do the Europeans are ready for Indian specific version? 87 is not a smaller number, and maintaining them, india would definitely seek some tech absorption and source code for Indian weapon integration, which the Europeans won't agree most likely
Indian UAV Procurement Programs : General Discussions
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MQ-9s costed us $1.7 bn only, rest was for training, infra, weapons, MRO and even local assembly. Since MQ-9Bs are supposed to be made here as part of existing deal and you've paid for all MRO and logistics as well as consultancy to DRDO for our own HALE project, it will be cheaper to buy and operate more, than buy a new type and pay for it's MRO, production site, training and weapons.
Actually they did.
Cant find the original source.
They locally assemble it with VEM Technologies.
Drones World in conversation with Jajati Mohanty, CEO of Schiebel India
Can you provide insights into the strategic significance of the Camcopter S-100 unmanned aircraft system in enhancing the capabilities of the Indian Armed Forces?
In 2022 a Request for Information (RFI) was issued to facilitate the Indian Navy’s acquisition of forty Naval Shipborne Unmanned Air Systems (NSUAS). In the RFI, the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Indian Navy stated that the NSUAS will be used extensively for surveillance missions, signals intelligence (SIGINT), target acquisition, reconnaissance, and maritime domain awareness around a naval task group. Secondary roles include anti-piracy measures, anti-terrorist activities, and search-and-rescue support.
The CAMCOPTER® S-100 has been placed in active service by the Indian Navy, marking a noteworthy advancement in the modernisation of its naval capabilities. The system represents a significant step in naval innovation and supports the country’s aspiration to incorporate state-of-the-art technologies in the IOR where unmanned systems would be the order of the day. Taking cue from the Navy the other sister services have also commenced study towards utilisation of the S-100 in their concept of operations.
What specific operational requirements of the Indian Armed Forces does the Camcopter S-100 address, and how does it contribute to the overall defense preparedness?
The Indian Navy has been undertaking ISR in the IOR (Indian Ocean Region) with unmanned systems since the beginning of the 21st century using fixed wing UAVs operated from shore as well as ships by handing over control to ships at sea. The exploitation of the MALE UAVs has provided a vital and crucial experience to the Indian Navy and they are now looking to foray into shipborne tactical UAVs. These deck-based rotary UAVs provide more tactical leeway to the fleet and the warships in local ISR (Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance) as well as closer air cover to fleet warships. Combat air patrol by the deck based rotary UAVs will become the new normal.
In what ways do you anticipate the Camcopter S-100 impacting the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of the Indian Armed Forces, especially in challenging terrains, high altitudes and border regions?
The S-100 is proven to operate effectively and efficiently in extreme environments. Customers routinely employ the S-100 capability in arctic conditions down to -40 degrees Celsius and deserts up to +55 degrees Celcius, as well as in climatic zones of extreme humidity. With its service ceiling of up to 12,000 feet and its endurance exceeding 6 hours with a full fuel load and 34 kg of payload, the UAS is the ideal asset for hard-to-reach areas and challenging terrains.
Could you shed light on the key features and advanced technologies incorporated into the Camcopter S-100 that set it apart from other unmanned aerial systems in the market?
The S-100 can be operated with either aviation gasoline or kerosene (S1 or the S2 engine option), making it ideally suited for the maritime environment. Its small footprint and the absence of launch or recovery equipment lets the S-100 be easily maneuvered, stowed and maintained in confined spaces or in ships’ hangars. Extensive use of carbon fibre composite materials, titanium, stainless steel and special coatings protect the system against corrosion. Operation is possible from any ship with a small helicopter landing deck or suitable clear space, even in challenging weather.
The S-100 can also successfully operate in environments where GPS is not available (or denied), with missions planned and controlled using a simple point-and-click user interface. Its carbon fibre and titanium fuselage provide capacity for a wide range of payload/endurance combinations up to a service ceiling of 5,500 m / 12,000 ft. The high-tech unmanned helicopter is supported by Schiebel’s excellent customer and training services.
