India — Successful Flight of RUSTOM‑I

Indige­nous­ly designed and devel­oped RUSTOM‑1 made 14th suc­cess­ful flight this morn­ing at Kolar with attain­ment of about 11,500 ft AGL (above ground lev­el) and speed of above 140 Kmph dur­ing 2 hrs 10 min­utes of cruise. It may be not­ed that this unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle (UAV), devel­oped by Aero­nau­ti­cal Devel­op­ment Estab­lish­ment (ADE), a DRDO lab at Ban­ga­lore, had its maid­en flight in Nov 2009. Mr. PS Krish­nan, Direc­tor ADE stat­ed that the flight was suc­cess­ful. All the para­me­ters were achieved by the UAV which weigh around 690 Kg and the total per­for­mance was satisfactory. 

Here you can find more infor­ma­tion about:  The Glob­al UAV Mar­ket 2011–2021 Armored Per­son­nel Car­ri­ers in India to 2021: Mar­ket Brief Main Bat­tle Tanks in India to 2021: Mar­ket Brief Defense Expen­di­ture in India to 2016: Mar­ket Review Home­land Secu­ri­ty Expen­di­ture in India to 2016: Mar­ket Review Army Expen­di­ture in India to 2016: Mar­ket Brief Naval Expen­di­ture in India to 2016: Mar­ket Brief Air Force Expen­di­ture in India to 2016: Mar­ket Brief The Indi­an Defense Indus­try – Mar­ket Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Entry Strate­gies, Analy­ses and Fore­casts to 2016

The high­lights of the flight are:
a) Use of lean mix­ture con­trol sys­tem in the engine for flights at high alti­tudes.
b) Take­off weight being heav­i­est so far.
c) Achieved max alti­tude of 3.5 kms, about 11500 ft.
d) Extend­ed range of about 50 kms tried out for the first time. The way­point track was per­fect and so were take­off and land­ing etc.,

This UAV has the poten­tial mil­i­tary mis­sions like Recon­nais­sance & Sur­veil­lance, Tar­get Acqui­si­tion, Tar­get Des­ig­na­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Relay, Bat­tle Dam­age Assess­ment and Sig­nal Intelligence. 

This UAV can attain a max­i­mum alti­tude of 22,000 ft and endurance of 12–15 Hours with an oper­at­ing range of 250 Kms when ful­ly developed. 

Source:
Min­istry of Defence, India