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The Ministry of Defence signed a contract with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) to lease two MQ-9B Sea Guardian High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems for the Indian Navy for 30 months.
The contract is valued at approximately Rs 1,943 crore and was signed on 17 August 2026 at Kartavya Bhawan-2, New Delhi, in the presence of Additional Secretary & Director General (Acquisition), Department of Defence, Shri A. Anbarasu.
The systems carry advanced sensors and payloads and are meant to strengthen the Navy's Maritime Domain Awareness through persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance coverage across the Indian Ocean Region.
An unmanned aircraft designed to loiter at high altitude for very long periods rather than to fly fast or fight. The MQ-9B family is the standard HALE benchmark: an endurance of over 40 hours, a range of more than 6,000 nautical miles and an operating ceiling of about 40,000 feet, powered by a Honeywell TPE331-10 turboprop. A maritime variant such as the Sea Guardian carries a surveillance suite built around synthetic aperture radar (SAR), inverse SAR, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors and an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, which together let one aircraft track shipping across an ocean-sized box. Note the terminology PIB uses: 'RPAS' - remotely piloted, meaning a human crew flies it from a ground station, unlike a fully autonomous drone. The MQ-9B SkyGuardian is the land variant; the Sea Guardian is its maritime version.
Simple Analogy: A manned patrol aircraft is a police car doing rounds and going back to refuel; a HALE RPAS is a CCTV camera that can be parked in the sky over the same stretch of sea for two days at a time.
US manufacturer of the MQ-9B family and of the Predator/MQ-9 Reaper lineage; a subsidiary of General Atomics, it designs unmanned aircraft and radar systems
The Indian Navy's naval air station in Tamil Nadu from which the leased MQ-9B Sea Guardians have operated since 2020; also home to the Navy's P-8I Poseidon maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare fleet, whose first squadron (INAS 312) was raised there in November 2015. Spread over about 2,200 acres and credited with one of Asia's longest military runways
Signs capital acquisition contracts for the armed forces; the Additional Secretary & Director General (Acquisition) heads the acquisition machinery and witnessed this contract
Promulgated on 28 September 2020 and brought into force on 1 October 2020, replacing the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) 2016. The word 'Procurement' became 'Acquisition' precisely because the new document added leasing and post-contract management to outright purchase. Leasing appears as a distinct category in two forms - Lease (Indian), where the lessor is an Indian entity owning the asset, and Lease (Global). The Navy's 2020 MQ-9B lease was the first defence system taken under this route.
The highest-priority procurement category under DAP 2020, covering equipment Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured, with the minimum indigenous content raised from 40% under DPP 2016 to 50%. Leasing sits at the opposite end of the same policy - it is the route for capability needed quickly or transiently, without the capital outlay of ownership.
An informal export-control arrangement founded in 1987 by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, now with 35 members. It restricts transfer of Category I systems - those able to deliver a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of 300 km or more - a class that includes large armed UAVs such as the MQ-9. India joined on 27 June 2016, which is what made the transfer of MQ-9B-class systems to India possible.
India is running both tracks on the same platform: two Sea Guardians on lease since 2020 and two more on a 30-month lease from 2026, alongside the October 2024 government-to-government agreement to buy 31 MQ-9B aircraft for about USD 4 billion. Leasing bridges the gap while the purchased aircraft are built and delivered - the classic exam distinction between capability held and capability owned.
MTCR (2016) was the first of the four multilateral export-control regimes India entered, followed by the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group. India is not a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. MTCR membership is the enabling fact behind every large-UAV transfer to India.
The same objective drives the P-8I Poseidon fleet at INS Rajali, the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region at Gurugram and India's white-shipping information agreements. A HALE RPAS adds persistence - hours on station - rather than new sensors.
The MQ-9B transfers sit on top of India's designation as a Major Defence Partner and the foundational agreements (LEMOA, COMCASA, BECA), of which COMCASA in particular governs the secure communication links that armed and networked platforms need.
GS Paper 3 > Security > Defence Technology and Procurement; GS Paper 2 > India-US Relations
General Awareness > Defence and Current Affairs
CDS/AFCAT General Awareness > Indian Armed Forces Equipment
Defence acquisition and export-control regimes are recurring UPSC Prelims territory; MTCR in particular has been asked repeatedly since India's 2016 accession.
High-Altitude Long-Endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft System - an unmanned aircraft flown by a human crew from a ground station, built for very long endurance at high altitude rather than speed.
Effective understanding of anything in the maritime domain that could affect security, safety, the economy or the environment - built by fusing surveillance, radar, satellite and shipping-identification data.
The most tightly controlled class under the MTCR: complete systems capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of at least 300 km, including large UAVs; transfers face a strong presumption of denial.
The DAP 2020 category under which the armed forces take equipment on lease from a foreign lessor without acquiring ownership.