Pakistan unveils locally built surveillance drones at IDEAS 2018

KARACHI: Pakistan introduced highly proficient locally built surveillance drones on Wednesday, during the tenth International Defence Exhibition and Seminar (IDEAS 2018) in Karachi.

Built by Global Industrial and Defence Solution (GIDS), Shahpur is capable of flying at the altitude of 17000 feet for up to seven hours.

GIDS describes Shahpar as a medium range tactical UAV System with autonomous take-off and landing. It can carry various types of payloads integrated for reconnaissance and day and night surveillance. Other features of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) include accurate lateral, longitudinal trajectory control, mission planning, management and control, geo-referencing and geo pointing for terrestrial targets.

Despite the ordinary look, the drone boasts several cameras and can see up to a radius of 250 kilometres and can operate in any weather.

Pakistan also unveiled multi-role armed drone Burraq which can fly at an altitude of 16000 feet for up to ten hours.

The quadcopter drone is stealth, unmanned drone – very effective in hunting the enemies down especially in the rugged mountainous areas. Pakistan Army is witness to its effectiveness in the field.

Pak Army has been using Burraq ever since it escalated its offensive against the terrorists hiding in the Northern and tribal areas in 2015.

The multi-role aircraft was mainly utilised in Operation Zarb-e-Azb and Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad.

The drones were unveiled by Vice Chief of Naval Staff Kaleem Shaukat at the defence conference.