NEW DELHI (PTI): A high-altitude-long-endurance MQ-9B Sea Guardian drone that was taken on lease by the Indian Navy from the US ditched into the Bay of Bengal off Chennai after encountering a technical failure on Wednesday. The drone was operating from naval air station INS Rajali in Arakkonam near Chennai, the Indian Navy said.

In 2020, the Indian Navy had taken on lease two MQ-9B Sea Guardian drones from American defence major General Atomics for a period of one year for surveillance in the Indian Ocean. The lease period has been extended subsequently.

"A high altitude long endurance remotely piloted aircraft leased by the Indian Navy operating from INS Rajali, Arakonnam encountered a technical failure at about 2 pm while on a routine surveillance mission which could not be reset in flight," the Indian Navy said in a statement.

"The aircraft was navigated to a safe area oversea 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.

General Atomics has been operating and carrying out maintenance of the drones as per the lease agreement.

The company is expected to replace the lost drone with another one as mandated under the pact.

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.