Nagpur based company beats global cos to supply UAV to Indian Army 

New Delhi: A Nagpur based company has bagged an order to supply unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) 'Nagastra' to the Indian Army. Solar Industries beat its global competitors from Israel and Poland to grab the order.

As per the company, Nagastra-1, the first indigenous Loiter Munition (LM), 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.

In the Army Commander's conference held this week in New Delhi, the company demonstrated a model of 'Nagastra -1' loitering munition.

The company has claimed that the UAV Nagastra -1 has an indigenous content of more than 75 per cent. It also has many world class features. 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, the company highlighted.

In addition to day-night surveillance cameras the loiter munition is equipped with 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 abort, recover and reuse features of this loiter munition make this system superior to similar class of systems developed by advanced countries.

Indian Army's buying drones picked up after the encounters with China in Ladakh in June 2020. 

In the last year, drones have come into sharp focus after the Russia-Ukraine war where drone attacks have become a daily feature. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine is using drones to attack Russian troops while Moscow is using drones to strike Ukrainian targets.

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