The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the premier R&D organization of the country, is continuing with its project to further develop the Tapas medium-altitude, long endurance (MALE) drone.
Notably, earlier one of the three defence forces had shown interest to use them around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for operations, where it can be used for surveillance and reconnaissance.
The Tapas drones being developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment Laboratory have not been able to fully meet the Joint Services Qualitative Requirements of flying at 30,000 feet for over 24 hours at a stretch and have been excluded from the category of mission mode projects.
Noteworthy, the drones have been tested by the defence forces and during the trials, it managed to reach 28,000 feet altitude and could fly for over 18 hours.
Also, in one of the trials, the drone was operated by Indian Navy officials over the Arabian Sea for a few hours after it flew from an airfield in Chitradurga, Karnataka.
As pern the sources, the runway length required for the Tapas drone to take off is not very long and can be used from some of the small airfields in the island territories.
DRDO officials said the laboratory concerned would be working on improving designs and increasing the power in the drone to make it more suitable for service requirements of altitude and endurance, which it was not able to meet in the recent evaluations.
Source: https://aninews.in/
