Homegrown Nishant Drone’s Perfect Crash Record

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.