Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman, Dr G Satheesh Reddy said, on the 63rd Foundation Day of DRDO, that at least 30 startups should be supported every year to develop innovative products for our forces.
Addressing the DRDO fraternity, Chairman DRDO highlighted that the academic institutes, R&D organizations and industry need to work together on advanced and futuristic technologies to make India self-reliant in the defence sector.
”A number of SMEs and MSMEs are supplying small components to subsystems for all DRDO projects and have been nurtured by DRDO. Now they have become partners in all new developments. He stated that DRDO conducted a competition “Dare to Dream” for Startups and very enthusiastic responses have been received,” he said.
Next Generation Needs
In his speech, he also called upon DRDO scientists to focus on next generation needs including cyber security, space and artificial intelligence.
”The immense potential available in DRDO has been a catalyst for the development of industries in the defence manufacturing sector,” an official statement from the Defence Ministry said.
DRDO Chairman further said that the latter should make efforts towards strengthening long term ties with the Academia and aim to leverage the academic expertise available in the country and increase the synergy with them.
”DRDO should concentrate on applied research and translational research and then make prototypes from the applied research. The industry should be in a position to adopt these technologies and have necessary infrastructure, and scale these up to market with sustained quality,” he added.
He also underlined the need to focus on documentation and productionisation for faster induction and said that many new initiatives towards enabling the industry and empowering youth for Defence R&D will be taken by DRDO.
Chairman DRDO also launched an Online Industry Partner Registration Module to simplify the process of vendor registration. He released the DRDO Monograph on “Issues on Development of Communication Technology using Orbiting Satellites” and also the Environmental Safety Manual and Guidelines for Disposal of Life Expired Chemicals and Gases at DRDO Laboratories.
He stated that an eventful year has passed and a new one is about to begin and asked scientists to innovate and create for the Nation. He said that efforts of DRDO have given a quantum jump to India’s self-reliance in defence, contributing towards Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
COVID Countermeasures
He highlighted the contributions of DRDO during COVID Pandemic and said that nearly 40 DRDO laboratories developed more than 50 technologies and over 100 products on war footing to develop products & technologies for combating COVID 19 pandemic in India. These included PPE kits, Sanitizers, Masks, UV Based disinfection systems, Germi Klean and critical parts of ventilators leading to ventilator manufacturing in the country in a very short span of time. He further said that DRDO has established three dedicated COVID hospitals at Delhi, Patna and Muzaffarpur in a record time for strengthening the medical infrastructure. In addition, Mobile Virology Research and Diagnostics Laboratory (MVRDL) were developed to speed-up the COVID-19 screening and R&D activities at various locations for strengthening the COVID testing capabilities.
DRDO was established in 1958 with just 10 laboratories to enhance the research work in Defence sector and was tasked with designing and developing cutting edge defence technologies for Indian Armed Forces. Today, DRDO is working in multiple cutting edge military technology areas, which include aeronautics, armaments, combat vehicles, electronics, instrumentation, engineering systems, missiles, materials, naval systems, advanced computing, simulation, cyber, life sciences and other technologies for defence.
