Lucknow: Public sector unit Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Wednesday signed its first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Israel Aerospace Industries Limited (IAI) and Dynamatic Technologies Limited (DTL) for marketing, manufacturing and selling of IAI’s Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) to Indian potential customers.
They include Indian Defence Forces, Paramilitary Forces and Central Armed Police Forces.
HAL is expected to sign 5 MoUs during the DefExpo 2020.
The MoU was signed between HAL ED (Corporate Planning) Sanjiv Shukla, IAI Executive Vice President (Marketing) Eli Alfassi and DTL Executive Director & Global COO Hydraulics and Homeland Security Arvind Mishra in the presence of HAL CMD R Madhavan.
Post signing of MoUs Mr Madhavan said, “The collaboration will provide excellent opportunity to HAL to expand its product offerings to Defence Customers, absorb critical technologies and strengthen the Aerospace Ecosystem in the country, especially for UAVs.”
Nimrod Sheffer, President and CEO, IAI said, “We are delighted to sign the strategic agreement with our partners, HAL and DTL. India is an important strategic market for UAVs and I am confident of IAI’s extensive experience and the technological capabilities of HAL and DTL will lead to significant advancements in the field.”
CEO & Managing Director of Dynamatic Technologies Limited Udayant Malhoutra said, “This is a Global PPP between HAL, our partner for over two decades, IAI a world leader in UAV technology who we have been teaming with since 2017. This collaboration will provide a boost to Make-in-India and we are committed to establish a broad technological and industrial eco-system within the country”.
Presently, UAVs are playing significant role in wars and other tactical missions such as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR).
In the coming years Indian Defence Forces are likely to induct a large number of UAVs to meet such requirements.
“We have the best capability and infrastructure available in India to manufacture world class and battle proven UAVs of IAI,” the HAL said.
HAL as a long-time partner of IAI is involved in the depot level maintenance of all the MALE and Short Range class of UAVs supplied by IAI to the Indian Defence Forces since 2004.
Taking the HAL-IAI collaboration one step ahead, under the scope of this MoU, this partnership would be the first in country to manufacture IAI designed UAVs in India like Short Range Tactical class having long endurance, it added.
