What is the issue?
- US Navy has decided to replace its Aircrafts gradually with UAVs.
- There is a strong demand for India over the UAV venture.
What are the significance of UAVs?
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are the best for search and strike missions with low calibre high accuracy guided weapons.
- Controlled from a ground station, the UAV either flies a pre-planned path or can be dynamically controlled.
- UAV’s has high endurance, which allows a high success rate for search and strike missions.
- The roles of UAVs are gradually increasing in the civil sector, ranging from the delivery of packages to the shooting of high-quality aerial films.
What are the short comings with UAVs in replacing MAVs?
- Sensors - Present sensors do not have the capacity to replicate the appreciation by a human eye and pose a limitation in operations.
- Dynamic Situation Processing - Decision-making autonomy is required, It cannot be explicitly expressed mathematically, a human is essential.
- Communication - Their inability is to capture high fidelity data, based on directions from the ground station, receive, decrypt and process it to execute a command.
- Speed and Manoeuvrability - They are low speed and consequent low manoeuvrability as compared to manned fighter aircraft and this makes them vulnerable.
- Weapon Carrying Capacity - UAVs are capable of carrying low calibre/low weight weapons in limited numbers as compared to manned aircraft.
- Safety - UAV accident rates are four to five times higher than that of manned aircraft.
- Endurance - Autonomous inflight refuelling could keep the UAV in the air for days.
- Risk - The control of UAV is heavily dependent on electromagnetic waves, which are susceptible to interference/jamming/technical malfunctions.
What is Indian UAV Scenario?
- By 2050, at least 50 per cent of combat missions would be designated to UAVs and that would require a large fleet of various types of UAVs.
- While Israel and USA are leaders in UAV technology and operations, the Indian UAV programme is in its infancy.
- Going by the example of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), the production of an Indian combat mission capable UAV is at least a couple of decades away.
- To meet that challenge, it would be prudent to establish a joint venture for the production of UAVs in India under the Strategic Partnership programme.
Source: IDSA
