Indian Defence PSU vie for Rustom UAV project

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India defence online -  New Delhi: The Indian defence contract for the design and development of the prestigious and highly touted ‘Rustom’ Unamanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) project by has been won jointly by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL).

For the private sector players like Larsen and Toubro Limited (L&T) and Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), this has been yet another blow since public sector players are consistently being chosen for Indian defence projects.

Apparently, ‘Rustom’ UAV project was the first Indian military aircraft programme to invite the private sector to design and build a plane. This will be the third major Indian defence project in a row where the private sector players have lost out to the state-owned companies.

For the ‘Rustom’ UAV project, the state-owned Defence Research and Development Organization, which has conceived the ‘Rustom’ project, intends to move away from traditional ways of developing products ; whereby laboratories under DRDO, like the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) involved in this project, develop and finalise the product and transfer technology to a production agency.

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will pursue a practice of concurrent engineering where initial design efforts also take into consideration production issues, with the production agency participating in the development of the system right from the design stage. The agency will also follow up issues related to infrastructure and expertise for the product and its support, thereby overcoming time delays in crucial projects.

After the Indian government gave a go-ahead for the indigenous UAV ‘Rustom’ project in association with a production agency cum development partner (PADP), the DRDO laboratory ADE issued requests for proposals (RFP) to four vendors which are the Tatas, Larsen and Toubro, Godrej and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited-Bharat Electronics Ltd. (joint bid).

According to DRDO officials, HAL-BEL joint bid was selected since the state-owned firms gave a clear roadmap for the manufacturing of the indigenous ‘Rustom’ UAV. The selected firms will build the UAV, test and certify it, and provide maintenance services. It will also work on converting ‘Rustom’ UAV into an unmanned combat aerial vehicle, in addition to developing future versions of the UAV.

Last year, ADE officials indicated that the cost of producing one set of five ‘Rustom’ vehicles with five sets of spares, payload and ground handling equipment would be around $ 50 million.

‘Rustom’ UAV will be a medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) aircraft, to be designed to fly at least 250 kilometres at a stretch. The ‘Rustom’ MALE UAV has a wingspan of 20 metres, weight of 1,800 kilograms and maximum speed of 225 kilometres per hour and can operate at 30,000 feet altitude though the ceiling would be 35,000 feet.

‘Rustom’ UAV will be able to execute surveillance of the enemy territory up to a distance of 250 kilometers and carry a variety of cameras and radar for surveillance. The first trial of the prototype was carried out in September 2008 and DRDO also carried out tests through the technology demonstrator of the ‘Rustom’ in 2009.

‘Rustom’ MALE UAV is being developed to replace medium altitude long-range UAV Herons manufactured by Israel, which the Indian armed forces are using currently. Unlike the other indigenous Indian drones or UAVs like ‘Lakshya’ and ‘Nishant’, the ‘Rustom’ UAV will be launched by conventional methods and not the launcher.

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