Solar Industries To Supply UAV 'Nagastra' To Indian Army

Solar Industries Nagpur on Friday said it had bagged an order to supply the unmanned aerial vehicle 'Nagastra' to the Indian Army, beating competitors from Israel and Poland.

A Solar Industries official said that with the government's initiative to bring Atmanirbharta into ammunition and defence systems, the first indigenous Loiter Munition, Nagastra-1, has been designed and developed by Economics Explosives Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of Solar Industries Nagpur, in association with Z-Motion, Bangalore.

A model of 'Nagastra -1' loitering munition was recently displayed at the Army Commanders Conference held in New Delhi.

The company said that Nagastra-1 with an indigenous content of more than 75%, has many world-class features.

It said that in 'Kamikaze mode,' it can neutralise any hostile threat with a GPS-enabled precision strike with an accuracy of 2 metres. The fixed wing electric UAV has an endurance of 60 min with a man-in-loop range of 15 km and an autonomous mode range of 30 km.

In addition to day-and-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.

It further said that the abort, recover, and reuse features of this loiter munition make this system superior to a similar class of systems developed by advanced countries.

Drone technology has proved to be a force multiplier in military operations, as evident from its application in various recent conflicts across the world, especially in the cases of Armenia-Azerbaijan, Syria, the strike on oilfields in Saudi Arabia, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

"Even in our context, the recent incidents along the borders have seen a noticeable increase in drone-related incidents along the northern borders."

'Solar Industries have taken initiatives to develop a wide array of weaponised 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 indigenous capability of using drones/ UAVs as war machinery,' company official said.