NEW DELHI: A Navy Drishti-10 Starliner drone crashed near the Porbandar airfield in Gujarat during a routine training sortie on Wednesday afternoon, in the second mishap involving the Hermes-900-based platform acquired under the emergency procurement route.
The remotely piloted aircraft had taken off from the Naval Air Enclave at Porbandar before going down in an open field near Dharampur village, around 6 km from the coastal city in the Saurashtra region.
“The Indian Navy confirms the crash of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle Drishti-10 off Porbandar airfield during a training sortie this afternoon. No injury or loss of life has been reported on the ground. The cause of the incident is being investigated,” the Navy said, with a board of inquiry to establish whether a technical malfunction or loss of data link led to the crash.
The Army and Navy had contracted two Drishti-10 drones each under the fourth tranche of emergency procurement in 2023, at a cost of around Rs 140 crore per aircraft. The drones are licence-manufactured by Adani Defence and Aerospace at its Hyderabad facility under a partnership with Israel’s Elbit Systems, and are the Indianised variant of the battle-proven Hermes-900.
This is the second Drishti-10 to go down near Porbandar. In January of last year, a drone being flown by the vendor during pre-acceptance trials had ditched into the Arabian Sea after reportedly losing its communication link, before formal induction into naval service. That aircraft was subsequently replaced by the manufacturer.
The twin incidents in 18 months will renew scrutiny of the platform’s reliability at a time when the Navy is pursuing a case to induct 10 more Drishti-10 drones for persistent round-the-clock surveillance of the Indian Ocean Region, where Chinese warships and survey vessels regularly prowl, sources in the defence establishment said.
With an endurance of 36 hours, a payload capacity of 450 kg and an operating ceiling of 30,000 feet, the Drishti-10 is geared for long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
The Navy flies the drones from Porbandar for maritime domain awareness over the Arabian Sea, easing the load on its P-8I long-range patrol aircraft, while the Army operates the platform from Bathinda to keep tabs on the western front with Pakistan.
Furthermore, the Navy already operates two MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones on lease from American firm General Atomics and will get 15 of the 31 hunter-killer MQ-9B drones contracted from the US in October 2024.
