Lt Col Ravi Bandreddi

He has served for over two decades in the Indian Artillery, till he took Premature Retirement on 02 July 2014. Accomplished operations professional with over 24 years of experience Flying (5000+ hours) including the UAV’s in Indian Army. He has Expertise in Innovation, R & D, and applying State of the Art Technologies, establishing policies, processes and leading large cross-functional teams, liaising with regulatory bodies and authorities and preparing and controlling budgets.

Enabling organizational improvement by identifying and leveraging trends and opportunities. He is an CQFI and Test Pilot on Tactical and MALE UAV’s, Instructor in Gunnery, D&M, and also qualified on Long Gunnery Staff Course. He was the Chief Examiner to test, evaluate and categorise the UAV Pilots.

He Created the test sheet and test cards for efforts to test UAVs. Created a modeling and simulation environment for effective Training of pilots to model UAVs Flights within the national airspace. Analysis and development for the UAVs to detect, sense, and fly in civilian airspace. Using national airspace archived data to profile the characteristics of the national airspace for Optimal utilization of airspace.

He was part of the Pioneers that introduced into Service, Searcher Mk-I, Half-Scale Models, UAVs, and has been instrumental in raising and commissioning of two UAV units to operational readiness, training of crews, organize maintenance of these assets up to ‘D’ Level, and preparation of Operational Manuals.

He single handedly was instrumental in setting up the UAV training school for Indian Army and was Head of the Training team and a test pilot/conductor for the development of UAVs. Worked on a 2-man team to create and execute a course syllabus, lessons, field exercises, and proficiency tests for students learning the UAVs and similarly train experienced pilots as proficient Instructors.

He was Advising and educating the Concerned authorities for integration of UAVs in civilian Airspace in India. Assisting in UAS Traffic Management and integration in Civil airspace. Member of committee in FICCI for formulating various policies concerning Homeland Security including UAVs and CIBMS. Currently he is a member of the core team of BIS for formulating industry standards on UAV.