India’s classified Unmanned Strike Air Vehicle (USAV) is making steady progress in its drawing board phase, with several key technologies in the process of maturing.
In his exclusive interview to Livefist, DRDO chief Dr Avinash Chander, when asked specifically about unmanned programmes, said, “We are working on a high stealth capability, optimising the weapon carrying capability. Various elements have been identified. It is not a ‘formal project’ at the moment. Before we come to that, we have to get a lot of enabling technologies. We are looking at those areas. Once we are confident of that, we will take up the project.”
The secret USAV programme was first revealed on Livefist three years ago.
Dr Chander also confirmed that the Kaveri turbofan would power the future UCAV. “We are focusing now on platforms that can carry weapons, with more intelligence and more powerful. That is where we feel the Kaveri engine is going to be one of the key parameters. Efforts we put in to the engine are s going to be very handy,” he said.
In June last year I posted the first ever images from the official design phase of the USAV, post aerodynamic shape optimization and design optimization (the first depicting the AURA/USAV with its internal weapons bays, weapons and intake-exhaust architecture). I had earlier scooped some preliminary impressions of the USAV. The guesswork impressions I commissioned from digital artist Anurag Rana pretty much match how the vehicle is turning out.
barking dogs seldom bite.
Anonymous barking
He himself have said that it's not a "FORMAL PROJECT" then definitely USAV will not be around 2020,maybe it will fly by 2030,By that time almost every country jumps to next GEN drone Tech,we will be deploying our state of the art Autonomous UCAV.
Yeah keep believing what ever these DRDO old timers say.At first they are not all confident of developing the key tech required for the USAV a project like this requires a high level of various SENSOR development & Artificial Intelligence we don't have expertise in developing these techs.We are not able to make our own "IRST" SENSOR where as they want to go in for UCAV.
Empty vessel sounds loud.
After reading this article only thing i did was ROLF XD:
AURA USAV & AMCA are dooooooooomed as long as ADA is involved in these projects.
AURA & AMCA will suffer the same fate of LCA Tejas.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE @ Anonymous 11:35 PM 12:42 PM
Why such a lewd standarad for comments especially for this site?
The anchor should do some moderations as well.
Our DRDO guys should be ambitious in thoughts, not pretentious. After 10000 cr they want to sink more in kaveri.
Spend that money on kaveri river n there will be water for thousands of farmers n much more for drinking.
it will take time …..