HAL in tripartite pact for UAVs

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), Israel Aerospace Industries Limited (IAI) and Dynamatic Technologies Ltd (DTL) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for marketing, manufacturing and selling IAI’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to potential Indian customers such as the Defence Forces, Paramilitary Forces and Central Armed Police Forces, at DefExpo 2020 in Lucknow.

The MoU was signed between Sanjiv Shukla, ED-Corporate Planning, HAL, Eli Alfassi, Executive Vice-President, Marketing for IAI, and Arvind Mishra, Executive Director & Global COO Hydraulics and Homeland Security for DTL, in the presence of R Madhavan, CMD, HAL, senior executives of HAL, IAI and DTL.

Madhavan said, “The collaboration will provide excellent opportunity to HAL to expand its product offerings to defence customers, absorb critical technologies and strengthen the aerospace ecosystem in the country, especially for UAVs”.

Nimrod Sheffer, President and CEO, IAI, said, “We are delighted to sign the strategic agreement with our partners, HAL and DTL. India is an important strategic market for UAVs and I am confident of IAI’s extensive experience and the technological capabilities of HAL and DTL will lead to significant advancements in the field.”

Global partnership

Udayant Malhoutra, CEO & Managing Director of Dynamatic Technologies Limited, said, “This is a Global PPP between HAL, our partner for over two decades, IAI a world leader in UAV technology who we have been teaming with since 2017. This collaboration will provide a boost to Make in India and we are committed to establish a broad technological and industrial ecosystem within the country.”

Presently, UAVs play a significant role in wars and other tactical missions such as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). In the coming years Indian Defence Forces are likely to induct a large number of UAVs to meet such requirements. HAL has the best capability and infrastructure available in India to manufacture world-class and battle-proven UAVs of IAI.

IAI as design authority, HAL as Principal Contractor and DTL as Principal Principle Sub-Contractor will complement each other to provide best in class ‘Make-in-India’ UAVs to Indian Defence Forces.

HAL, as a long-time partner of IAI, is involved in the depot-level maintenance of all the MALE and Short Range class of UAVs supplied by IAI to the Indian Defence Forces since 2004. Taking the HAL-IAI collaboration one step ahead, under the scope of this MoU, this partnership would be the first in country to manufacture IAI-designed UAVs in India, like Short Range Tactical class having long endurance. This collaboration will enhance technology sharing and business partnership between India and Israel.