Boeing eyes drone collaboration in India

NEW DELHI: Boeing Co. is in talks with the Indian firms to collaborate on drones, digital technology and aerospace services, a top company executive said. The US-based aircraft maker is already making the fuselage of its Apache attack helicopters and floor beams for some of its planes in collaboration with the Tata group and has also invested in an engineering centre in Bangalore.

Marc Allen, president of Boeing International, said Boeing is casting its “anchor deep into India” and more announcements are likely soon.

“You see that we are producing the structure for Apache (helicopters) but what’s ahead now will be the progression (of this),” he said in an interview on August 1. “We have talked around a variety of possibilities whether it is autonomous systems or whether it is systems themselves on another platform. None of them are announced yet so I am not going to make news...but there are discussions ongoing so that’s going to continue growing.”

Drones with artificial intelligence for autonomous functioning are able to do surveillance, track targets, and fire on targets, said Bharat Karnad, professor for national security studies at Centre for Policy Research.

Boeing’s Insitu ScanEagle, for example, is a small, long-endurance, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle and is used for reconnaissance. The firm has also stepped up its research in autonomous systems.

Boeing is also looking to work on digital technology and services out of India, Allen said.

Boeing has won contracts worth about $14 billion from India over the last few years including C17 Globemaster transport planes, Harpoon missiles, P-8 anti-submarine warfare jets besides Apache and Chinook helicopters. In lieu of that it has an offset obligation to source products and services worth about 30% of the value from India.

“Today the conversation is where can we partner together to create mutual benefit for India and the United States, United States and India and those efforts advance with trust with shared capability and with real tangible projects to work on. All three of those are present now,” said Allen, 44, who is also on the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum.

Boeing, he said, is already sourcing $1 billion worth of products annually from India.