Exclusive: CCS may clear the 31 Predator drone deal today

The acquisition of 31 Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles, GBU-39B precision-guided bombs has been spearheaded by the Indian Navy.

Published on: Oct 9, 2024, 08:54:45 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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New Delhi: The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) today is expected to clear the Indian Armed Forces acquisition of 31 MQ-9B Predator drones from US Defence major General Atomics through government to government route without involvement of any third party in the USD 3.1 billion dollar deal.

US Predator drone firing Hellfire missile.

While the government is tight-lipped about the entire project, it is understood that the multi-billion dollar acquisition is now before the CCS headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after obtaining approvals from the Finance Ministry and inter-ministerial consultations.

The acquisition of 31 Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles, GBU-39B precision-guided bombs and high-fire rotary cannon, has been spearheaded by the Indian Navy. Out of the 31 drones, 16 will be given to the Indian Navy and eight each to the Indian Army and Indian Air Force respectively.

While some of the 31 acquired drones will be assembled locally with 30 percent of components sourced from Indian industries, the unmanned vehicle will not have any DRDO-developed missile as the cost of integrating a missile is prohibitive with no guarantees.

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The Predator drone will be a game-changer in the region as the platform has high endurance, high altitude and lethal weapons to take the fight to the enemy in the ‘hunter-killer’ role. The surveillance footage from the Predator drone is said to be better than that obtained from Boeing P 8 I aircraft and will raise Indian maritime domain awareness from Gulf of Aden to Sunda Straits to the next level.

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While the Indian Air Force and Indian Army will use the drone for taking out critical infrastructure and high value targets in the worst case scenario, the Indian Navy will use the armed drone for not only keeping a watch on dark shipping but also destroying vessels carrying arms and drugs on high seas in the Indo-Pacific. The Predator drone will also deter Chinese spy ships, which are in the Indian Ocean virtually round the year.

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Fact is that India has no options but to go for US drones as DRDO’s indigenous project was delayed and China had top of the line armed drones in its inventory apart from passing on the platform to Pakistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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