Pakistan
Defense Minister Syed Naveed Qamar said Pakistan intends to build unmanned
aerial vehicles. Qamar made the statement in discussions with Pakistani
media, the News International reported Thursday, October 18, 2012. Pakistan's
indigenous UAV industry is centered on the state-owned defense enterprise
Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) in Kamra, east of Islamabad.
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PAC
has begun manufacturing Falco UAVs in collaboration with the Italian company
Selex Galileo. While initially the Falco UAV system is designed purely
for aerial reconnaissance and information gathering, PAC intends the vehicles
eventually to be upgraded to be equipped with weapon systems to carry
out offensive operations, similar to U.S. UAVs.
Pakistan originally wanted to buy UAVs from the United States but Islamabad
was rebuffed in its requests, leading PAC to attempt to develop an indigenous
variant. However, technical issues have slowed development of the Pakistani
program.
Pakistan's aviation firms have been involved in manufacturing smaller
UAVs for years, with Pakistan's Integrated Dynamics firm producing small
UAVs for the government and commercial market since 1997.
Other Pakistani companies working on UAV issues include Surveillance and
Target Unmanned Aircraft (Satuma) and East West Infiniti, while state-owned
aviation firms produce UAVs include the Air Weapons Complex National Development
Complex as well as the PAC.
But the PAC complex is the main driver behind Pakistan's UAV development.
The massive PAC facility, the world's seventh largest assembly plant,
is in Kamra in Punjab province, and assembles and manufactures aircraft
for Pakistan's armed forces.
"PAC has acquired the capability to produce Falco XN UAV in collaboration
with Selex Galileo (SG) of Italy," PAC's website states. "The
UAV is a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV designed for area reconnaissance
and point surveillance.
"It has the capability to reveal targets of interest, classify them,
calculate their coordinates and determine the distances between them."
In describing the Falco XN UAV, the website added: "The UAV has a
high-wing monoplane connected to the central fuselage. The wing assembly
is equipped with flapperons to control the lift and lateral dynamics.
Tail-planes comprising two rudders and two elevators provide control for
directional and longitudinal dynamics and are connected to the wing assembly
through the tail-booms. ...
"The payload is mounted on the stabilized platform of the UAV and
is managed through an advance Payload Management System and an Electro-Optical
suite. The Electro-Optical suite includes E/O Camera, IR sensors, Thermal
Imaging Systems, Laser Designator and a Surveillance Radar."
While the PAC website makes no mention of possible exports plans for the
Falco XN UAV's it nevertheless touts the UAV's characteristics, noting
that it is "capable of carrying wide variety of payloads; easily
adaptable to meet mission requirements," has an "effective guidance
and control system, suitable for both civil and military roles, mission
pre-planning, re-tasking, simulation, rehearsal, and play back" and
"can be flown in manual and automatic modes."
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