General Atomics’ MQ-9B SeaGuardian drone

High costs have prompted New Delhi to do a rethink on a key deal for armed drones 

by Sandeep Unnithan

India has shelved a high-profile $3 billion (Rs 22,000 crore) deal to buy up to 30 armed drones from the US after one of its armed forces raised concerns over the cost of the platforms. The joint services procurement would have seen the first six MQ-9B SkyGuardians worth $600 million (Rs 4,400 crore) purchased outright from US firm General Atomics and delivered to the Indian army, navy and air force over the next few months—two for each service. The remaining 24 drones were to have been acquired over the next three years. An option to lease two MQ-9Bs for training Indian operators, however, is still in the reckoning.

The MQ-9B has an endurance of 48 hours, a range of over 6,000 nautical miles and nine hard-points for carrying sensors and weapons laser-guided bombs and air-to-ground missiles, with a maximum payload of two tonnes. It was to have been India’s first purchase of an armed drone.

One service chief is believed to have flagged both the high purchase and maintenance costs of the MQ-9B deal—Rs 900 crore per unit with a 10 per cent annual maintenance cost—in several internal meetings. Another deal breaker is the fact that the drones will come with no transfer of technology and no defence offsets.

An Acceptance of Necessity (AON), the second step in a formal acquisition process, for the deal was to have been finalised over the past few weeks. The AON needs to be approved by the Defence Acquisition Council headed by defence Minister Rajnath Singh. This is yet to happen. Over the last few years, New Delhi has seen big ticket arms deals as key to shoring up ties with successive administrations in Washington. A lack of clarity on the winner of the November 4 US elections could possibly have also weighed on the minds of policy makers on Raisina Hill when they put the drone deal on hold.

The US had expected the deal to be announced at the ‘Two Plus Two’ Ministerial dialogue in New Delhi on October 27, but were disappointed. US media reports suggest that both secretary of state Mike Pompeo and defence secretary Mark Esper unsuccessfully pushed the drones in talks with their Indian counterparts S. Jaishankar and Rajnath Singh. The highlight of the dialogue instead was the equally significant inking of the long-pending Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) to expand geospatial information sharing between the two militaries.

The navy was the lead service for the HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) UAV acquisition for several years. It cited the platform as an urgent operational requirement and, as a senior naval official put it, “critical” to its ability to have comprehensive domain awareness at distances, including monitoring of choke points like the Malacca Straits. The navy is believed to be looking at a separate proposal to lease two of the MQ-9B drones for training purposes.

The services could now choose to go ahead with ‘Project Cheetah’ that will give them armed drones in a few years. Under this, a Rs 5,500 crore contract will be taken up to upgrade the ‘Heron’ medium-altitude long-endurance drone fleet with all three services. The defence ministry has finished price negotiations with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the upgrade—this will convert the fleet of primarily ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) drones, acquired over a decade ago, into weapons platforms. The upgrade that will equip the Herons with satellite navigation, air-to-ground missiles and precision weapons, is awaiting sanction from the cabinet committee on security (CCS).