How has the collaboration between Schiebel Systems India and VEM Technologies evolved in delivering a tailored solution to meet the specific needs of the Indian Armed Forces?
Schiebel Systems India and VEM Technologies had showcased the CAMCOPTER® S-100 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) featuring the script of the Indian Navy and the roundel of India on the airframe at Aero India 2023 in Bengaluru.
Subsequently, Schiebel India and local firm VEM Technologies have joined hands for the production of CAMCOPTER® S-100 in India wherein the complete assembly, integration and testing (licensed production) in now happening within the country at Hyderabad and in addition Schiebel India is also setting up an state of the art MRO facility to maintain these assets for the next 10-15 years as mandated by the Indian Navy.
With the increasing focus on indigenous defense manufacturing, how much of the Camcopter S-100 is manufactured locally, and what are the prospects for further localization in the future?
Schiebel has set up an office in India and partnered with VEM Technologies for the local production of the CAMCOPTER® S-100. This partnership is manufacturing the CAMCOPTER® S-100 along with its payload under the Buy (Indian) category with up to 60% indigenisation content. The endeavor would be to create necessary skills for integration and testing in India (licensed production), creation of a robust eco-system consisting of component manufacturer, dealers for off the shelf items and also setting up of the MRO with Indigenized tests stands and diagnostic testers towards fault detection and rectification in addition to overhauling and testing. The creation of facility and skills in India would be to sustain the platform for 15 years and above based on the technology obsolescence.
What training and support infrastructure are being provided to the Indian Armed Forces for the effective utilization of the Camcopter S-100, and how is technology transfer being managed in this collaboration?
Complete training to Indian Navy personnel was undertaken within the country so that the trained personnel would be available immediately for operational availability with the Navy. This activity was undertaken jointly by Schiebel and utilizing the training facilities of the Navy which provided crucial inputs to the Navy regarding future sustenance of skills and experience as the S-100 matures in the naval operations. The Navy has been trained to undertake all front line maintenance related activities and the OEM managing the overhauls and depot level maintenance. Under this condition, the programme ensures operational and maintenance skills within the Navy as well as creation of an eco-system in the industry to manage the S-100 for the next 10-15 years. Necessary training aids and data have been provided to Navy to sustain training activities for the future crew.
As a defense correspondent, I’m interested in understanding the broader implications of this unmanned aircraft system sale for India’s defense capabilities. How does it align with the country’s broader defense strategy and modernization goals?
The use of unmanned systems falls into three major categories namely Strategic level – where the MALE and HALEs are important, Tactical level – where VTOL unmanned systems come into picture and where the S-100 has been the market leader since the last 15 years for rotary based systems and Ground level – where the mini and micro unmanned systems are required. Availability of a tactical unmanned system for a surface combatant / naval warship is a huge capability bolster where the surface tactical picture gets enhanced for suitable decision making at ship / fleet level. This enhancement is in total agreement with the nation’s broader strategy to monitor & manage IOR where we are seeing growth of piracy and other non-linear actors. Rotary tactical unmanned system is a major capability booster and will enhance the ability of the ships deployed in the IOR, providing them with better maritime domain awareness and crucial capability for littoral operations.
What are the key technological advancements and improvements introduced in the new Camcopter S-300 compared to its predecessor, the S-100?
The CAMCOPTER® S-300 UAS – the bigger brother of the S-100 – is 4.8 meters long, 1.9 meter high and 0.9 meter wide. It can fly at a maximum speed of 220 km/h (cruising speed 100 km/h). The S-300 is able to carry up to 340 kg (including fuel) and its maximum take-off weight can reach 660 kg. It can fly up to 24 hours with a 50 kg payload (or 4 hours with 250 kg).
The ground component, including the control system for the S-300, will be the same as for the S-100 version. This in turn means, that by using a single control system, it will be possible to select the S-100 or S-300 platform according to the needs and tasks to be carried out. Ships or other platforms adapted for operation with the S-100 will be ready for immediate interoperability with the S-300 version, without any additional work on the communication and control systems.
