Army Design Bureau inks pact with DFI to develop high-impact drones

Army Design Bureau (ADB) on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding with Drone Federation of India (DFI) to develop high-impact drones for Indian soldiers.

DFI is an industry body that has Asteria Aerospace, Quidich Innovation Labs, AutoMicroUAS, Aarav Unmanned Systems and Indrones as its members.

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As a part of their collaboration, DFI and ADB will be launching an event titled 'Indian Army's Him-Drone-a-thon', under which proposals will be invited for the development of drone-based solutions for supporting Indian Army operations in the harsh Himalayan terrains, according to a statement.

"The ADB will provide mentoring and enable field visits to selected participants in order to give Indian industry an exposure of the real-life operational scenarios," it noted.

Under the MoU, DFI and ADB will collaborate on roadmap planning, research, testing, manufacturing and adoption of drones, counter-drone and associated technologies that are to be utilised by the Indian Army in its operations.

"This collaboration between the DFI and the ADB will establish new drone use cases and develop high-impact drone solutions for the Indian army soldiers via an active industry-academia-user engagement," said Smit Shah, President, Drone Federation of India.