Start-up announced that its prototype had completed flight during Winter
Solstice trial. Big fillip to India’s plan of having long-endurance drone
capable of flying in stratosphere

New Delhi: Bengaluru-based NewSpace Research and Technologies Pvt Ltd (NRT)
announced Saturday that its long-endurance drone, the solar-powered High
Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS), had carried out its first flight lasting
over 21 hours. The development comes as a big fillip to India’s plan to have
its own long-endurance drones capable of flying in the stratosphere.

The project is being spearheaded under the Innovation for Defence Excellence
(iDEX) initiative of the defence ministry. Under this, NRT has signed a
contract for an initial proof-of-concept demonstrator, which targets a
solar-powered flight lasting longer than 48 hours.

Sameer Joshi, CEO of the start-up and a former Air Force pilot, announced on
X, formerly Twitter, that the company’s prototype completed its flight during
a Winter Solstice trial on 22 December.

21+ Hours In The Air – NewSpace Research And Technologies Creates A National UAV Endurance Record Benchmark In India

A huge #win for the #Indian #Aerospace & #Defence R&D #ecosystem; this
feat was accomplished using our #cuttingedge #SolarPowered UAV development…
pic.twitter.com/6K3BROp0Tn — Sameer Joshi (@joe_sameer) December 23, 2023

The Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, tests the solar-powered
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV) endurance at its worst. The next flight will
take place on 21 June or the Summer Solstice, when the Sun will be at its
brightest.

The IAF has included HAPS under a Rs 1,000 crore ‘Make I project’ of the
Government of India. This means that 70 percent of the funding will come from
the government.

Upbeat about the NRT feat, defence sources told ThePrint that this was the
next big thing in air warfare and that the flight included both day and night
flying, with the UAV using solar energy for travel during the day and using
its solar-charged battery for flying at night. The sources refused to get into
details of what altitude the UAV flew at, but said the plan is to have it fly
in the stratosphere at about 65,000 feet, above air traffic.

For context, commercial aircraft typically fly between 31,000 and 38,000 feet,
or at about 5.9 to 7.2 miles.

Since the HAPS operates on solar power, it can continue to fly for months.

India’s First Stratospheric Vehicle?

The HAPS UAV is part of a new genre of solar-powered platforms being designed
across the world for persistent surveillance, communications, and specialist
science missions.

Both the IAF and the Navy are on board with the project and are looking at
acquiring this capability in the short term as well as in the long term.

In India, the National Aerospace Laboratories under the government’s Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research is also working on a similar project,
but details of its progress are yet unknown.

Defence sources said that India does not have a stratospheric vehicle.

Running exclusively on solar power and flying above the weather at 16-20 km
autonomously for months at a stretch, a HAPS platform will fill a capability
gap between satellites and HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) UAVs, sources
said.

The sources explained that HAPS is ultra-lightweight but has a strong body
with the ability to take onboard batteries and other systems. They said that
as the battery technology improves, the endurance would also grow.

The intended surveillance payloads for HAPS include electro-optical/ infra-red
(EO/IR) solutions, synthetic aperture radars (SAR) besides communication
payloads — including range extenders, electronic intelligence (ELINT) and
electronic warfare (EW).

The existing technology limits of the ISR payloads for HAPS allow observations
of up to 80-100 km from stratospheric altitudes, which is 2-3 times more as
offered by MALE (Medium Altitude Long Endurance) UAVs. ISR, or Intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), is vital for military operations.

Sources said the HAPS technology will offset the lack of critical ISR gap felt
during the Doklam crisis, the Balakot incident, and the ongoing crisis in
Ladakh.

The Navy will be an immediate beneficiary since this allows continuous
low-cost manning of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), sources said.

They also explained that the civilian use of HAPS is equally important since
it can provide telecommunication connectivity all over India — especially in
regions with patchy terrestrial network issues because of the challenges of
terrain and costs.