Homegrown Nishant Drone's Perfect Crash Record

[Delnavaz B]

Army sources said the UAV, the last of the four inducted in 2011, crashed near Pokhran in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan.


New Delhi: There were meant to be the eyes and ears of the Indian Army - a state of the art unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) meant to give Army commanders high definition images of a battlefield, help designate targets, and provide Electronic and Signal Intelligence information.

Instead, the home-grown Nishant UAV, developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is a flop with all four aircraft in service with the Indian Army having crashed. And now, the Army has had enough. They want no more Nishant drones from the DRDO. Each drone had cost the Army Rs. 22 crore.

The last of the four Nishants in service with the Army went down near the Pokhran range in Rajasthan today. According to Army sources, "Today's crash is due to a technical glitch." Just 15 days back, another Nishant had gone down, also for a technical reason. Earlier in April, two other Nishant drones had crash landed near the India-Pakistan border near Jaisalmer.

Under development for two decades, the Nishant, designed to fly for four and a half hours, was first inducted into the Indian Army in 2011 after successfully completing confirmatory trials. Launched by a catapult system, the Nishant is recovered after it deploys a parachute at the end of the each mission.

For their part, the DRDO has blamed the user for poor handling of the system, a point categorically denied by the Army.

The DRDO was banking on the success of the Nishant drone and was also developed a wheeled version of the system called the Panchi. The future of this programme now remains unclear.

India's armed forces uses a variety of UAVs including Israeli built Heron and Searcher aircraft which are larger and significantly more capable that the Nishant in its present state of development. A smaller drone, called the Nethra which was developed by graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology is also in use with the forces and is widely used by police and paramiltiary forces and the National Disaster Relief Force.
http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/nish...cle-of-indian-army-crashes-in-pokhran-1245328

 

[Cherokee]

This was published on November 19, 2015

So the new member is taking good care of his responsibility and positing old articles as if they have not been discussed to death already . Keep Going !! You are not the first noobie to do this and certainly you will not be the last .

 

[fitpOsitive]

discussed to death already .

 

[Cherokee]

For E.g. :

https://defence.pk/threads/last-of-the-four-nishants-in-service-crashes.409323/

https://defence.pk/threads/homegrown-nishant-drones-perfect-crash-record.409417/

https://defence.pk/threads/every-one-of-india’s-nishant-drones-has-crashed.412783/

https://defence.pk/threads/every-one-of-india’s-nishant-drones-has-crashed.412821/

 

[fitpOsitive]

For E.g. :

https://defence.pk/threads/last-of-the-four-nishants-in-service-crashes.409323/

https://defence.pk/threads/homegrown-nishant-drones-perfect-crash-record.409417/

https://defence.pk/threads/every-one-of-india’s-nishant-drones-has-crashed.412783/

https://defence.pk/threads/every-one-of-india’s-nishant-drones-has-crashed.412821/

I totally agree sir, only that sentence gave me a big laughter..

 

[DesiWarrior]

Why do you guys get frustrated when we want to discuss your illustrious home grown programs? I see waves of you Indians trolling each of the Pakistani program thread and once a person just points out a report from your own media, you guys start shitting in your pants. If you have a problem, go back to Bharat Rakshak or other numerous forums that you guys have and praise your technology and ways to crash drones or whatever else as much as you want.

About the Nishant drone, do you guys think it has an issue with the engine or other onboard navigation systems?

 

[ghameed]

Why do you guys get frustrated when we want to discuss your illustrious home grown programs? I see waves of you Indians trolling each of the Pakistani program thread and once a person just points out a report from your own media, you guys start shitting in your pants. If you have a problem, go back to Bharat Rakshak or other numerous forums that you guys have and praise your technology and ways to crash drones or whatever else as much as you want.

About the Nishant drone, do you guys think it has an issue with the engine or other onboard navigation systems?

the issue is the manufacturer....if it were a pakiman who had built it , then the drone would have orbited jupiter, fought with jovians and come back unscathed

 

[R!CK]

No harm in discussions, that's the point of a Forum. But should we just rediscuss every closed topic after each month? Trust me we'll be bored to death.

