| Developers: | Aeronautical Development Establishment |
| Date of the premiere of the system: | July 2022 |
| Branches: | Mechanical and Instrument Engineering |
2022: Russian-powered military drone announcement
On July 1, 2022, India successfully carried out the first flight of an autonomous technological military drone with a Russian engine. It is developed by Bangalore-based Aeronautical Development Establishment, run by the government-run Defence Research and Development Organisation of India.
The drone is a smaller version of the Ghatak combat drone under development. The flight took place at an aviation test site located in Chitradurg in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, landing gear and all flight control systems and avionics used for the aircraft were developed inside India, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh described the flight as a major achievement towards autonomous aircraft that would pave the way for Aatmanirbhar Bharat, an economic initiative designed to make India less dependent on foreign technology for critical military systems.
A scientist from Aeronautical Development Establishment told Defense News that flight tests of the aircraft, also called Stealth Wing Flying Testbed (SWiFT), were carried out to demonstrate its ability to take off, gain altitude, cruise in the air, navigate waypoints, descend and land autonomously. He noted that the next step should be the development of a proven autonomous combat surveillance platform.
The 1-ton SWiFT platform is equipped with the Russian NPO Saturn 36MT turbofan engine. The platform completed taxiway tests in September 2021. Until the end of 2022, the aviation design bureau will evaluate flight data in terms of aircraft configuration, autonomous take-off and landing technology, retractable landing gear system and low radar visibility. This work is intended to be the basis for future modifications of the platform.[1]
Notes
| The site content is translated by machine translation software powered by PROMT. The machine-translated articles are not always perfect and may contain errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. Read original article If you find inaccuracies or errors in the results of machine translation, please write to editor@tadviser.ru. We will make every effort to correct them as soon as possible. |