UAV engines are silent enoguh that they cannot be heard from above 8000ft so that abduls need not know of thier presence overhead.

This is for yo Aditya_v,

Indian UAV Engine development programs

what's the use? I am pretty sure the muslim appeasers will never allow these to kill the pigs of piggistan (beginning with suar sayed )