By: Vivek Mishra
This article originally appeared in ORF on October 23, 2024.
India signed a US$4 billion deal with the United States (US) to acquire 31 predator drones MQ-9B made by General Atomics, which are remotely piloted. A government-to-government deal between the two countries has facilitated the drone deal. The agreement, signed in 2023 and cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security recently, is one of the largest in the history of India-US relations by value. The agreements also include setting up maintenance, repair, and overhaul facilities (MRO) for these drones in India. As for the next steps, General Atomics’ partnership with the Indian company Bharat Forge Limited to manufacture UAV components as part of the process of developing a global drone manufacturing hub will be keenly watched. The partnership between the US and Indian companies will also provide ground for consultative assistance from the US in building the next-generation combat drones, a rapidly evolving space for India-US joint military technology to fill, which has been contextualised by the two ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.
The 31 systems will be distributed between the three wings of the armed forces. The Indian Navy is likely to get 15 drones, the largest share out of the current batch of 31 drones. The remaining 16 are expected to be divided equally between the army and the airforce. The Indian Navy was already operating two MQ-9Bs, of which one was lost in an incident in the Bay of Bengal in September. While for the Indian Navy, the drones served as a potent system to surveil the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, all three wings of the armed forces kept a close eye on the operational capabilities and accuracy of the system since it was leased by the navy. The fact that the navy subsequently renewed the one-year lease on the two drones may point to the systems’ successful run. Furthermore, the incident involving one of the drones that recently crashed while operating did not prevent the two sides, particularly the Indian Armed Forces, from signing the larger deal, attesting to the system’s operational resilience with the incident being attributed to other factors.
MQ-9Bs: The USP
The MQ-9B’s tactical and operational capabilities are tremendously beneficial to the Indian Armed Forces. They are Satellite Communications (SATCOM) enabled, giving the MQ-9Bs considerable operational coverage, especially over large surface areas, whether over land or ocean, for prolonged lengths of time. Built with an open architecture system, the Reapers can be integrated with a wide variety of foreign and even natively built payloads covering sensors, kinetic payloads, intelligence collection and survivability should India choose to do so by gearing them to the complexities of the tactical and operational environments. The MQ-9Bs can fly for 40 hours and up to an altitude of 40,000 feet, making it ideal for surveillance in the Indian Ocean and over the challenging altitude of the Himalayas. Apart from continuous surveillance across sea and land, the Reapers can also detect and engage targets with precision. They are equipped with four Hellfire missiles, 450 kgs of GBU-39B precision-guided glide bombs, navigation systems, sensor suites, and mobile ground control systems. Near continuous or persistent surveillance of the Line of Actual Control (LaC) and across the Tibetan Plateau has remained a key weakness for the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Army (IA). The MQ-9Bs of the SkyGuardian variant will redress the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) gap that the IAF and the IA face vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC), enabling precise targeting of Chinese static military installations and mobile forces in the vicinity of the LaC and further inland. In the mountain terrain dividing India and China, persistent surveillance from the SkyGuardians will enable precise targeting of Chinese forces by the IAF.
The naval variant of the MQ-9B – the SeaGuardian—has more than 8 million flight hours and costs 86 percent less than a manned aircraft. Its operational value lies in its all-weather performance, seamless integration with civilian air traffic, surface warfare, Electronic Warfare (EW), and defensive counter-air operations and can be used in very demanding and complex operational environments involving anti-submarine warfare (ASW) for integrated missions that include the SATCOM-enabled SeaGuardians with ASW helicopters like the MH-60 Romeo multi-mission choppers that the Indian Navy (IN) currently operates. The latter can drop sonobuoys in the ocean area where adversary submarines are operating, and the SeaGuardians can monitor the search area with its sensors detecting the presence and movement of submarines, enabling a strike by attack choppers that are endowed with precise data derived from the SeaGuardian drones.
The delivery of these systems will take at least four to six years, and its logistics will be decided through an evolutionary process based on its performance. These could fill important capability gaps in regions where India’s challenges are to increase significantly in the coming decade. India recently became a member of the Combined Maritime Force (CMF)—a loose coalition of 45 nations led by the US—that forms a security coalition in the Western Indian Ocean, which now makes the region an area of its direct interest. Together with the Quad countries and the broader commune of democratic nations committed to the peace and stability of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), with the MQ-9B deployments, India can now leverage its HADR, search and rescue, airborne early warning, anti-submarine warfare, and other related roles with greater heft. The MQ-9Bs could significantly bolster India’s over-the-horizon capability in carrying out strikes in far-off geographies such as the Arabian Sea and the northwest Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy may have showcased a competent operational ability in the Gulf during the peak of Houthi-led attacks on international shipping lines. The MQ-9Bs could add a lethal component to combining with interdiction capabilities at high sea for the Indian Navy.
While the acquisition deal will provide India with the system to address existing capability gaps in the ISR domain, the MRO deal could be the real long-term gain in augmenting domestic capacities in the UAV sector. Transfer of Technology (ToT) remains a persistent issue in India-US bilateral relations, often hindered by bureaucracy and the absence of channels typically provided by a formal alliance. Developing an ecosystem of UAV manufacturing and upkeep could help navigate some of the technical obstructions in ToT. Similar to the Major Defence Partner (MDP) status, the UAV deal could introduce some sensitive technologies to India without requiring a formal alliance (sometimes required for Congressional clearance in the US) or another strategic upgrade in the relationship.
Vivek Mishra is a Visiting Fellow at ORF America.