To answer your question, there seems to be a classified problem nd only time will tell how it pans out. I'd rather prefer a new drone design with more improvements making use of the MTCR membership.

Good Day!

 

[EyelessInGaza]

Even as an Indian I find the title funny...

"Gentlemen we have the Perfect Crash Record"

"Eh, great, eh, so you mean the highest standard of safety, eh?"

"No sir, all of them have crashed".

 

[DesiWarrior]

India already had all the technology available from Israel, I am just wondering how India is not able to make a drone of not that high tech technology when it is able to send satellites and rockets to space and very highly publicized Mars mission. If one admits it or not, the fault lies in understanding the basics. You guys always had help available from Russia, Western European countries for your space programs and it gave you an edge. I am definitely not trying to negate the effort your scientists and organizations put to further the cause. I admire ISRO in many ways and also the support your government has given them.

 

[boxer_B]

India already had all the technology available from Israel, I am just wondering how India is not able to make a drone of not that high tech technology when it is able to send satellites and rockets to space and very highly publicized Mars mission. If one admits it or not, the fault lies in understanding the basics. You guys always had help available from Russia, Western European countries for your space programs and it gave you an edge. I am definitely not trying to negate the effort your scientists and organizations put to further the cause. I admire ISRO in many ways and also the support your government has given them.

Dude, there can never be any comparison between space and defense technologies.

Space science is addictive and somewhat spiritual. It is a means to discover our existence and concept of God. Most of people working in ISRO only cares about their ends meet with kind of pay package.

However in defense technologies, most of the young graduates looks at salary package, which in most cases is sub par with MNCs out there. Money is driving force behind bright graduates choosing this field. Not so with space science.

 

[Quester]

Pakistan Always Best.

 

[Delnavaz B]

A perfect record all 20 Nishant drones turns into Shaant after the crashes

Every One of India’s Nishant Drones Has Crashed
by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

The Nishant was supposed to be the Indian Army’s premier, domestically-produced surveillance drone. But now it can’t be because all of them, every single one, crashed.

To be fair, there were only four Nishants. The product of a development program dating to 1995 from India’s state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization, the Nishant was meant to be a medium-altitude drone in a similar class to the Israeli Heron, which India also operates.

The difference being that India would produce the Nishant itself, freeing the country from its dependence on foreign unmanned vehicles, just as China and Pakistan race ahead producing drones of their own.

During its brief lifespan, the catapult-launched Nishant could stay in the air for four-and-a-half hours. The drone carried no weapons. Returning to base, the Nishant would not land like an airplane, but deploy a parachute and float to earth.

It could not carry weapons, as it functioned strictly in a reconnaissance role — spotting for artillery, snooping on enemy troops and hoovering up electronic and signal information from the battlefield. Or at least, that was the plan.

Had Nishant worked out, the Indian Army would have bought a total of twelve and sent them to disputed Kashmir region and to track Maoist rebels in India’s interior.
But it was not to be. The four prototype Nishants entered service in 2011, and then started falling — not floating — out of the sky. The first two went down near the Pakistani border in April 2015. The third Nishant crashed in Rajasthan in early November.

There was only one left … and that crashed on Nov. 19.

Above and at top — Nishant drones, one of them crashed with what appears to be an undeployed parachute. Photos via Indian defense forums
The cause of the last crash appeared to be a parachute which failed to properly deploy.

“In the past DRDO has blamed poor handling by the Army for the loss of at least two systems,” the Economic Times reported. “However, the Army has contended that the system has failed to perform and has technical problems during the recovery phase that have not been sorted out.”

To the Army’s credit, it already operates dozens of Israeli drones with no apparent troubles. Retired Lt. Gen. P.C. Katoch, who led the Indian Army’s information systems directorate, blasted the DRDO for a “gross lack of accountability,” producing “schoolboy level” inventions and then bragging about its accomplishments with “false propaganda.”

“For their part, the DRDO in its usual manner has blamed the user for poor handling of the system, a point categorically denied by the Army,” Katoch wrote at SP’s Aviation magazine. “The irony is that this game has been [going] on for decades with no one held accountable in the DRDO.”

