March 31, 2014: The DRDO is in the market for specialised flight line hardware to support the testing of UAVs later this year, including the Rustom-2 medium altitude long (MALE) endurance UAV. The DRDO has called for bids for the supply of advanced portable flight line test systems, in which the hardware should be on PCI/cPCI/PCIe/VME platform only, indigenously built for long term project support, modular with enough provision to upgrade or scale up the configuration, safety features like short circuit protection, isolation, etc, come fitted with MIL grade components relays, connectors to be used. The winning vendor shall perform testing of UAV flight line testing (FLT) hardware in association with DRDO's Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) for Preparation of Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) for theentire UAV FLT Hardware in consultation with ADE, testing of the UAV FLT Hardware as per the ATP and submission of test reports and other documents to ADE asper requirement. The new equipment will be used by ADE at the Taneja Aerospace airfield at Hosur in Tamil Nadu as well as at the HAL airport for test flights of UAV platforms next year.