'For futuristic technology DRDO needs to partner with industry'

Scientific Advisor to Minister of Defence G. Satheesh Reddy on Tuesday said the defence industry should use imagination and innovation to build products for tomorrow while DRDO should focus on research and let industry do the rest.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of 'DEFTECH 2016 - Realising Make in India through Defence R&D', organised by CII and supported by the DRDO, Reddy said, "Make in India should not stop at Build to Print. Instead, it should also involve indigenous design, development and manufacturing."

Reddy said industry should engage with the incubation centres of various universities which would complement the research initiatives of the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), and added that interactions between the DRDO and the industry are at an all-time high.

He said that the government has already included safeguards through policy to ensure that indigenous products get priority even if they are priced a little higher than imports.

Reddy said that in any product development, research and development constitute 15-20 per cent of the work while the rest is engineering. The DRDO should focus on research and let the industry do the rest of the work.

In some of the earlier products the DRDO would do everything. If this continues today, it will be very difficult for the DRDO and the industry to exist, he added.

While delivering the special address, Lt. Gen. Subrata Saha, Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Planning & Systems), stated that typically Indian requirements need local solutions and Indian Army would go out of its way to provide an opportunity to replace imports with indigenous products.

Pointing out the anomaly of procurement in finding competitive bids for unique products, Lt. Gen. Saha said, that there are some companies who are coming up with unique technologies and we have to find ways to procure these products without going through competitive bids.

The Defence Procurement Procedure is a final looking document but there is still scope for improvement, he added.

In his key note address, Baba Kalyani, Chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Committee on Defence, said that the in last two years decision making has become faster and the government is addressing many industry issues.

--IANS

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