On April 23, TV3's ‘Bulletin Utama’ news segment reported that Sapura have bought an Eye-in-the-Sky Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) system from Australia. The spokesperson from Sapura proudly touted the state-of-the-art functionality of their Unmanned Aerial Surveillance system.

That news report prompted me to wonder what had happened to the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) project developed by the UAV Research Team at UPM whose leader is Dr Zairil A Zaludin.

I have personally met Dr Zeq (the way he likes people to call him) at UPM and have seen his working UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) prototype. I know for a fact that his prototype was working since 2006, as it was exhibited at the 18th International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) in 2006.

From my point of view, Dr Zeq's UAV is a complete platform for developing a UAS solution, one that could rival the Australian's eye-in-the-sky system.

I'm an engineer myself, so I know the challenge of putting a model aircraft in the air without any human intervention. Dr Zeq achieved it. He had to rewrite the pilot software he purchased from Europe, built his own air-frame for his model aircraft.

What I've described here could not even scratch the surface of how much toil and sweat went into getting his prototype into the air, fitted with a camera that could record the whole flight scene besides allowing data to be stored on a laptop at the ground station while flying without a human piloting it. He was not given the funding and the opportunity to developed his UAV platform further.

I would not want speculate on the reasons, but I do know that from what was reported by TV3, Sapura would rather purchase a system from Australia while ignoring the need to develop technology locally or aid local talent in the UAS field.

The question I have is how would Malaysia be able to catch up with the West when the powers- that-be continue to rely on foreign technology and ignore the effort and hard work of local scientists and engineers in developing cutting edge technology.