Indian Army Gets Nagastra-1, India's First Indigenous Man-Portable Suicide Drones

New Delhi: The Indian Army has received its first indigenous man-portable suicide drones, engineered to precisely target enemy training camps, launch pads, and infiltrators, thereby ensuring the safety of soldiers. These loiter munitions—named Nagastra-1—represent a crucial advancement in modern warfare technology, allowing for high-accuracy strikes without endangering soldiers' lives.

Developed by Solar Industries, Nagpur, the Nagastra-1 drones mark a milestone in India's defense capabilities. The Army had placed a supply order for 480 units from Economics Explosives Ltd (EEL), a 100 percent subsidiary of Solar Industries, underscoring the strategic importance and confidence in these domestically produced munitions.

Following the successful completion of pre-delivery inspections, EEL has delivered 120 loiter munitions to an army ammunition depot, according to defense officials.

Fully designed and developed in India by EEL, these drones are capable of GPS-enabled precision strikes with an accuracy of 2 meters and a range of nearly 30 km. Intended for use by infantry troops on foot, the drones feature a low acoustic signature and electric propulsion, making them a silent but deadly weapon.

Weighing 9 kg, this man-portable fixed-wing electric UAV boasts a 30-minute endurance. It offers a 15 km range with man-in-loop control and can extend up to 30 km in autonomous mode. Due to its electric propulsion system, the Nagastra-1 operates with a low acoustic signature, making it nearly undetectable at altitudes above 200 meters.

Equipped with day and night surveillance cameras, the UAV carries a 1 kg high-explosive fragmenting warhead designed to neutralize soft-skin targets. Its unique features, such as the ability to abort, recover, and reuse missions via a parachute recovery mechanism, distinguish it from similar systems worldwide.

The Nagastra-1, designed with over 75 per cent indigenous content in collaboration with Z-Motion Autonomous Systems Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, is a man-portable system with a total weight of 30 kg, distributed across two rucksacks. This includes the ground control station, communication control, payload, and pneumatic launcher.

The success of Nagastra-1 highlights the potential of drone technology as a force multiplier in military operations, as demonstrated in recent conflicts in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Ukraine. In the Indian context, the increasing number of drone-related incidents along its northern borders underscores the necessity for such indigenous solutions.