India Building Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

India To Build Unmanned Vehicle For Oceanic Operations

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Bangalore (PTI) Aug 26, 2003
India has embarked on a project to build a "concept demonstrator" of an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle in 30 months, a top defence official said recently.

"It is very difficult to put a timeframe for a project like this... We want to put something in water and see whether we can have an autonomous (unmanned) underwater vehicle without any sensors in about 30 months," Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister and Director General of DRDO Dr V K Aatre told reporters here.

Defence Research Development Organisation, he said, had begun work on the demonstrator for initial trials under water, a product similar to an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

Aatre said India was lagging behind the United States in technology, but was even with other countries.

Earlier, delivering the 19th Brahm Prakash memorial lecture on "Ocean Marine Acoustics and Underwater Technologies" at the Indian Institute of Science here, he said the country had indigenous capability to build all types of SONARs, Sound Navigation and Ranging.

"We are self reliant in the technology except for chips...India has built all type of SONARs," Aatre said.

Observing that the future of underwater survelliance was in shallow waters, he said "anti submarine warfare will be a Littoral (near territory)...and perhaps, we are not going at blue water (far sea) naval confrontation.

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