7 May 2022: Fortifying India's Defence Part 2 - (E)
The Indian Armed forces are entrusted to secure and protect our country's vast land, maritime and airspace borders - this crucial responsibility to protect our nation presents multiple challenges in the face of constantly changing regional and global geo-political dynamics. The nature of warfare is also undergoing a major change, this includes constant military preparation for low intensity conflicts as well as major wars coupled with the challenges of advanced weapon systems like missles, weaponized drones, cyberwarfare and more lethal weapons. While constantly reviewing its operational preparedness to meet the perceived security challenges. India is revamping its defence strategy by integrating its armed forces, upgrading weapons, strengthening military alliances coupled with policy revisions in defence production, and in the process further supporting the larger ambition of becoming a net exporter of weapon systems. To give a boost to the fast-growing Indian defence industrial ecosystem and help the industry to contribute towards ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, the government of India has earmarked 68 % of the military’s capital acquisition budget for the year 2022-23 around ₹84,000 crores for purchasing locally produced weapons and systems, besides setting aside 25% of the defence research and development or R&D budget for private industry, start-ups and academia.And in many ways the torch bearer for this national mission is the Defence Research Development Organisation - which is on the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge technologies to progressively enhance India’s combat effectiveness through development of state-of-the-art weapon systems and technologies and this has enabled our Armed Forces to achieve its place among the elite defence forces of the world. In the last episode of this special series we looked at DRDO’s role in indegenous missile development capabilities, we will continue our journey in this episode taking a deeper look at development of indigenous light combat aircraft Tejas, Indian army’s Main battle tank Arjun and electronic warfare systems to be deployed in Naval ships.This and much more in this episode of Science for a Self Reliant India, only on India Science.
