The wait is over! India and America will sign the agreement to buy 31 Predator drones for $ 4 billion next month

New Delhi: India is set to sign a major deal with the US next month to buy 31 MQ-9B ‘hunter-killer’ Predator drones. The Defence Ministry is finalising the ‘draft note’ for the deal, after which it will be sent to the Finance Ministry and then to the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the Prime Minister for approval. The US had quoted a price of $3.9 billion (about Rs 33,500 crore) for this government-to-government deal. This news comes at a time when Prime Minister Modi is set to attend the fourth Quad leaders’ summit hosted by US President Joe Biden on September 21.

The Defence Ministry has approved the report

The report of the Defence Ministry’s contract negotiation committee has been approved. “The contract is expected to be signed in mid-October. The cost, setting up of an MRO (maintenance, repair, overhaul) facility here, performance-based logistics support and other such issues have been finalised after tough negotiations,” a source said. Though there will be no direct technology transfer (ToT) in the deal, the 31 remotely piloted aircraft will be assembled here. Drone-maker General Atomics will invest in India and source more than 30 per cent of the components from Indian companies. Drone-maker General Atomics will also guide DRDO and others to develop such high-altitude, stealth drones indigenously.

Navy and Air Force will get advanced drones

Last month, it was reported that India was speeding up the technical-commercial negotiations for this deal. Under this deal, 15 Sea Guardian drones have been kept for the Navy and 8-8 Sky Guardians for the Army and the Indian Air Force. This move has been taken at a time when both China and Pakistan are continuously increasing their fleet of armed UAVs.

What is special about the drone?

Designed to fly at an altitude of over 40,000 feet for about 40 hours, the 31 MQ-9B drones will come with 170 Hellfire missiles, 310 GBU-39B precision-guided glide bombs, navigation systems, sensor suites and mobile ground control systems. India will also equip the drones with indigenous weapons in the future, including the naval short-range anti-ship missile (NASM-SR) being developed by the DRDO. Apart from long-range strategic ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) missions and over-the-horizon targeting, the drones can carry out anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare operations.

This deal is necessary amid the growing presence of China

This becomes necessary in the face of the growing presence of the Chinese Navy in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), with its submarines capable of posing a major strategic challenge to India in the maritime domain after land borders. “China is systematically deploying its survey and research vessels in the IOR to map oceanic and other data useful for underwater domain awareness and submarine operations. Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, which have been occasionally visiting the IOR till now, will be on regular deployment in the region in the near future,” an official said.

India expects to receive initial deliveries of the combat-sized drones in two to three years, and plans to deploy them at ISR command and control centres at Arakkonam and Porbandar for the IOR and Sarsawa and Gorakhpur for the land borders.