DRDO Rustom 1 & 2 | Indian Army | Indian Air Force | Indian Aviation Core | Indian Defence Forces
The DRDO Rustom is a Medium Altitude Long Endurance unmanned air vehicle (UAV) being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation for the three services, Indian Army, Indian Navy, and the Indian Air Force of the Indian Armed Forces. Rustom is derived from the NAL's LCRA (Light Canard Research Aircraft) developed by a team under the leadership of late Prof Rustom Damania in the 1980s. The UAV will have structural changes and a new engine. Rustom will replace/supplement the Heron UAVs in service with the Indian armed forces.
The Indian government has allowed the development of the Rustom MALE UAV project in association with a production agency cum development partner (PADP). The ADE officials indicated that the requests for proposals (RFP) would shortly be issued to four vendors which are the Tata Power Strategic Engineering Division, Larsen & Toubro Limited, Godrej Aerospace Limited, and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited-Bharat Electronics Limited (joint bid) who were chosen out of the 23 firms that responded.
Currently, negotiations are underway between these companies and the three Indian armed forces since the private majors are looking for support and commitment from them before they start executing any development and production plans. This is because of the fact that the chosen PADP will also have a financial stake in the Rustom project. The Armed Forces would also be asked to take up a financial stake and the Indian government may have to guarantee that a specific number of Rustom UAVs will be bought.
There will be three variants of the Rustom UAV.
Rustom-I: Tactical UAV with the endurance of 12 hours (based on NAL's LCRA )
Rustom-H: Larger UAV with a flight endurance of over 24 hours (completely different design from Rustom-1), higher range, and service ceiling than Rustom-1.
Rustom-II: An unmanned combat air vehicle based on the Rustom-H model. It is often compared with Predator drones by Indian scientists and media.
Defence career app Defence learning App
Comments
Post a Comment