India set to ink $4 billion deal for 31 Predator drones with US in October

NEW DELHI: India is getting set to ink the mega deal for 31 weaponised MQ-9B `hunter-killer’ Predator drones with the US next month, with the defence ministry now finalizing the `draft note’ for the finance ministry and then the final nod from the PM-led cabinet committee on security.

The report of the MoD’s contract negotiation committee has been “submitted and accepted” for the government-to-government deal for which the US had earlier quoted a price of $3.9 billion (over Rs 33,500 crore), sources told TOI.

The development comes as PM Modi is slated to visit the US for the fourth in-person Quad leaders’ summit to be hosted by President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 21.

“The contract should be inked in mid-Oct. The costing, setting up of a MRO (maintenance, repair, overhaul) facility here, performance-based logistics support and other such issues have been finalized after hard negotiations,” a source said.

While there will be no direct transfer of technology (ToT) in the deal, the 31 remotely-piloted aircraft will be assembled here, with the drone-manufacturer General Atomics making an investment in India and sourcing over 30 per cent of the components from Indian companies.

Drone-manufacturer General Atomics will also provide expertise and consultancy to DRDO and others to develop such high-altitude, long endurance drones indigenously.

TOI was the first to report last month that India was fast-tracking the techno-commercial negotiations for the deal, under which 15 Sea Guardian drones are earmarked for Navy and 8 Sky Guardians each for Army and IAF, in the backdrop of both China and Pakistan steadily boosting their fleets of armed UAVs.

Designed to fly for almost 40 hours at altitudes over 40,000-feet, the 31 MQ-9B drones will come with 170 Hellfire missiles, 310 GBU-39B precision-guided glide bombs, navigation systems, sensor suites and mobile ground control systems, among other associated equipment. India will also equip the drones with indigenous weapons, including the naval short-range anti-ship missiles (NASM-SR) being developed by DRDO, in the future.

Apart from long-range strategic ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) missions and over-the-horizon targeting, the drones can undertake anti-warship and anti-submarine warfare operations.

This becomes crucial in the backdrop of the Chinese Navy’s increasing footprint in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), with its submarines capable of posing a major strategic challenge to India in the maritime domain after the land borders.

“China has been systematically deploying its survey and research vessels in the IOR to map oceanographic and other data useful for underwater domain awareness and submarine operations. Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, which as of now come to the IOR occasionally, will be on regular deployments to the region in the near future,” an officer said.

India, hoping to get the initial deliveries of the fighter-sized drones in two to three years, plans to deploy them at ISR command and control centres at Arakkonam and Porbandar for the IOR and Sarsawa and Gorakhpur for the land borders.

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