Blah Blah from The TeaBreak Team.

For all the news of US drones attacking targets inside Pakistan, many might think that the country lacks a strong, powerful UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) fleet of its own, which is quite contrary to reality. Also, I do not see why we asked for US predator technology. With Wired magazine taking notice, and the Air force already having 2 UAV squadrons with 4 more on the way, why do we want imported super expensive US drones when stuff like that is being built right here in Karachi and Islamabad: (see pics below)

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A UAV is the epitome of integrated engineering. Building a strong platform demands high software development skill, EE skill, mechanical and aeronautical engineers. You have to build a plane essentially, put it an robotic brain (software), advanced sensors and make sure all the motors and long range controls work.Build ground control stations that can operator off a laptop and do enough signal processing to make sure the video comes across clean and in focus. All at the same time. Not easy at all to do.Payloads are designed by separate firms that then work with the UAV designers to integrate and build a truly modular system capable of listening in on terrorists (and even civilians!) and providing targeting data and in some cases can attack targets themselves, like the predator. Other UAVs developed in Pakistan are built as air defense decoys, designed to fool missile systems to activate their radars and hence allow a manned fighter to launch attacks on the missle systems. And we have not one company working on this but several.

Integrated Dynamics in Karachi has several models developed already that are working in the field.  SATUMA Pakistan is a pioneer in UAV technology in Pakistan. East-West provides alot of the sophisticated electronic devices that go into these UAVs to track terrorists. In 1997, when I found UAVs as a personal interest there was maybe one company working in this areas in pakistan. Today there is a growing ecosystem for robotics and UAVs, with workalso being done on UUVs (underwater unmanned vehicles) and ground recon robots.

So, do we still need the Predator? I think i’d rather we have institutes to train lots more engineers and software developers! We’d do better with them! National security would be better served by hordes of brilliant Pakistani engineers to back the soldiers in the field…ESPECIALLY when Pakistani firms are selling their UAVs to the US border patrol!!! (Yes, quite brilliant I must say, locally made UAVs are that good)

To learn more, here are some articles on UAVs in Pakistan : http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3811950&c=FEA&s=SPE

(Note :Inspired by techlahore coverage of the same topic)

Above : The Stingray UAV - made by Satuma, small and quiet.