IAF to get Rs 10,000 crore indigenous I-STAR spy planes for precision strikes: Report

The ISTAR provides air-to-ground surveillance to the forces to help them in carrying out precision strikes.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) may soon get three sophisticated spy planes, as the Defence Ministry is going to take up Rs 10,000 crore proposal to help the IAF get a clear air-to-ground picture to carry out precision strikes against enemy ground targets like radar stations, air defence units and other mobile objects. The I-STAR system shall be for carrying out intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting by day and night from stand-off ranges.

The ISTAR systems are operated at high altitudes from large stand-off ranges and will be used for intelligence processing, exploitation, dissemination and generation of the common operating picture.

Defence officials told ANI that the Rs 10,000 crore project for the Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (I-STAR) is expected to be taken up for clearance at a high-level defence ministry meeting scheduled to be held in the fourth week of June. The spy aircraft project being developed by the Defence Research and Development includes the acquisition of three aircraft through an open tender from foreign manufacturers, including Boeing and Bombardier.

The ISTAR provides air-to-ground surveillance to the forces to help them in carrying out precision strikes.

The onboard systems on the aircraft would be completely indigenous, as the DRDO's Centre for Airborne Systems has already successfully developed them, they said to ANI.

The systems have already been proven and developed by the CABS and they will just have to be integrated with the three aircraft which would be acquired and modified for the purpose, they said.

The development of an ISTAR system would also add India to a select club of nations with such a capability, including the US, UK, Israel and a few others. ISTAR thus provides dynamic and time-sensitive targeting capability and contributes significantly to meeting the nation's security goals.

It will aid in limiting the scale and complexity of undetected hostile threats. It has multi-spectral surveillance capability to detect, locate and monitor irregular forces.The ISTAR aircraft will be a system comprising airborne and ground segments.

*With ANI Inputs