“The irony here is that while this monolith of DRDO cannot produce a worthwhile drone in 20 years, Pakistan has already developed and deployed its own armed drone.” Kaotch was referring to the Burraq drone, which Islamabad developed from the Chinese CH-3.

Nishant, however, is dead. With no more left and an obvious lack of faith in the drone, the Indian Army canceled the project for good.

 

[zebra7]

India already had all the technology available from Israel, I am just wondering how India is not able to make a drone of not that high tech technology when it is able to send satellites and rockets to space and very highly publicized Mars mission. If one admits it or not, the fault lies in understanding the basics. You guys always had help available from Russia, Western European countries for your space programs and it gave you an edge. I am definitely not trying to negate the effort your scientists and organizations put to further the cause. I admire ISRO in many ways and also the support your government has given them.

Drones was never the priority of the India, may be the reason that IA will never use it tactically on Indian Soil, and to be frank, no OEM whether Israeli or US will share its secrets with India. Nishant was the Indian own effort, and now have been scraped as no new order by IA. However I think it should be continued with Panchi, a wheeled variant of the Nishant as the tech demonstrator and to test new technologies on it. All 4 units produced so far by the DRDO for IA dosen't prove anything, due to the nature of the Drones to have high crash probability. IA have lot of option now, and Nishant have played its part and it have given its contribution as the Wankel Engine. There is no shortcuts in R&D, and India/DRDO might face these types of failure to bring the sweet fruit of sucess.

But, now India is now putting an effort, and pushing for a mojor thrust in the Drones development and the induction of various Drones in armed forces, and in 6 years, the demand of different Drones is not less than 1000.
Rustam-2 showed good promise of the MALE, and for HALE Rustam-H, For stealth Combat Drones, DRDO have AURA program. It is a matter of time, when looking at the huge demand in the Indian Services and the Civilian usage in India, many Pvt companies will jump in this domain, and TATA have already joined it. The usage of the Drones are important, which the Police used recentally to keep an eye on the illegal mining in M.P recentally, when the DM was frustated with the Mafia, and ordered 24 hour vigillance on them.

 

[R!CK]

India already had all the technology available from Israel, I am just wondering how India is not able to make a drone of not that high tech technology when it is able to send satellites and rockets to space and very highly publicized Mars mission. If one admits it or not, the fault lies in understanding the basics. You guys always had help available from Russia, Western European countries for your space programs and it gave you an edge. I am definitely not trying to negate the effort your scientists and organizations put to further the cause. I admire ISRO in many ways and also the support your government has given them.

Israel will never share it's secrets about UAV to any country but US. Russians aren't way advanced in drones themselves. ISRO and drones are not really linked. But I admit we are lacking indigenous knowledge in this field mainly due to delayed introduction of technology into the battlefield. It is similar to the case of attack helicopters, where a focus on them were placed only recently. I'd hope things change in future, Slowly but surely.

A perfect record all 20 Nishant drones turns into Shaant

I'm not exactly sure how you found out about 20 nishant drones crashing since only 4 were ever made. So maybe another 16 crashed in your dreams or you have a natural tendency to multiply everythng by 5. Eitherways I'd recommend u verify information before you post to avoid wrong information from being passed on to others. It's very easy to pick up random numbers out of the air and create a hype.

“The irony here is that while this monolith of DRDO cannot produce a worthwhile drone in 20 years, Pakistan has already developed and deployed its own armed drone.” Kaotch was referring to the Burraq drone, which Islamabad developed from the Chinese CH-3.

If you see both the CH3 and Burraq, U'd know it's more Chinese than Pakistani. But regardless I appreciate PAF route of drone development because it's more feasible for countries like ours where R&D is ill-funded. I'd never compare Burraq and Nishant mainly because Nishant has always been a test project with just 4 prototypes made and India going at it almost entirely alone. Sadly may not be entirely successful, but hey that was the point of such a project. We didn't make 100s of Nishant and then realise it had problems. I'd actually praise the people involved for limiting it's number to 4. This may help make improvements in future projects. R&D efforts are never wasted, it might come handy in future someday.

Good Day all!