India seeks SWIFT aerial target for navy, army

The Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has issued a request for information for the prospective procurement of an indigenously developed, remotely piloted aerial target system capable of simulating supersonic sea-skimming anti-ship/cruise missile threats for the Indian Navy and the Indian Army.

Nominally designated ‘Supersonic Weapon Imitating Flying Target' (SWIFT), the system is required to be launched from both maritime surface platforms and land-based launchers.

In a questionnaire format document seen by Janes , the Indian MoD noted: “The Supersonic Weapon Imitating Flying Target is intended to simulate a supersonic anti-ship missile and would be utilised for practice firings of air-defence systems in the Indian Navy and Indian Army. The target should be capable of being launched from both sea and land from suitably modified Expendable Aerial Targets. The target should be expendable in nature, but should be recoverable for reuse in case it is not expended in flight. The trajectory of the target should be programmable to replicate trajectories of missiles, including sea-skimming missiles.”

The aerial target is required to be detectable on S-, X-, Ku, and Ka-band radar frequencies at ranges “of at least 20 km”, with suppliers required to supply the mean radar cross-section (RCS) of their proposed solutions, and detail any provision for “enhancing/reducing the mean RCS by using a payload”. Inferred flight mode requirements for SWIFT include fully and semi-autonomous modes, loiter mode, target following mode, camera-guided mode, manual mode, and return to home (RTH) mode.