Representatives of the U.S. and the Indian Air Force signed a landmark agreement to jointly develop air-launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The agreement is the inaugural co-development project under the U.S.-India Defense Technology and Trade Exchange Initiative, a bilateral defense cooperation mechanism that promotes collaborative technology sharing, strengthens cooperative research and enables co-production/co-development of defense systems for sustainment and modernization of military forces.
“The United States and India share a common vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” said Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, Kelli L. Seybolt. “This co-development agreement further operationalizes India’s status as a Major Defense Partner and builds upon our existing strong defense cooperation.”
The project is valued at more than $22 million with costs shared equally, and marks the largest-ever defense Research, Development, Test and Evaluation collaboration between the United States and India.
The objectives are the Design, Development, Demonstration, Test and Evaluation of technologies including physical hardware such as small UAVs, avionics, payload power, propulsion, and launch systems through prototyping that meet the operational requirements of the Indian and U.S. Air Forces.
The co-development project will be carried out jointly between the U.S. Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
“This important Project Agreement comes after many months invested by the AFSAC team, AFLCMC program offices, AFRL, Air Force International Affairs, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, as well as our Indian Air Force and DRDO counterparts working together, side-by-side, on common national security interests,” emphasized Bruckbauer. “I am proud of the dedicated teamwork and partnership this Project Agreement represents for both of our countries.”
For India, this partnership will take a very concrete form, offering a boost to CATS project research.
Combat Airborne Combat Equipment System (CATS)
This is a collaborative unmanned and manned combat aircraft system being developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
Full view of the Combat Air Team System (CATS) ensemble. #AeroIndia2021 pic.twitter.com/yZcPVHYUxf
— Livefist (@livefist) February 4, 2021
The system will consist of a manned combat aircraft that will act as the «mother ship» of the system and a set of drones that will act as a swarm, governed by the pilot of the mother plane.
CATS was first unveiled during Aero India 2021, being a similar program to the Loyal Wingman, which will serve to significantly expand the capabilities of the HAL Tejas Mk1A and the future Mk2.
The US is already working on it
For its part, the U.S. is already experimenting and refining this technology. An experiment was conducted in March this year, in which an XQ-58A Valkyrie combat UAV successfully launched an ALTIUS-600 reconnaissance drone.
The general idea would be to saturate enemy air defenses by launching hordes of unmanned combat aircraft, which in turn would deploy swarms of suicide air-launched drones or marauding munitions.
