Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)

Pilotless Target Aircraft (LAKSHYA)

Lakshya is a cost effective re-usable high subsonic aerial target system powered by a gas turbine engine and launched either from land or ship. It carries two tow targets of tow lengths of 1.5 km each having radar, IR or visual signature augmentation and Miss Distance Indication Scoring System. These tow targets are used for training of land or ship based gun and missile crew and combat aircraft pilots in weapon engagement. Lakshya is comparable in the same class of vehicle such as Northrop’s BQM-74 Chukar

Multi- Mission Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (NISHANT)

Nishant is a multi-mission Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with Day/Night capability used for battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, target tracking & localization, and artillery fire correction. A sophisticated image processing system is used for analyzing the images transmitted from the UAV. It is launched using a Mobile Hydro pneumatic Launcher. The air vehicle has autonomous flight capabilities and is controlled from a user friendly Ground Control Station. Nishant is a highly mobile, compact and easily deployable system. It is recovered with Aero Conical Parachute and impact attenuation system. An onboard flight control and navigation system enables the aircraft to fly in autonomous Way Point Navigation mode. NISHANT is comparable in the same class of vehicle such as IAI’s SEARCHER

Micro & Mini UAVs

MAVs and Mini UAVs have been developed by ADE along with CSIR-NAL. These vehicles have an endurance of 20 mts to 1 Hr. Three MAVs namely Black Kite, Golden Hawk and Pushpak have been designed and developed. These are fully autonomous air vehicles. Two variants of 2 Kg class FWMUAV are developed - the Imperial Eagle and Slybird. A gimbaled payload provides ISR information and a video tracking system ensures the continuous ISR information during the flight & a state of the art Ground Control station controls the entire mission from launch to recovery. An Image processing system that provides the processed data in near real time to take action on the available ISR information. Imperial Eagle and Slybird arecomparable in the same class such as RAVEN.