Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) has signed a contract worth about ₹499 crore with the Ministry of Defence for manufacture and supply of Akash missiles to the Indian Air Force (IAF) .
The contract was signed by Air Commodore Ajay Singhal, Air Commodore, Guided Weapons Maintenance, on behalf of IAF and Commodore T N Kaul (Retd.), Executive Director (Marketing) on behalf of BDL in the presence of P. Radhakrishna, Director (Production), BDL, in New Delhi on Thursday.
BDL CMD Commodore Siddharth Mishra (Retd.) stated that Akash missiles were being supplied to both the Indian Army and IAF besides exploring export to foreign countries that had shown interest in procuring the missiles.
BDL is the prime production agency for projects under India’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) with Akash being one of the missiles, which was successfully test fired on several occasions. The company also manufactures anti-tank guided missiles, air-to-air missiles, air-to-surface weapons, launchers, test equipment, underwater weapons and counter-measure systems.
It bagged orders worth about ₹2,803 crore last year, including the anti-tank guided missiles order worth about ₹1,820 crore and surface-to-air missiles order worth about ₹793 crore. With the Akash deal, the order book position now stood around ₹8,683 crore, said a press release.
