We actually need 120 mq-9's, 12 mq-4's/rq-4's and around 300 heron tp's and around 800 heron 1/2's and tapas.
Maritime Patrol Aircraft : P-8I Neptune, Dornier-228 : News & Discussions
- Thread starter Ashwin
- Start date
Our scope of operations isn't 5 oceans, it's just the BoB, Arabian Sea upto the Persian Gulf & Bab el Mendeb , Andaman Sea upto the straits of Kra , west Pacific upto the Malacca , Sunda & Lombok straits & the Northern half of the Indian Ocean .
I doubt we intend to go even upto Diago Garcia or the Mozambique Channel. What are we going to do with a carrier based MQ-9.
That'd be more of use when INS Vishal comes in.
If we have 10-15 with 24 hrs endurance & the range they have + satellite cover & the US + Japan network, I mean what exactly are you hunting? Chinese ships & subs or UFO's ?
It's still overkill. Each MQ-9 costs 100 million USD. You expect us to procure 100 nos while we haven't yet gone in for those 114 MRFA's in spite of wasting 2 decades over them or 4+ decades depending on the PoV you hold.
Currently the regular Reapers are leased, they give usual 15-18 hours.
The dedicated sea guardian, that's like 30+ hours with all the sensors and fuel.
30 hours on station is great.
Do you guys think Tapas could handle operating from ANC for the adjacent area, assuming its cleared for operation over sea/rough weather?
For the navy use, I would go for current lease agreement continuation for few more years. Never understood the idea of all 3 services being handed 10 each at that level of cost when numerous other areas lacking budget.
For the navy use, I would go for current lease agreement continuation for few more years. Never understood the idea of all 3 services being handed 10 each at that level of cost when numerous other areas lacking budget.
Tapas is in the class of Heron 1s.
For Army and Airforce, it can take off from one base and land on another.
But for Navy, there's no other base, there's only sea. Navy needs a bigger UAV. Like Reaper or Heron TP.
HAL is working with IAI for making their range here probably, it was in the news recently. Think they also hinted of IAI being involved in rustom project too. Curious about how this plays out, this is one sector where a lot of competition is everywhere & cheap drones are pulling market by winning PR race.
There's no way a we can upgrade UAVs performance with 360hp in power to someone's having 1200hp. There's a huge difference.
I only wish that Tapas gets done, so that Army and Airforce can replace the Heron 1 roles effectively.
There are chances that we could license produce the mq-9's. That's why such high number.
Never heard of it . Besides if we indeed do license produce it , prices usually tend to escalate in our case if the collaboration partner is a DPSU . Even if it's a Pvt entity how much do you think we'd be able to reduce the prices by ?
There is absolute every chance the license production will be limited to making less important stuff like wings & composite material built airframe parts locally, HAL will assemble those which frankly is useless. We are yet to see anything concrete take shape. As I have posted before from Midhani meeting, Lockheed Martin wanted to give some useless ToT & not look for collab & then business together, some Pvt startup must have taken that bait by now. The same will happen for this venture too given USA nature.
Sensors/electronics will be imported. Rest we can surely do. The engine used is same we use in Do228 or HTT40.
if we could do it, then we would have already done it. Countries like like turkey, iran are putting their stuff on the battle field while we are still building & testing it.
We should envy South Korea, Japan , France, UK, Italy and Germany in military tech and hope to best them all.
Turkey and Iran will never win a conventional war against a conventional army. What they have are asymmetric last options.
Not the 1st, 2nd or 3rd.