Rustom soars

"As you can imagine, I am delighted to see Rustom’s legacy being kept alive in our country’s aerospace history. The successful launch of the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) Rustom-II is something we all can celebrate and feel proud of,” said Dr Deenaz Damania, the late engineer’s wife. She was in communication with Parsiana on March 11, 2018 about the UAV named after her late husband Prof Rustom Damania that was tested by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at its aeronautical test range at Chitradurga in Karnataka on February 25. Rustom had led the team of engineers that developed the aircraft at the National Aeronautics Laboratory in Bangalore in the 1980s (see "Aircraft named Rustom,” Parsiana, January 21, 2010).

Deenaz recalled that "Rustom was unassuming about his achievements and contribution, and it is so heartwarming that his colleagues of yesteryears who could easily have thanked him mentally and then forgotten his pioneering work, chose to keep his precious memory alive by naming this innovative project after him… To all those wonderful fellow scientists also goes the credit that they honored him in this unusual and inspiring manner.” Reminiscing that the professor’s hobby was airplanes "ever since he was a little boy,” she said that "his whole life was one big romance built around airplanes…It was very unusual in the 1980s and 90s for an individual holding a commercial pilot’s license like Rustom did, to not pursue a lucrative career in an airline, but prefer to opt for a ‘less glamorous’ option and pursue his dream in a central government educational and research facility in the field of aerospace science.”
In a statement about the flight, the DRDO noted that "all parameters were normal,” adding that this flight assumes significance because "this is the first flight in a user configuration with a higher engine power.” The Hindu reported on February 26 that the medium-altitude, long endurance drone can fly up to an altitude of 22,000 ft for over 20 hours. The newspaper report stated that the defense services employ hundreds of Israeli drones "and have projected a requirement of hundreds of more UAVs, including armed variants in the near future.” Capable of carrying "payloads for electronic and signal intelligence missions,” the report stated that besides this vehicle, two others named Rustom-1 and Rustom-H are under development.
A management consultant who lives in Coonoor and Bangalore, Deenaz added, "You can imagine what a privilege it was to have had Rustom as a husband and friend for just over 25 years of my life. It is a testimony to his supreme self-confidence that he chose to marry a girl two inches taller than he was, and make jokes about it!” She added that the Center for Civil Aircraft Design and Development facility and hangar in Bangalore is also named after him.