Solar Industries Nagpur beats competitors from Israel and Poland to supply UAV ‘Nagastra’ to Indian Army

Solar Industries Nagpur on Friday said it has bagged an order to supply unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ‘Nagastra’ to the Indian Army, beating competitors from Israel and Poland. A Solar Industries official said with government’s initiative to bring Atmanirbharta in ammunition and defence systems, the first indigenous Loiter Munition (LM), Nagastra–1, 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.

A model of ‘Nagastra -1’ loitering munition was recently displayed in the Army Commanders conference held in New Delhi. The company said that Nagastra -1 having an indigenous content of more than 75 per cent has many world class features. It said that 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.

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. Drone technology has proved to be a force multiplier in military operations as evident from its application in various recent conflicts across the world, especially in cases of Armenia-Azerbaijan, Syria, strike on oilfields in Saudi Arabia, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“Even in our context, the recent incidents along the borders have seen a noticeable increase in drone related incidents along the northern borders. “Solar Industries have taken initiatives to develop a wide array of weaponised drones to neutralise various targets using gravity drop bombs, guided missiles or using them in a Kamikaze mode. This will go a long way to boost indigenous capability of using drones/ UAVs as war machinery,” company official said.