By IANS
New Delhi : A company that has developed India’s first indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be showcasing them at the DEFEXPO-2008 international defence exposition that begins here Saturday, pointing to their wide applications in the military and civilian sectors.
“Hitherto, it has been believed that UAVs have only military applications. We believe these can be used in other areas like traffic management, disaster management, search and rescue operations and survey and mapping,” Lt. Gen. (retd) Vijay Shankar, director (Business Development) of the New Delhi-based MKU Pvt. Ltd., told reporters here Thursday.
Set up two decades ago, the company has a diverse portfolio of products in the areas of night vision devices, personal ballistic protection, tents and shelters, signature management and gun barrel clearing that it supplies to the Indian armed forces and the police forces and also exports to 50 countries around the world.
MKU will be displaying two of its indigenously developed UAVs at DEFEXPO-2008 in the hope of attracting customers from the security establishment as also the civilian sector.
One of these is a collapsible ultra-light TERP (Tactical Electrical Reconnaissance Probe) that can be carried in a soldier’s backpack and which can fly at heights of 19,500 feet for up to 90 minutes.
“While TERP has been designed for frontline operations, it is ideally suited for urban environments. Its composite fuselage and non-reflective paint make it virtually undetectable to the naked eye, even at low altitudes,” Shankar explained.
“Its electric motor means that it has an almost non-existent audio signature during flight,” he added.
MKU has already received queries about TERP from the Indian army’s Northern Command that is responsible for guarding Jammu and Kashmir and also from the paramilitary Assam Rifles and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and will soon be staging demonstrations for them.
The other UAV, named Erasmus, is larger and can fly at heights of up to 10,000 feet and can stay aloft for up to five hours.
“One of the defining features of Erasmus is its visual imaged based tracking and targeting system that allows the operator to designate a target that is visible through a camera in the nose,” Shankar said.
“Thereafter, Erasmus locks on to the target and pursues it relentlessly whether it is stationary or moving,” he added.
“Given the features of the two machines, it is evident that they have a wide range of non-military applications in the civilian sector too,” Shankar said.
MKU is now in the process of developing the next generation of vertical take-off and landing UAVs, as also cargo UAVs that can carry up to one tonne of load.
“We know the (Indian) Navy is looking for a VTOL UAV but of the rotary wing kind. Once we develop our machine, we plan to offer it to navy for evaluation,” Shankar said.
“As for the cargo UAV, we see tremendous applications for this in areas like (the) Siachen (glacier in Jammu and Kashmir) and in the remote areas of the northeast,” he added.