India will need 30,000 pilots over next 15 to 20 years: Minister Jitendra Singh

Bengaluru: The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), a constituent of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), inaugurated four of its major projects on Saturday. 

This included the unveiling of the Hansa 3 (NG) production standard aircraft by Jitendra Singh, Vice President of CSIR and Union Minister of State (Ind Charge), Ministry of Science and Technology. 

Speaking at the event, Singh stated that the commercialisation of the indigenous aircraft would benefit India’s growing aviation sector. “India will need 30,000 pilots over the next 15-20 years, a big jump from the current 6,000-7,000 pilots, given that Indian airlines cumulatively have over 1,700 aircraft on order. Our industry partner, PCA,  will be setting-up the manufacturing facility at Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh. The facility will manufacture 70 to 100 aircraft annually and employ about 250 people.I am sure that this collaboration will accelerate the indigenous aircraft manufacturing, making the Hansa-NG competitive on the global platform as it signals India’s growing capabilities of the aerospace manufacturing ecosystem,” he said. 

At the event, Singh also inaugurated High Altitude Platform (HAP) Airframe Fabrication Facility, an Initiative for a high altitude solar powered drone to undertake persistent surveillance, and SARAS MK II Iron bird test Facility, a comprehensive, ground-based testing platform for integrating and validating all major aircraft systems.

The fourth inauguration revolved around the launch of NAviMet, a system designed to aid safe landing and take off operations at airports, at HAL Airport. The comprehensive weather monitoring system aids in measuring crucial weather parameters such as visibility, humidity, and wind speed, among others. 

The new system is a combination of NAL’s two indigenous innovations — Drishti and AWOS — which are currently operational in over 170 Indian airports. Speaking to DH, the team behind the Navimet, shared their plans to extend the usage of the system beyond the airport, for example in the railways sector. 

On the occasion, CSIR-NAL also signed a collaborative agreement with Solar Defence & Aerospace Limited for the design and development of Loitering Munition (LM) UAV. This LM UAV will be powered by NAL developed Wankel engine and have a range of 900 kilometers, endurance of six to nine hours with service ceiling of five kilometers.