In mid-July, Hindustan Aviation (HAL) announced that it would begin building the fuselages of the first six TAPASBH-201 drones.
Previously, the Indian aviation industry has been carrying out research and development work on large UAVs for more than 20 years, and the mass production of tapas series UAVs may mark that the Indian army is about to have its own domestic medium altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAVs.
Indian-made drones that are given high hopes
The TAPASBH-201 drone (formerly known as Rustom2) is a long-range drone.
The TAPAS program was officially launched in 2011. On November 16, 2016, TAPASBH-201 successfully made its first flight in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. In the initial phase, 6 prototypes were built for flight testing. But due to link loss and turbulence, one of the prototypes crashed during test flights in September 2019.
According to hal's public information, the TAPASBH-201 drone is powered by twin NPO "Saturn" 36MT turboprop engines. With a wingspan of more than 20 meters and an endurance of 24-30 hours, it can perform tasks day and night, and can take off and land autonomously.
Its payload is 150 kg. The Indian military plans to purchase 76 aircraft, including 60 for the Army, 12 for the Air Force and 4 for the Navy.
The TAPAS drone project was supposed to be completed in 2016, but has been postponed due to various technical issues. Finally, it finally entered the airframe production phase in July 2022. Subsequently, HAL promised that the TAPAS project would not be further extended and that delivery would be achieved in 2023.
Not long ago, when the Armenian defense delegation visited India, it discussed with Indian drone manufacturers the possibility of purchasing Indian-made reconnaissance drones. Indian media speculated in the report that the armed reconnaissance drone that Armenia plans to purchase may be the TAPASBH-201 drone.
Since 2006, India has procured as many as 50 Heron drones from Israel. Obviously, HAL hopes to achieve mass production of TAPASBH-201 as soon as possible to replace the "Heron" drone. This can not only meet the needs of its domestic troops, but also create certain foreign trade benefits.
Heron
Ambitions outside of Annei
At present, the main drones of the Indian army are imported "Searcher" -1, "Searcher" -2, "Heron".
Due to the weak industrial base of India, its self-developed Indian military drones frequently have accidents, which makes the Indian army gradually lose its trust and recognition of domestic models, resulting in the development of India's UAV industry more tortuous.
Take, for example, the Nishant drone, which was developed as early as the 1990s. However, due to the failure of its calibration technology to meet the standards, there were several crashes after the completion of the test in 2011 and delivery to the Indian Army, which eventually led the Indian Army to terminate the order for "Nishant".
"Nishant" drone
Searcher -1
Searcher -2
In recent years, in order to promote the development of domestic UAVs, India has introduced a series of regulations including the 2021 UAV Rules, the "Production Linkage Incentive Plan", and the conditional prohibition of UAV imports. The main purpose is to enhance the competitiveness of the domestic drone industry.
On August 22, 2022, the Indian Army launched the "Drone Marathon" project in cooperation with the Indian Drone Alliance. Designed to promote and provide focused opportunities for India's drone ecosystem to develop groundbreaking drone capabilities to meet the needs of frontline troops. The project has developed various types of developments, including high-altitude transport drones and autonomous surveillance search and rescue drones. In addition, it was announced that it would design and develop micro and nano unmanned aerial vehicles for use in urban operations.
In addition, India currently implements an exemption policy for imported drone parts to encourage domestic drone manufacturing. But for military drones with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, the Indian government legislates that must be procured domestically.
The gap between history and reality
In recent years, drones have played a huge military value in the Libyan war, the Syrian war and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, achieving a strategic role in attacking high-value military targets at a very small cost.
In April 2022, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he would transform India into a global manufacturing hub for drones. At present, 70% of India's airspace has been freed up for civilian drones, which have been deployed for mapping, agriculture, meteorology, film, medical treatment and disaster relief. The Indian government will provide 10,000 technicians to the drone manufacturing industry, and by 2025, the drone civilian industry will create 500,000 jobs.
India's Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scidia also said 14 of India's 28 states, as well as more than a dozen federal agencies, have adopted drones that have digitally mapped 6.5 million properties in India. However, there is no substantial data on the application of the UAV announced above.
Although the Indian government is actively formulating policies and expressing its vision to vigorously promote the development of the drone industry, the enterprises affiliated to the Indian government department are not active in the development of the drone field. In contrast, private companies are more aggressive about the development of the military drone field.
Seeing this, the Indian government has also allowed private enterprise companies to participate in the development of military drone projects, hoping to reduce research and development costs and deepen cooperation with overseas advanced manufacturers through private companies – at present, Israel Aviation Industry (IAI) has taken the lead in cooperating with several Indian drone companies.
Although TAPAS has now entered mass production, due to its crash record in the test flight phase, people still have doubts about its prospects. This may be the epitome of India's domestic high-end drone industry: the policy and vision are beautiful, but the technology and history are very "bone".