“The aircraft was navigated to a safe area over sea and carried out a controlled ditching at sea off Chennai,” it said.The Navy has sought a detailed report from the OEM or the original equipment maker.Controlled ditching generally refers to an emergency landing of an aircraft on water. Since the Navy took two drones on lease, their maintenance was being done by General Atomics.The incident comes as India is in the process of procuring 31 MQ-9B Predator drones.India is planning to acquire the drones at a cost of nearly USD 3 billion primarily to crank up the surveillance apparatus of the armed forces, especially along the contested frontier with China.In June last year, the Defence Ministry approved the procurement of the MQ-9B Predator armed drones from the US under a government-to-government framework.The MQ-9B drone is a variant of the MQ-9 “Reaper” which was used to launch a modified version of the Hellfire missile that eliminated al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in the heart of Kabul in July 2022.
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