Given the increasing importance of cybersecurity in military operations, what measures have been implemented in the Camcopter S-300 to ensure the system’s resilience against cyber threats?
In terms of anti-jamming, the experience with the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022, which led Schiebel to implement techniques and procedures in order to keep the systems operational in spite of powerful jammers used by the Russian Army. The monitoring missions provided many opportunities for the anti-jamming system to be utilised, tuned, upgraded and modified in the process of creating a very robust and strong system capable of handling anti-jamming situations.
How do you see the growth of Schiebel India in next 2-3 years?
We see Schiebel growing along with the Navy in the maritime domain with Coast Guard too following close behind since they too have requirement for these kind of capability. In fact, we have a large no of Coast Guard customers around the world who are effectively exploiting this system for shore & sea based patrols and search & rescue at sea. S-100 is also suitable for various land-based operations and we are working potential customers for induction into Army and Air Force. Further, oil & gas has also shown huge potential towards utilization of this asset for ISR and logistics. Hence we feel that Schiebel is slated for substantial growth in the coming few years.
Teledyne FLIR Black Hornet with indian army
• Approval for 87 MALE drones (ISR + strike-capable): ~₹20,000 crore.
• Support and logistics for 10 years: additional ₹11,000 crore.
• These drones aim for faster induction than the 31 MQ-9B ‘Predator’ HALE drones (₹32,350 crore), deliveries for which will begin 2029-30.
BEL hinted at some archer uav procurement case, is it this same 87 MALE ones or the latter one MALE category? probably 2 separate cases I guess ?
Is this going to be the Adani screwdrivergiri drone that crashed during trials?
Could the indigenous Tapas drone with significantly lower cost though just shy of the altitude requirement that could have been improved with spiral development be afforded the same grace?
Nope, stifle indigenization in the name of "capability". Vishwapappu.
Tapas is not exactly for strike role as of now. ISR is ok, but in contested airspace will get shot down.
Also, some imp subsystems are Israeli, so in a way it is some level of S word giri anyway. Does it matter much at present ?
For ISR against Pak, Tapas will fare just as well as the foreign drone. And against China, neither will be survivable - drone interceptors in the RU/UK theater have been operating at 36000ft for a while.
As far as strike is concerned, Hermes900 isn't capable of that role. And for that, Archer-NG is maturing as well.
OTOH, Tapas offers the following advantages:
- 90% indigenization including a local ICE which makes it vastly more attritable
- In an era of system-on-system warfare, Tapas comes out of the box with the DEAL datalinks. Has the foreign drone even been onboarded on to the battlenet?
- Support for spiral development especially given the babu's habit of creating requirements from copy/pasting foreign military brochures
- At least did not crash while testing
IMHO, Op Sindoor has temporarily pinned Paxtan and given China some pause given how their weapons bungled. This has given some breathing room for India to push hard on all indigenization efforts and build out supply lines before we're all deep in the era of war and this window of opportunity is lost.
On a related note, until India's own HALE RPA is ready, the MQ-9Bs might actually be a decent buy, and may even turn out to be great with the Saab AEW upgrade. Perhaps that could also be used to arm twist the Swedes to do less business with the scoundrel neighbor wrt Erieyes?
Source: trust me bro.
Tapas is a failed project that should have been closed a long time ago. If project cant deliver basic defined specs its failure. They knew about it a decade back but didnt act. Now we have to import. But somehow, they blame the men in uniform. Brainwashed swadeshi only nutjobs are coming to this forum from other places.
It crashed twice!
Dont make up shit. It's not even flying. Delayed by 2 years just for the first flight.
The arbiter will be the user trials. Just like MPATGM vs Javelin, WhAP vs Stryker, etc. I have reason to have faith. Should it meet the requirements, it is in the best interest of the "user" to show partiality towards the indigenous product-- unlike the previously mentioned cases or worse, a transmission-like job being pulled like was done with Arjun.
The failure was one of funding and I am making the case that Op Sindoor provides a reprieve so we do not have to rush.
