Aiming at keeping a hawk’s eye on criminals and those planning to disrupt peace, Chandigarh police have purchased an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), becoming the first police force in the country to possess such machine.
“We have procured the UAV for the first four months on trial basis. ‘Golden Hawk’ will be with the city police by mid-May...DRDO officials have already demonstrated the machine at Sarangpur village on the city outskirts recently,” Chandigarh IG P.K. Srivastava told reporters.
UAVs, equipped with a high-power small camera to record the activities on the ground, are mainly used by armies around the world for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes.
The remote control-operated machine is attached to a computer for keeping surveillance of a particular area. The device, which generally weighs three kg, flies approximately 100 m from ground for about half-an-hour.
“’Golden Hawk’ weighs 625 gm. Depending on its success, bigger UAVs will be procured later on for surveillance purposes,” Srivastava said.
“We are the first urban police force to have an UAV,” he said, adding that the machine would be of huge help during demonstrations and VVIPs visit.
‘Golden Hawk’, having a speed of 10 to 15 m per second, has an operational range of two km. It has an operational altitude of 100 metres and can fly for 30 minutes, DRDO scientist Harish Chandra said.
“It can download images at night time as well. The images captured by the camera are transmitted to the ground control room (GCR). After flying for half-an-hour, the machine automatically returns to its base,” he said. However, the device cannot be used in stormy and rainy conditions, he said.
