DRDO’s soar & slide moment: missile launch, drone crash

Tuesday proved to be a day of ups and downs for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). On one hand, it successfully test-fired an indigenously developed air-to-air missile - Astra in Odisha, but lost an advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to a malfunction in Karnataka.

The drone, a Rustom-II (also known as Tapas 201), came down in a farmer’s field at Chikkenahalli in Challakere taluk of Chitradurga district on Tuesday morning. According to sources, the drone (Serial# 04-19) had taken off on Tuesday morning from the DRDO’s aeronautical test range at Kudapura in the taluk.

The drone was in the process of making a test flight up towards Hassan, when it lost contact with the ground station and radar at 6:30 am. It crashed 15 minutes later at Chikkenahalli, sources said.

The UAV, according to district officials, was on a maiden flight experiment and DRDO officials alerted the local police soon after contact with the machine was lost. The UAV reportedly crashed in the areca plantation of farmer Anandappa. Police officers who dashed to the area found local residents standing on the wrecked aircraft.

Anandappa told police that the aircraft had sheared the top of an areca tree in his plantation before coming down on a stretch of open ground. Superintendent of Police, Chitradurga, Dr K Arun, said that the UAV was completely damaged in the crash, but that there were “no deaths or loss of property in the incident.”

A team of DRDO scientists arrived 15 minutes after the police to secure the crash site. “They carted off the wreckage and the area was cleared by 12 pm,” Arun said.

DRDO’s fortunes were lifted hours later, when a Sukhoi SU-30 MKI successfully launched another one of its products, a new air-to-air missile, Astra, in air trials.

While DRDO described the Astra as being “executed in a textbook manner,” it initially refused to comment on the matter of Rustom-II crash. However, it later released a statement confirming the crash, adding the organisation was analysing data from the incident.

This is the second crash of a drone in the Challakere area, where the DRDO has a major testing facility.

In February 2018, a small practice drone lost control and crashed, while being tested at the Aeronautical Test Range.