Solar Industries Nagpur announced it has bagged an order to supply unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‘Nagastra’ to the Indian Army, beating competitors from Israel and Poland.
A Solar Industries official said with government’s initiative to bring Atmanirbharta in ammunition and defence systems, the first indigenous Loiter Munition (LM), Nagastra-1, has been designed and developed by Economics Explosives Ltd (EEL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of Solar Industries Nagpur, in association with Z-Motion, Bangalore.
A model of ‘Nagastra -1’ loitering munition was recently displayed in the Army Commanders conference held in New Delhi.
The company said that Nagastra -1 having an indigenous content of more than 75 per cent has many world class features.
It said that in a ‘Kamikaze mode’ it can neutralise any hostile threat with GPS enabled precision strike with an accuracy of 2 m. The fixed wing electric UAV has an endurance of 60 min with a man-in-loop range of 15 km and autonomous mode range of 30 km.
In addition to day-night surveillance cameras the loiter munition is equipped with a fragmenting warhead to defeat soft-skin targets.
In case a target is not detected or if the mission is aborted, the loiter munition can be called back and made a soft landing with a parachute recovery mechanism enabling it to be reused multiple times.
“Solar Industries have taken initiatives to develop a wide array of weaponized drones to neutralise various targets using gravity drop bombs, guided missiles or using them in a Kamikaze mode. This will go a long way to boost the indigenous capability of using drones/ UAVs as war machinery,”
a company official said.
Sources: mint; The Economic Times