Indian Air Force is looking forward to Induct HAROP drones to enhance its ground attack capabilities. Indian Air Force plays whole range of Roles, from SU30MKIs for Air Superiority to Mirage and Jaguars for Ground attack.
With HAROP IAF can have another tool to take out mobile ground-based air defenses, without threat to its frontline attack fleets. The HAROP attack drones are Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV) that itself is it’s the main munition, and crashes into targets to destroy them. An Israeli innovation, Harop has a loiter (flying) time of 6 hours and a range of 1000 km. It can even be launched by Sea or Land based mobile canisters and can be adapted for air-launch.
The UAV can either operate fully autonomously or controlled by a remote operator. An optimum use of the drones will be to take out enemy Anti-Air defenses and RADAR facilities.
ANI has reported that a proposal to acquire these attack drones is expected to be discussed by the Defence Ministry at a high-level meeting in the coming week.
HAROP has been reported to be used by Israeli Air Force in Syria against Syrian air defenses and by Azerbaijan to take out buses full of Armenian soldiers being transported to the frontline.
Indian Air Force has shown continued interest since 2009 when HAROP was first unveiled to world for the first time in Bangalore Air Show.