Further, what it demonstrated is India's sore need for space-based ISR assets which unfortunately is a capability that has a long ramp-up time. The runway to bridge that ISR gap through much more easily ramped up MALE/HALE alternatives will be shorter. Going through the import path which will result in just a small handful being inducted, will do nothing to address the ISR gap and worse stifle local options. What India lacked a decade ago, it has now -- and the "user" can do much to provide the minimum orders that will spur the local industry.
Everybody wants the men in uniform to have the best kit. The import path gets you that only in limited numbers and only during fair-weather.
Learn to differentiate between products under development and products that are off the shelf, that too being shamelessly exported.It crashed twice!
Also you make my case -- see how quickly the foreign failure was ignored while doubling down on local failure.
And it never will if limited budgets keep being diverted by import babus away from local R&D and productionization efforts.
The half-glass-empty types would do well to recognize that both in the government and on forums such as this and others, your import addition will no longer be given a free pass.
ADE is literally saying Tapas failed tto meet requirements. Your vibe based "faith" wont fix that. It's the most incompetent lab in the DRDO.
Since we already had a conflict. Let's wait longer. What kind of logic is this?
No, you don't . You prefer ships without sonars because NPOL promised they would deliver. You prefer billion-dollar submarines without torpedoes because you think waiting for another decade for DRDO to come up with a new design is a good idea. You prefer not to remember how a 15-year delay in delivering LCA caused the loss of so many young pilot lives on Mig-21. You forget HAL is yet to deliver IJT after placing order for LSPs 19 years ago.
Dont shift the goal post. You said it never crashed.
Again, illiterate takes. The CAPX and R&D budgets are different. All recent projects are properly funded according to the DRDO chairman.
Getting the best possible tools to fight for the forces will always override your "faith" based logic.
Selective amnesia of swadasi cult will be disappointment to know import is inevitable if we relay only on DPSUs and DRDO for everything.
I'm sure the foreign drone met full operational requirements as it was falling out of the sky.
BTW I thought GTRE was the most despised amongst DRDO haters? Is it ADE now that GTRE has been basically defunded and UAVs are the need of the hour?
Sure, LCA, IJT, sonar, torpedoes, etc. have had delays and performance gaps. But every one of these "failures" has left behind hard-won domestic capability in aerodynamics, composites, sensors, avionics, propulsion integration, and manufacturing. The early PSLV failures were embarrassing too, but it laid the foundation for Chandrayaan and Aditya for a fraction of the budget of NASA today.
And the Mig-21 crashes? That wasnt caused by the existence of LCA but by decades of import addiction before it, which left no domestic alternative ready. If things weren't abandoned after Marut, blowing capital budgets on MiG/Jaguar/Mirage/etc. that capability would have been built up by today. And folks will still pine after Su-57 and F-35 and things will be repeated with AMCA.
Funding CAPX for imports instead of funding R&D for indigenous systems, is effectively voting against your own industry's growth. Every dollar towards import is a dollar less to grow local industry capacity.
And it is hilarious if you think DRDO is in a position to demand any funding. The less than 1.5% of the total defense budget they're getting now for projects will also be funneled to the import babus.
The Pakistanis and cheenis were both given a bloody nose. Theyre welcome to try again, but i will give even the goat brains more credit. This is the time to seriously evaluate priorities. If Ukraine can build a drone industry when their country looks like the surface of the moon, India can too in the momentary peace it has just bought itself.
More importantly Op Sindoor's success was possible because of the indigenous capability in the mix. And i want India to build on that success.
Every flying object can crash; that's natural and part of the process. Tapas crash as part of development is acceptable as long as it delivers on the promise. Criticism based on facts is not hate. Less evolved beings might have a hard time understanding this.
What does Chandrayaan have to do with the failure of DRDO programs that left services vulnerable? You should learn to argue without shifting goalposts.
Accept failures quickly and support import when needed. We need to ensure that services have the necessary equipment.
CAPX means a modernization budget that is 70% allocated to Indian companies, not imports. And ~4% of defence budget goes towards DRDO. At least make some sense in arguments.
