The wheeled version of UAV Nishant can take off from and land on small airstrips

Panchi, the wheeled version of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Nishant, capable of taking off from and landing on small airstrips, had its maiden flight on December 24 from an airfield at Kolar in Karnataka.

The aim of the flight, which lasted 25 minutes, was “to demonstrate that Panchi can take off and land on its wheels. It was a textbook flight,” said Anil Kumar Agarwal, Project Director, Panchi. The flight was preceded by high-speed taxi trials that began at the Kolar airfield on November 22.

Panchi was designed and developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) facility at Bengaluru.

K. Tamilmani, Director-General (Aeronautical Systems) of the DRDO, lauded “the aggressive efforts in the past eight months by the ADE team, which led to the creation of this version.”

Nishant, which has an underbelly airbag, is launched by a catapult, and lands with the help of an onboard parachute. Panchi has all the surveillance capabilities of Nishant, but it can stay in the air longer because it does not have to carry the airbag and the parachute systems of the other. It is also a light vehicle with its body made of composites, and has a high degree of stealth because it has a low radar cross-section signature.

Mr. Agarwal said that since the Army wanted a wheeled version of Nishant, the ADE quickly developed it with modifications to the hardware and software.

Ravi Kumar Gupta, Director of Public Interface, DRDO, said Nishant which had already been with the Army, was designed for battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, tracking of targets and artillery fire correction. A sophisticated image processing system was used for analysing the images transmitted by it.