The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is an agency under the Department of Defence Research and Development in Ministry of Defence of the Government of India, charged with the military's research and development, headquartered in Delhi, India. It was formed in 1958 by the merger of the Technical Development Establishment and the Directorate of Technical Development and Production of the Indian Ordnance Factories with the Defence Science Organisation under the administration of Jawaharlal Nehru. Subsequently, Defence Research & Development Service (DRDS) was constituted in 1979 as a service of Group 'A' Officers / Scientists directly under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence.
The HAL Tejas is an Indian single-engine, delta wing, multirole combat aircraft designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy. Tejas made its first flight in 2001 and entered into service with the IAF in 2015. In 2003, the aircraft was officially named 'Tejas'. Currently Tejas is the smallest and lightest in its class of supersonic combat aircraft.
A drogue parachute, also called drag chute, is a parachute designed for deployment from a rapidly moving object. It can be used for various purposes, such as to decrease speed, to provide control and stability, as a pilot parachute to deploy a larger parachute or a combination of these. Vehicles that have used drogue parachutes include multistage parachutes, aircraft, and spacecraft recovery systems.
The ballute is a parachute-like braking device optimized for use at high altitudes and supersonic velocities.
The Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI) was formed 1991 with the merger of the AUSROC Launch Vehicle Development Group at Monash University, Melbourne and the Australian Space Engineering Research Association (ASERA).
The Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) is a European Space Agency (ESA) experimental suborbital re-entry vehicle. It was developed to serve as a prototype lifting body orbital return vehicle to validate the ESA's work in the field of reusable orbital return vehicles.
The Kistler K-1 was a two-stage, fully reusable launch vehicle design created by Kistler Aerospace. It was to accommodate a wide range of missions, including payload delivery to low Earth orbit (LEO), payload delivery to high-energy orbits with a K-1 Active Dispenser, technology demonstration flights, microgravity missions, and commercial cargo resupply, recovery, and reboost services for the International Space Station (ISS).
The GTRE GTX-35VS Kaveri is an afterburning turbofan project under development by the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), a lab under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in Bengaluru, India. An Indian design, the Kaveri was originally intended to power production models of the HAL Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. However, the Kaveri programme failed to satisfy the necessary technical requirements on time and was officially delinked from the Tejas programme in September 2008.
IrvinGQ, formerly known as Airborne Systems, is an aerospace manufacturing company based in Llangeinor, Wales, United Kingdom. It specialises in the design, manufacture and supply of a range of parachutes and emergency, rescue and survival equipment for both the military and civilian markets.
The Space Capsule Recovery Experiment is an Indian experimental spacecraft which was launched at 03:53 UTC on January 10, 2007, from Sriharikota by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The launch was conducted using the C7 launch of the PSLV rocket, along with three other satellites. It remained in orbit for 12 days before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and splashing down into the Bay of Bengal at 04:16 UTC on January 22.
The DRDO Nishant - is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developed by India's Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), a branch of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for the Indian Armed Forces. The Nishant UAV is primarily tasked with intelligence gathering over enemy territory and also for reconnaissance, training, surveillance, target designation, artillery fire correction, damage assessment, ELINT and SIGINT. The UAV has an endurance of four hours and thirty minutes. Nishant has completed development phase and user trials. However, further development of the project was cancelled after all of the four prototypes and production UAVs crashed due to various and unkown reasons.
Aeronautical Development Establishment is a laboratory of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation. Located in Bangalore, its primary function is research and development in the field of military aviation.
The Lockheed MQM-105 Aquila (Eagle) was the first small battlefield drone developed in the United States during the 1970s to act as a target designator for the US Army.
Gaganyaan is an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the formative spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme. The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people, and a planned upgraded version will be equipped with rendezvous and docking capabilities. In its maiden crewed mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s largely autonomous 5.3-metric ton capsule will orbit the Earth at 400 km altitude for up to seven days with a two- or three-person crew on board. The first crewed mission was originally planned to be launched on ISRO's HLVM3 rocket in December 2021. As of October 2023, it is expected to be launched by 2025.
The Joint Air Delivery Test and Evaluation Unit (JADTEU) is a tri-service unit is an Air Warfare Centre unit located at RAF Brize Norton, England. Commanded by a lieutenant colonel, it has a combined strength of approximately 115 military personnel and civil servants. Its primary role is to conduct operational trials and evaluation and to develop the delivery by air of personnel, machines and materiel on behalf of sponsors. In addition it provides advice/recommendations to MOD sponsors, other government departments, civilian industry and foreign governments on all air transport matters. It received ISO 9001 accreditation in 1997, this a requirement of holding Design Approved Organisation Scheme (DAOS) approval.
Reusable Launch Vehicle–Technology Demonstration Programme is a series of technology demonstration missions that has been conceived by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as a first step towards realising a Two Stage To Orbit (TSTO) reusable launch vehicle, in which the second stage is a spaceplane.
Kapothaka was a technology demonstrator mini-UAV for reconnaissance. The Kapothaka which means “dove” is believed to be a predecessor of Nishant UAV system.
The Indian Air Force has been undergoing a modernization program to replace and upgrade outdated equipment since the late 1990s to meet modern standards. For that reason, it has started procuring and developing aircraft, weapons, associated technologies, and infrastructures. Some of these programs date back to the late 1980s. The primary focus of current modernization and upgrades is to replace aircraft purchased from the Soviet Union that currently form the backbone of the air force.
The Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE) is an experimental test vehicle for the Indian Space Research Organisation's future ISRO orbital vehicle called Gaganyaan. It was launched successfully on 18 December 2014 from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, by a LVM3 designated by ISRO as the LVM 3X CARE mission. Total cost of mission was ₹155 crore. Cost of launch vehicle and CARE module was ₹140 crore and ₹15 crore.
SMART is a canister-based, long-range supersonic anti-submarine missile developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for the Indian Navy.
