EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

One of India's key player in Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS),ideaForge recently unveiled its the most ambitious product 'NETRA 5'. At a time when globally borders are having several challenges,this product is designed for defence and security operations in challenging environments where missions face constant threats. In an exclusive interview, Rahul Singh, Co-founder and VP Engineering, ideaForge explains Vishal Kashyap, Managing Editor, Aviation World about technical capabilities of Netra5 and ideaForge vision towards indigenization. Excerpts...

- 

Q: Kindly brief about ideaForge, about its works and plans ahead?

A: ideaForge represents one of the most pioneering efforts in driving cutting edge, autonomous, Indian drone products. We are present for more than a decade now. The company was founded in 2007 and has focused on creating the best in class unmanned aerial systems of India particularly for the domestic needs and for the global as well. Our latest product NETRA 5, which was officially launched at the Aero India 2025 represents the culmination of advanced technologies that we have brought to this class of products so far.

Q: What is NETRA 5 and its USP for the Indian market?

A: NETRA 5 builds on the long legacy of the NETRA range of products which have been used by our domestic customers for more than a decade. The latest version of NETRA not just inherits but builds on the strengths of what the previous products were. The three pillars of our product philosophy are performance, reliability and autonomy.

So this NETRA 5 version extends the performance to deliver a class leading performance of more than 75 minutes with a built-in multi-sensor dual payload. It has the ability to attach a variety of secondary payloads while still inheriting the capability of the primary payload on the platform. On terms of the reliability, the product extends the reliable operation and autonomous operation with a host of new technologies. It builds in all direction obstacle avoidance which increases the availability and reliability of the operation that the product is doing.

The product also comes built in with advanced vision based navigation systems which enable it to survive GPS jamming and GPS denial kind of challenging environments and increasing the availability of the system in the most contested environments.

Q: What are the technical capabilities of NETRA 5?