From the latest leaked lab reports on X, Tapas and other drone development continues to move forward. Now is the time to fund them properly so we don't keep expecting a $2.5B dev. class engine with a $250M budget. Since you're very understanding that even the great foreign maal isn't perfect, could you kindly extend that courtesy to domestic drones, O greatest of all evolved beings?
Sure, anything expended during Op Sindoor should get restored quickly through the emergency procurement route ASAP to get readiness levels back up -- but ONLY to minimum thresholds.
The following point appears to be repeatedly getting lost. India has just taken out Pakistan's C&C, airbases, radars, MRO equipment junked, multiple birds including AWACS junked, its nuclear doctrine has been flushed down the toilet -- they are naked and not in any position to prosecute shit. China which provides 80% of Pak's h/w deploys the same HQ9s at their border; they are scratching their heads right now if they need to shift their best kits from the eastern flank and whether even that will work. India has just bought something precious -- TIME!!
Look up analogy in the dictionary.
The PIB FY24 procurement envelope (see- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2035748) puts complete imports at 25% of the total outlay which results at ~$8B.
And this is just the lower bound. With the rest, with 40-50% of the ~$12.6B allowed to be non IC, puts the upper bound at ~$14.3B
Out of the 3.5% of defense budget given to DRDO, I was specifically referring to project expenditures (see-- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2035748) which is ~$1.5B. But okay, let's add pensions and the rest which makes it ~$2.7B
So in FY24, that's $2.7B that builds national capability and all of it goes back into the local economy compared to $8B - $14.3B of lost forex to trade some "capability" at the cost of lost sovereignty.
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BTW, I am not a DRDO/DPSU diehard. I would just as well prefer private enterprise like NewSpace build some ISR variant of the Abhimanyu. But no whitelabeling and no IKEA assembly.
And I fully recognize that some capability is significantly further out which will need to be substituted by imports. But I do not think the drone industry up to MALEs fits this bill.
Ya follow some twitter clickbaiters and give gyan here. I didn't expect anything better. Tapas has been running for 15 years now. Seven years ago, the ADE chief was saying it's not possible to achieve the desired requirement with a twin-boom design. It is a fundamentally flawed design that cannot be fixed by simply throwing money at it. Thats why they are going for Archer-NG.
Sure, let's chill out for now if you say so.How many times do i have to prove you wrong?
Tapas never crashed - Wrong
R&D budget comes from CAPX budget - Wrong
DRDO budget is 1.5% of defence budget - Wrong
Do you have the decency to acknowledge it? No. Just blabber by shifting goalposts. You sound like a gen z kid who better be on forums like reddit or twitter. Bye.
The entire DPSU ecosystem learned to produce things because they did screwdriwer giri with public money. But somehow standard is different for private sectorm, they will always have to do R&D prove themselfs first.
yeah, if we cant build a drone locally that cant operate against pakistan then there is little or no hope left competing against china. Frankly buying super expensive weapons to fight against pakistan is self defeating ,cost/performance ratio is way too high. It would be ridiculous to spend $70 billion and get the same result of a country which spends $20-25 billion.
should cancel it now & save a lot of trouble later. US will certainly take the money & string us along. They have done that against pakistan for F16's and not expecting the same treatment against us would be nothing short of sheer stupidity.
It's literally posted on this forum-- Ghatak and Rustom Indigenous UAV Programs
And I was referencing the last 18hr LE AF-9 flight
Spoon fed the link to GoI and PRS research where the data comes and you're still having difficulty:
> Out of this allocation, a major share of Rs 13,208 crore is allocated for capital expenditure.
Yet you have no single argument that local research is given at best $2.7B compared to the $8B+ for imports funding foreign research.
Exactly! And Tapas doesn't need to be fielded at Leh. There are plenty of other border areas where it can be put into service where it can be shy of that 30k ft ceiling requirement, and help gain valuable data including with the jayem engine which then feeds into the next Tapas2/ArcherNG/etc SETB and Ytail designs... some other folks on this forum can't fathom how iterative spiral development works and instead blow the budget on imports.