Guardian UAV

Why in news?

• The Indian Navy has inducted two MQ-9B Sea Guardian unarmed drones procured from the U.S. on lease.

About the drones:

• The Guardian is the maritime variant of the Predator MQ-9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).
• The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper (sometimes called Predator B) is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capable of remotely controlled or autonomous flight operations.
• It has a maximum endurance of 40 hours and a maximum flying altitude of 40,000 feet.
• It has a 3600 maritime surveillance radar and an optional multimode maritime surface search radar.
• It was developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) primarily for the United States Air Force (USAF). The MQ-9 and other UAVs are referred to as Remotely Piloted Vehicles/Aircraft (RPV/RPA) by the USAF to indicate their human ground controllers.

About Drones in Indian Armed forces:

• Till now Indian services have been using the fixed-wing drones just for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) purposes.
• IAI Searcher and Heron UAVs from Israel and Guardian from USA are the main imported drones used.
• DRDO NISHANT, Micro UAVs namely Black Kite, Golden Hawk and Pushpak are also used.

PRELIMS QUESTION

Consider the following pairs of defence platforms and their originating country:
1.Phalcon AWACS : Israel
2.S-400 Triumf : Russia
3.P-8I Aircrafts : France
Which of the pairs given above is/are correct?
(a)1 and 2 only
(b)1 and 3 only
(c)2 and 3 only
(d)1,2,3 only

 Answer to prelims question