The Kalyani Group has conducted a successful flight of its Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). An UAV team was created at their R&D centre in Pune and their first UAV flew successfully after all possible technical simulations, Baba Kalyani, CMD, Bharat Forge, said.

The next challenge is to build a quadcopter that can lift 50 kg of weight, to help the army carry things in mountainous regions, Kalyani said.

The Kalyani group was working towards high-tech products such as guided bombs (250 kg to 1,000 kg), giving bombs a high level of accuracy, landing gear components and warhead seekers apart from the UAVs.

Foreign OEM Leiber was buying landing gear components from Bharat Forge and was now also had an opportunity to supply for Airbus very soon, Kalyani said.

They are also working on turbo machinery, which started three to four years ago and is a ten year plan to make small turbines, small jet engines (up to 1,000-1,200 kg) usable for helicopters as well, he said. “This is our next opportunity as India is looking to purchase over 1,500 choppers over 10 and on an average one helicopter needs three times engines so the number of engines required will be quite high,” Kalyani said.

Currently, supply components to big companies like Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Liebher, HAL etc., aim to substantially increase this with more value addition,

The Kalyani Group has announced three defence and aerospace partnerships at the Aero show in Bangalore with AMG Partners, USA, defence PSU Bharat Electronics Ltd and Belcan LLC.

Bharat Forge and AMG Partners to get into a partnership to invest in new and advanced technologies in defence and aerospace domain where they will identify global advanced manufacturing technologies for joint development, licensing and world-class manufacturing operations in India. The Kalyani Group and Belcan, LLC have got into a partnership to provide advanced technological product and service offerings in defence, aerospace, and other technical segments in India. The companies will work together in the design and development of helicopter engines and transmission systems in defence and aerospace, as well as collaborate on advanced manufacturing practices and digital manufacturing & IoT solutions. With Bharat Electronics the co-operation in defence and aerospace products/systems is to jointly capitalise on the emerging opportunities in the domestic market.