Loitering Munitions to be Manufactured under PALM Brand
At DEFEXPO in Lucknow, India, next week, Israel’s UVision and India’s Aditya Precitech will announce a joint venture to address the needs of the Indian market for loitering munitions, the companies announced on 29 January.
The new company, AVision, will manufacture and market a series of combat-proven systems, which are already in service, under the brand Precision Attack Loitering Munitions (PALM) Hero Systems.
It will explore the various opportunities for such systems in India, with the intention of providing a full range of activities, including design, manufacture, sale, maintenance, support, upgrading and lifecycle management. The partners will also maintain a supply of spare parts for the warranty and post-warranty periods for current and future versions of the smart munitions systems.
AVision will be responsible for and will provide the following: design, development, manufacture and maintenance support for all PALM Hero series; marketing strategy development and implementation; facilities for the new company’s operations; human resources and personnel; supply chain creation and implementation; platform integration; and after-sales training and customer support services.
Commenting on the joint venture, Shane Cohen, VP Sales and Marketing at UVision and a member of the AVision Board, commented “We are very pleased to have partnered with Aditya, a highly respected company with extensive experience as development partner for many of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization’s (DRDO) most important projects. Aditya has a skilled team able to produce a wide range of complex components, and is an ideal partner for our innovative, cost-effective loitering munitions systems designed for the battlefield of the future.”
Col Anil Yadav, Aditya’s representative and Avision’s CEO, added “This joint venture is a major step forward, enabling India to achieve significantly higher levels of self-sufficiency in the defence sector with the transfer of state-of-the-art cutting-edge technologies for the futuristic loitering munitions. We look forward to producing the full range of loitering munitions, which will be offered to India’s military, paramilitary forces as an effective response to multiple threats with minimal collateral damage.”