By Zachary Keck
India will soon be equipping its drones with precision-guided munitions (PGMs), according to the head of the country’s defense technology agency.
According to The Hindu, on Monday Avinash Chander, the new Director-General of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) said that “in a couple of months” his organization would begin testing PGMs that are small enough to fit onto Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).
The newspaper paraphrased Chander as saying that along with miniaturization, the “major thrust” of DRDO’s effort in the short term are on “bridging vital gaps in developing advanced seekers, sensors and actuators.” In the future, Chander said his agency would focus on the “development of navigation and telemetry on chip and that of loitering weapons with 80 percent explosives and 20 percent avionics.”
Speaking at the same conference as Chander, G. Satheesh Reddy, the head of Research Centre Imarat (RCI)—a missile research laboratory that is helping to develop India’s PGMs—said his company was working on extending the range of the PGMs to 100 km, up from 30 km currently.
Read the full story at The Diplomat