India and the U.S. are negotiating a deal for the purchase of high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV).
An agreement or announcement to this effect is likely when U.S. President Barack Obama visits India as the chief guest for the Republic Day ceremony next month, sources informed The Hindu .
Though the variant and the numbers are not known, it has been learnt that the UAV in question is most likely the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, a non-combat drone and the largest unmanned aircraft system built by the U.S.
Global Hawk is a HALE Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) with extraordinary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, providing near-real time, high resolution imagery of large geographical areas both during the day and night, in all types of weather. The Global Hawk has an endurance of over 24 hours and can operate at an altitude of 60,000 feet. The U.S. has extensively deployed it in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Source: The Hindu