Army mulls establishing 'trial parks' for industry offerings: Lt Gen Saha

This initiative will benefit the industry, users and Army, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff said

The army is examining the possibility of establishing "trial parks" where the industry can test their offerings to the Armed forces under one roof, Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Subrata Saha said on Wednesday.

"We are also examining the possibility having some trial parks where we have all trial and testing facilities at one place," he said at the inauguration of a Tech Summit, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

This initiative will benefit the industry, users and Army because it will prevent "much of knowledge getting lost in the dispersion because of distributed trying and testing," Saha said.

He also said foreign defence industry is realigning itself to "Make in India" in a big way.

Between Defexpo event in Goa in 2016 and Aero India 2017 in Bengaluru last month, one can see a whole range of joint ventures, and co-production, among others, in a big way and "a whole lot of linkages are being established to be able to come and participate in this (Make in India programme)", he said.

"Joint ventures with countries or industries... That's already happening in a big way," the deputy army chief said.

He said the battlefield circumstances that the country face are "very, very typically Indian" and the armed forces are convinced that "ultimately we have to find Indian solutions to fight India's wars".

"With the way technological capabilities have grown in the country, we see no reason why this is not possible," Lt Gen Saha said.

Since India's defence requirements are huge, there is no reason why it can not be a sustained business model for industries, the deputy army chief added.