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The people’s newsroom

PolicyDefence

Nagpur firm delivers Nagastra-2 anti-tank loitering munition to the Army after trials

Solar Defence and Aerospace says the drone completed technical trials at the Mahajan range in August and can strike armour up to 50 km away.

From the editorial desk · NagpurPublished
A Nagastra loitering munition made by Solar Defence and Aerospace (file photo)
A Nagastra loitering munition made by Solar Defence and Aerospace (file photo)Photo: MilleniumAC / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. Nagastra-2 completed technical trials at the Mahajan Field Firing Range in August.
  2. It carries a 4 kg tandem shaped-charge warhead meant to pierce up to 650 mm of armour.
  3. The maker gives a range of 50 km in fire-and-forget mode and endurance of up to an hour.

Solar Defence and Aerospace Ltd, a Nagpur company, says it has delivered its Nagastra-2 anti-tank loitering munition to the Indian Army after the weapon completed technical trials.

The trials were held at the Mahajan Field Firing Range in August, and the company said the users had observed all operational parameters, including its resistance to electronic jamming.

A loitering munition is a drone that circles over a battlefield until it finds a target and then dives into it. The company says Nagastra-2 “is equipped with day-and-night surveillance cameras and a 4 kg tandem shaped-charge warhead”, designed to penetrate up to 650 mm of rolled homogeneous armour, the steel used in tanks.

Range and jamming

According to the maker, it can fly up to 25 km in a recover-and-reuse mode, in which it returns if no target is struck, and up to 50 km in fire-and-forget mode. It can stay in the air for up to 60 minutes.

“A key technological feature of Nagastra 2 is its Electronic Counter-Countermeasures (ECCM) capability,” the company said, meaning it is built to keep working through communication jamming, GPS jamming and GPS spoofing.

The company has not said how many units were handed over or what the order is worth, and the Army has not commented.

The delivery comes as the government presses the forces to adopt new technology. At the Army Commanders’ Conference in New Delhi on Friday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asked commanders to speed up the adoption of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, and praised the Army’s work on drones.