Make in India: Army Contemplating Use of Indigenous ‘Mule’ Drones for High Altitude Logistics

The drones have found relevance in solving many everyday human problems ranging from photogrammetry to delivering couriers. The Indian Army is looking at using drones for transporting not only rations but also materials in unfriendly terrains. According to top Indian Army officials, there are immense opportunities for using the indigenous drones instead of the mules.

The DGCA has classified the drones based on their weight as the single most important criterion: Nano (lees than 250gm), Micro (250gm-2kg), Mini (2kg-25kg), Small (25kg-150kg) and Large (greater than 25Kg) are considered to obtain various licenses and Governmental permissions. Here, the overall weight of the drone is inclusive of the payload weight it has been designed to carry in the air. Further, from an engineering point of view, a drone is classified as either ‘rotary-wing’ or ‘fixed wing’ configuration, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Different Drones

Fixed-wing drones fly more like a remote control plane (aerodynamics force principle) with launch attained through a small runway, catapult or hand-operated. The rotary drones hover/move akin to a helicopter and these rotary drones are further categorized based on propeller configurations as Quad-copter, Hexa-copter or Octa-copter. A combination of these two types also exist for special purposes, called Hybrid drone, to leverage the advantages of vertical take-off/landing (of rotary drones), and cruise flight of a fixed-wing drone.

Mule Drones

In the Northern regions, large High Altitude Areas are manned by soldiers 24/7 around the year and maintaining human lives with military provisions at these bunkers is no easy task for any Nation. The supply lines in these areas are maintained either through helicopters, Porters or Mules/local ponies. The risk to men and material is very high during these regularly required tasks and long breaks in essential supply may jeopardize the troop sustenance in inhospitable terrain.

However, a specialized Drone tailor-made for store delivery in High Altitude Area shall be the much-needed alternative and need an urgent indigenization focus as a Drone’s peacetime military application opines an expert.

Technical Challenges

“Such specialized load-carrying ‘mule’ drones shall be required to carry about 20 to 50 Kg payload, and are to be capable of operating up to 20,000 feet above MSL. An endurance of approximately 6 to 8 hours is desired for these drones so as to achieve a minimum 10km flight range. These highly specialized drones are expected to be heavily ruggedized to near Military Grade so as to bear the adverse atmospheric conditions and still be able to complete two to four sorties daily,” Milind Kulshreshtha, C4I and Drone expert.

According to the drone expert, navigation of these Drones shall be based on GPS or IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System – NAVIC), with safety features like Auto Return to the Launch point for fail-safe exploitation. Due to space limitation for landing, Mule drones shall have vertical take-off/landing procedures, whereas cruising flight could be a fixed-wing configuration. Therefore, Hybrid drone design makes for the most suitable choice for these Mule drones.

“Mule drones are expected to operate frequently at extremely low temperatures (up to minus 20 degree Celsius ambient temperatures), and, therefore, a combined Gasoline plus Electric propulsion system shall be the main fuel source for these Hybrid drones. Special design features like heat pads and insulator mechanism for onboard systems and electronics shall form part of ruggedization process and an advanced Navigation with Stabilisation shall protect these flying units from random heavy gusts etc. (even though meteorology shall continue to be an important consideration at the launch instant),” Kulshreshtha says.

Overall, with no risk to men or animals during their operations, the Mule drones shall provide a more reliable supply chain route for provisioning troops based at High Altitude Areas. Even though few private sector companies have separately tested fixed-wing and rotary drone prototypes for high altitude (up to 20,000 feet operating at minus 20 deg C) operations, such efforts need Governmental support to extrapolate these designs to cater to Mule drones’ Hybrid scheme.

With ever deteriorating border conditions, troop de-escalation in the Northern frontier of India is beyond a remote chance in the future, and hence, Government effort to support such technological initiatives can go a long way in protecting our border, saving lives and reducing expenses too.

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Source: FE

Image Courtesy: LifeBoat

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