HAL CATS Warrior - Wikipedia
CATS Warrior is a part of the HAL Combat Air Teaming System program. Its work is believed to be started in early 2019 under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the state owned HAL & an Indian private startup Newspace R&D. HAL has done an initial investment of Rs 400cr in CATS Warriors & in Aero India 2021 a full-scale mock-up model was presented for the first time.[2]
CATS Warrior will be an autonomous wingman drone capable of take off & landing from land & in sea from aircraft carrier, it will team up with the existing fighter platforms of IAF like Tejas, Su-30 MKI and Jaguar which will act like its mothership.[3] The Warrior is primarily envisioned for Indian Air Force use and a similar, smaller version will be designed for the Indian Navy. It would be controlled by the mothership and accomplish tasks such as scouting, absorbing enemy fire, attacking the targets if necessary with its internal & external pylons weapons or sacrifice itself by crashing into the target. It will fly back for mission within the combat radius of 350 km and for long range mission with combat radius of 800 km it will sacrifice itself crashing into the target. As it is an unmanned asset, it can be directed towards a target and sacrificed in case it cannot be flown back to territory.[4] “Warrior will serve as a ‘sensor amplifier’ for the LCA, flying out ahead of the manned aircraft and using its sensors to feed information back to LCA,” HAL test pilot Retd Group Captain H.V. Thakur[5]
HAL management approved a sum of ₹390 Crore ($53.5 Million) for the development as of February 2021. As per Director of HAL Engineering, Research & Development division Arup Chatterjee, the integration with CATS MAX mothership will take 1-2 years and first flights is scheduled for 2024-25.[6]
