Defence Modernisation: Army To Get Indigenous SWITCH Drones

• 16 Jan 2021

Towards modernization of Indian Defence forces, the Indian Army has struck a deal for SWITCH UAV from ideaForge Technology — especially for surveillance along LAC in Eastern Ladakh.

• This is the biggest such order in terms of the contract value, for any Indian equipment manufacturer for drones.
• ideaForge was incubated in 2007 at the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) at IIT-B by four alumni members.
• Based in Mumbai, currently, the company offers seven UAVs that are used in a range of applications including mapping, traffic management, surveillance, crowd management and security. Some of these drones are already in use by the armed forces.

About Switch UAV

• The Switch UAV is a fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing UAV that can be deployed at high altitude and harsh environments for day and night surveillance in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
• It is man-portable and has the highest time on target compared to any other UAV in its class.

Its features include:

• Advanced flight time with a range of 15 km
• Around 2.6m long and 1.8m wide and weighs less than 6.5 kg
• Higher safety and simple operation with additional fail-safe redundancies
• Used for long-duration operations harsh environments for day and night surveillance in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions