Indian Navy’s Heron Drone Crashes in Gujarat

An Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flies over Porbandar, during its commissioning into the Indian Navy.

(Photo: Reuters)

An Indian Navy drone crashed in Gujarat soon after it took off from Porbandar on Thursday. The Heron UAV drone was on a routine surveillance round when it crashed, NDTV reported.

Citing a statement by the Indian Navy, NDTV further reported that there have been no injuries or deaths. The statement also said that though an initial investigation says that the cause of the crash seems to be engine failure, a board of inquiry has been set up to carry out the investigations.

The drone is said to have crashed around 10 am. The Indian forces have been using the Heron drones since 2001. India is reportedly planning to buy more Heron drones from Israel over the next few years.

The Indian Navy statement also said that although there is no formal data on the number of crashes, reports suggest that the average crash rate of these drones since 2013 has been about one percent.

Heron is a long-endurance unmanned aerial drone capable of carrying out operations for upto 52 hours at an altitude of 35,000 feet.

The Heron uses an inbuilt navigation system and can also perform pre-planned flights, giving it complete autonomy. It can autonomously return to base and land in case of lost communication with the ground station. The system has fully automatic launch and recovery (ALR) and all-weather capabilities.

The drone that crashed in Gujarat was a remotely piloted aircraft which means it may have been operating on manual mode. The site of the crash is close to the air base.