Indigenous industries have a great scope of diving into the tide of opportunities with the Defence Ministry granting approval for procurement of indigenously designed and developed military equipment including anti-tank guided missiles worth over Rs 3,300 crores for the armed forces giving a fillip to the ‘Make in India’ initiative. The Ministry said that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh led the meet of Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on Monday in which the decision of procurement was taken. The DAC accorded approval for three projects to be indigenously designed, developed and manufactured by the Indian industry.

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Details of the three projects

The Ministry has announced that the first two projects include third-generation Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGM) and the Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) for the T-72 and T-90 Tanks. While the third-generation ATGM would provide ‘Fire and Forget’ and ‘Top Attack’ capabilities to the troops in an armoured battle, the APUs would enable incorporation of various upgrades to Fire Control System and Night Fighting capabilities of the tanks. The projects will be progressed under the ‘Make-II’ Category, providing a boost to indigenous research and development in the Private Sector. The third indigenous project is related to the discrete Electronic Warfare (EW) systems for the mountain and high-altitude terrain, which would be designed and developed by DRDO and manufactured by the design-cum-production partner from the Indian industry. 

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First-of-its-kind indigenous defence procurement

India used heavily rely on exports for its defence procurements. However, for the first time, the Ministry of Defence has offered complex Military equipment to be designed, developed and manufactured by the Indian private industry. The DAC had earlier in August approved the procurement of indigenous Software Defined Radio (SDR Tactical) and Next Generation Maritime Mobile Coastal Batteries (NGMMCB–Long Range) for Indian Navy. The August meeting was the first DAC meeting chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh since he assumed office. Both the indigenously developed equipment are said to be of the latest generation and their procurement is bound to give an impetus to Make-in-India initiatives of the government. 

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Earlier this year, DAC had also approved amendments to Defence Procurement Procedure 2019 to simplify processes under the ‘Make’ category as well as ‘Offsets’. This decision was taken in a bid to facilitate the 'ease of doing business' in the defence acquisition sector. 

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