Hyderabad (Telangana) [India]: After unveiling the first indigenously manufactured Drishti 10 Starliner Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Hyderabad, Indian Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar asserted the platform is expected to be a ‘capability enhancer’ for the force.
He affirmed the UAV is a dream come true for the Navy, that a Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAV has been manufactured in India with over 60 per cent indigenous content.
“It’s a milestone event for the Indian Navy and India’s quest for an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. This is a dream come true for us that a Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV has been manufactured in India with over 60 per cent indigenous content. This demonstrates the capability that has been set up,” he said during an interaction with reporters after the unveiling ceremony in Hyderabad.
“This will be a great capability enhancer for us. And we are quite confident now that this is only going to strengthen us and provide us with even better capabilities as time goes by. I’ve gone around and seen the facility,” the Navy chief outlined.
The Navy Chief further highlighted the UAV’s ability to provide real-time communication, surveillance, and monitoring.
He pointed that the goal is to enhance Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) in the Indian Ocean region, where the Indian Navy holds a prominent position as the largest resident naval power.
“This has got satellite communication, which will enable us to go further out into the Indian Ocean, helping us to have better maritime domain awareness,” he said.
“The aim is to have much better MDA or maritime domain awareness. So when you have that, what happens is that, in the Indian Ocean region, we are the largest resident naval power. We should know what’s happening, who’s there, what they’re doing and what they’re up to,” Hari Kumar said.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle has been manufactured by Adani Defence and Aerospace.
Speaking on the UAV, Vice President of Adani Enterprises, Jeet Adani, said that the platform will primarily augment the Navy’s anti-piracy and seaborne missions.
“What you see here, this entire platform is more than 70-80 per cent indigenised, which means everything is manufactured in this facility that you see over here, along with the vendor ecosystem that we’ve developed over the last twelve months,” Jeet Adani said.
“In terms of its abilities, it’s a medium-altitude, low-endurance machine. So it’s meant for a sort of 1000-mile operational range and as you may have heard the chief of Naval Staff talk about it earlier today, what this is primarily going to augment is their anti-piracy and seaborne missions,” he added.
The Drishti 10 Starliner is an advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform with 36 hours of endurance and a 450 kg payload capacity.
The only all-weather military platform with NATO’s STANAG 4671 (standardised agreement 4671) certification for the UAV system’s airworthiness, it is cleared to fly in both segregated and unsegregated airspace. The UAV will now be taken from Hyderabad to Porbandar to be inducted into naval maritime operations.
