A list of 108 military subsystems and components have been identified for development by the Indian industry and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will provide support for the process, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.
“A DRDO delegation met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to apprise him about 108 systems and subsystems which have been identified for designing and development by the Indian Industry only,” the Ministry said in a statement.
The DRDO would also provide support to industries for design, development and testing of these systems on requirement basis. All the requirements of these systems by research and development establishments, armed forces and other security agencies could be met through development contracts or production orders on suitable Indian industry, the Ministry said. “This will allow DRDO to focus on design and development of critical and advanced technologies and systems,” it stated.
The development of the subsystems and components would be done over the next couple of years. The DRDO has been partnering with industry for many years, including the development of full systems like the Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS) and Pinaka rocket launchers among others. “Collaborating with DRDO in the development of major weapon systems the Indian industry has matured to a stage where they can develop systems on their own. Indian industry has progressed from a ‘build to print’ partner to ‘build to specification’ partner,” the Ministry stated.
The present industry base for the DRDO consists of 1,800 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) along with Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), ordnance factories and large-scale industries. The DRDO already offers its technologies to industry for manufacture at a nominal cost and has been providing free access to its patents.
Negative import list
This announcement follows the 101 items on the negative import list issued by the Defence Ministry on August 9 which have to be domestically procured in a phased manner. This was part of a series of measures announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in May to promote domestic defence manufacturing as par of the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” initiative. These include the negative import list, separate budgetary allocation for domestic procurements, indigenisation of spares and components and raising the FDI cap in defence through automatic route from 49% to 74%.
Separately, the Godrej group said in a statement that it had partnered with Ordinance Factory Chandrapur (OFC) in Maharashtra to conceptualise and develop an indigenous automated assembly line for production of Pinaka Rockets at a new facility that was inaugurated early this month. Godrej & Boyce began the design and development work on the automated assembly line in 2016 that allowed the production capacity for Pinaka rockets to be quadrupled.
