SOURCE: RAUNAK KUNDE / NEWS BEAT / IDRW.ORG.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) intends to procure 130 Tethered drone systems with EO/IR payload under Fast Track Procedure from Prospective buyers. A tethered drone system uses a permanent physical link, in the form of a flexible wire or cable, to provide power and communications to a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Due to the inability of fixed-wing drones to hover, UAV tethered systems utilize quadcopters or other multirotor drones, as well as aerostats.
According to RFP, Tethered drone systems should have an All-Up Weight of Not more than 15 Kg with an Endurance of Not less than 06 hours in Tethered mode and 45 min in untethered mode.
Tethered drone systems should have Fully Autonomous Mode, Semi-Autonomous Mode, Manual Mode and Return Home Mode along with that has inbuilt 128 AES encryption and should be able to transmit control commands from the GCS to aerial vehicles as well as transmit data
(videos by day and night).
The army is asking for Tethered drone system to have a Minimum of 7 years or 1000 landings for drones (whichever is earlier) and not less than 500 charging cycles for the battery.
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