India Gambles On Building a Leading Drone Industry (bbc.com) 14
The Indian government wants to develop a home-grown industry that can design and assemble drones and make the components that go into their manufacture. The BBC reports: "Drones can be significant creators of employment and economic growth due to their versatility, and ease of use, especially in India's remote areas," says Amber Dubey, former joint secretary at the Ministry of Civil Aviation. "Given its traditional strengths in innovation, information technology, frugal engineering and its huge domestic demand, India has the potential of becoming a global drone hub by 2030," he tells the BBC. Over the next three years Mr Dubey sees as much as 50 billion rupees $630 million invested in the sector.
[...] However, despite the excitement and investment around India's drone industry, even those in the sector advise caution. "India has set a goal of being a hub of drones by 2030, but I think we should be cautious because we at present don't not have an ecosystem and technology initiatives in place," says Rajiv Kumar Narang, from the Drone Federation of India. He says the industry needs a robust regulator that can oversee safety and help develop an air traffic control system for drones. That will be particularly important as the aircraft become larger, says Mr Narang. "Initiatives have to come from the government. A single entity or a nodal ministry has to take this forward if we want to reach a goal of being the hub by 2030," he says.
India also lacks the network of firms needed to make all the components that go into making a drone. At the moment many parts, including batteries, motors and flight controllers are imported. But the government is confident an incentive scheme will help boost domestic firms. "The components industry will take two to three years to build, since it traditionally works on low margin and high volumes," says Mr Dubey. Despite those reservations, firms are confident there will be demand for drones and people to fly them. Chirag Shara is the chief executive of Drone Destination, which has trained more than 800 pilots and instructors since the rules on drone use were first relaxed in August 2021. He estimates that India will need up to 500,000 certified pilots over the next five years.
[...] However, despite the excitement and investment around India's drone industry, even those in the sector advise caution. "India has set a goal of being a hub of drones by 2030, but I think we should be cautious because we at present don't not have an ecosystem and technology initiatives in place," says Rajiv Kumar Narang, from the Drone Federation of India. He says the industry needs a robust regulator that can oversee safety and help develop an air traffic control system for drones. That will be particularly important as the aircraft become larger, says Mr Narang. "Initiatives have to come from the government. A single entity or a nodal ministry has to take this forward if we want to reach a goal of being the hub by 2030," he says.
India also lacks the network of firms needed to make all the components that go into making a drone. At the moment many parts, including batteries, motors and flight controllers are imported. But the government is confident an incentive scheme will help boost domestic firms. "The components industry will take two to three years to build, since it traditionally works on low margin and high volumes," says Mr Dubey. Despite those reservations, firms are confident there will be demand for drones and people to fly them. Chirag Shara is the chief executive of Drone Destination, which has trained more than 800 pilots and instructors since the rules on drone use were first relaxed in August 2021. He estimates that India will need up to 500,000 certified pilots over the next five years.
Unless those drones can swim... (Score:2)
...they won't go far in their ash-like air. ;-)
Government tries to tell industry what to do? (Score:3)
That never works. You can waste an incredible amount of taxpayer money on this though.
This is basically "hit the hype" and as the "AI" stupidity is already taken and India produces mainly really crappy software, the next best thing was probably the "drone" hype. Of course, that one is stupid as well. It starts with software needing to be really reliable here. Hardware as well. Professional drones often carry really expensive equipment. Of course, they may be talking about toys here, but I do not see India having what it takes there either.
Re: Government tries to tell industry what to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
I get the feeling this is going to happen with more countries due to the Ukraine war and how necessary drones are going to be in modern warfare now. India has developed a homegrown space program, I imagine they could develop something similar to what Turkey has.
Cornering the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile in Taiwan and South Korea it worked.
So your statement is false. What is true about your statement is a bit more subtle: India wants to toss money at a problem to solve it, but they don't want to deal with any of the supply side issues or the supply chain.
The article do put it nicely:
"At the moment many parts, including batteries, motors and flight controllers are imported." which is a roundabout way of saying that India won't attempt to corner the market for small formfactor batteries, small DC engines, or the electronics.
If India want to corner the drone market, they will need to figure out a way to corner the supply side. Last time I checked most of India's attempts end up with tossing money, educate a few people, set up some facilities and production, and you get slave labor and poor quality craftmanship as a result.
Re:Cornering the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost anyone can make a quadcopter at home by purchasing three unique items: the remote control/receiver unit, the brushless motor/electronic speed control (ESC) units, and the control board (accelerometers, gyro, firmware). https://youtu.be/yFBvC_zRiek [youtu.be] https://youtu.be/zSHDmwfb-8Q [youtu.be]
The word "drone" has been misused so much it now has almost as many meanings as "hacker". A drone can be anything from a tiny quadcopter toy small enough to fit in your hand that you can purchase from Target [target.com], all the way up to the Global Hawk. [northropgrumman.com] Most of the time these large military versions are referred to as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to differentiate them from the toys.
I think India is looking at the middle ground of advanced hobbyist drones and commercial UAVs. They see the growing importance of remote monitoring for agriculture, real estate, etc and want to have the expertise to design, manufacturer, and pilot them in-country. To show how serious they take this concept, in February this year India banned the import of drones, except for those needed by the military or for research and development.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not what happened in South Korea or Taiwan. But I guess that is beyond your understanding.
Re: (Score:2)
I would suspect that they are planning to build military drones, and that will pay a technology dividend. Warfare is going to involve more and more drones for the foreseeable future, so every nation is going to need a lot of them, and India is big. India also has sent their best and brightest abroad to be educated, and a percentage of them come back with new skills. I think they have all the stuff necessary to make it happen, the question is whether anyone with intelligence and drive will be in charge of th
Re: (Score:2)
Governments telling industry "what to do" has often succeeded. Often the government dares to invest in projects where the marker is too risk averse.
Take for example Denmark and robotics
https://www.universal-robots.c... [universal-robots.com]
Or how Angela Merkel pushed for battery cell production in Europe when the German automakers were dragging their feet.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
And let's not forget where the internet came from.
My point being that blanket statements like that make me wary of your otherwise valid argumen
If you can make home grown drones... (Score:2)
Pretty empty promises (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
India is trying to build the entire ecosystem. The idea is to use drones for saving costs in agriculture, in the transport of supplies to rural areas, etc. And then, of course, there are the higher-value areas like defence.
All of this cannot happen at once. The idea is to first encourage the private sector through incentives to build large assembly and basic production facilities. Then gradually move upwards to produce the more complex components. Imported components will always remain in one form or anothe