Gandhinagar: Chief Of Army Staff general MM Naravane today said that 85 per cent of whatever the Indian Army buys is Indian. He said the target was 68 per cent but we are far ahead of it. He said in recently union budget, 25 per cent of Research and Development budget in Defense has been earmarked for private players.

Addressing the design week function of Karnavati University, the chief of Indian Army said the Innovation and Defense Excellence unit of Army has 26 projects with the help of 33 startups and some of things that are under trial evaluation right now include a see through armor, counter drone jammers, unmanned surface vehicles and AI based satellite image analytics.

He said a technology development fund under the aegis of DRDO also provides certain amount of support to startups ad MSMEs. ‘ We give some challenges and we develop something to overcome the problem that we have. We issue our problem statement and we fund the solutions. The last order which we placed for UAVs went to a firm called IdeaForge which is a startup. We also organized a hackathon. The first prize of such hackathon recently went to a young person in Indore’ the Army chief said.

COAS Naravane asked students to keep it in mind that whatever they design today, will be in operation for another fifty years and it has to be effective then.

He spoke about the battle tanks that have essentially remained same for last 60-70 years with a hull, caterpillar track and gun. ‘If you see the first world war tank, when they first came out and the tanks today, it looks almost same. We need design change. You must think of something radically different, which is unique to us. We have recently embarked on a programme for a future-ready combat vehicle, future infantry combat vehicle. Future tank and future armored personal carrier both are in conceptualization stage, we have just asked for idea,’ the Army chief said.

The Army chief said that there’s an entire bandwidth visible which we have to explore when it comes to design and innovation. He gave example of a simple problem of potable water at forward posts. He said, all the people are talking about drones and UAVs….High-tech solutions are very much required but there is a very large playing field. We are also looking at developments in many other areas. For example we still not have a portable system that can give us potable water in inaccessible areas. Such a simple thing – water, drinking water. We don’t have anything for that. And we spend copious amount of money in transporting potable water from wherever the water point is in tankers to our forward areas. How nice it would be if we had a small suitcase size or table size something which could be put at my post at 15 – 16,000 ft and get water right there. But we don’t have it. So the field is large and from very high tech advance weapon system to something as simple as a potable water plant. So there’s an entire bandwidth visible which we have to explore. ‘

The Army chief said, the two things to concentrate are electric and miniaturization.

‘Future is electric, in the ways things are going to change. I think the govt of India has made it quite clear what is the roadmap ahead as far as EVs are concerned and that is one field that we need to concentrate and I have no doubt in my mind that as we go ahead, more and more electricity based, not just vehicles but electricity based things will come up which are not fossil fuel based. We run 1000s of generators in forward areas because there’s no electricity supply. Each generator requires fuel and to transport it we need vehicle, that is the cost. Generating one unit of power in forward areas is 10-15s time costly.’

‘The future is also in miniaturization. We have come long way to laptops from room-size computers. But there’s still lot to be done. Packing more and more into less and less is important as the Armed forces can’t afford to have large platforms. Size of the ship, size of an aircraft have to be small by necessity. And in that small space you have to pack more and more features. And therefore miniaturization is one are in which we have to proceed.’

The Army chief said development has to be far sighted. There can not be incremental approach. From a caterpillar, you need to transform to butterfly and not to a bigger caterpillar.

He said the Army has three four years ago started the Army design bureau. ADB doesn’t design anything. They are just facilitators connecting the designers and the Army. They have been interface. They have been one point contact. Anybody if has some idea, then ADB is the place to contact. ‘ADB will facilitate all you need to do. You want to get an equipment, you want to see what a tank looks like, we will take you there. You have developed a prototype but it has to be mounted on a system, we will help you to mount on that system.’

The Army chief said the Army has inked MoUs with Gujarat based BISAG and RRU and they are being provided help. ‘I had gone to BISAG during my previous visit. Lot of their students are developing many products for us and making software and I asked them do they know where does their products actually go, who is the user using it, what is the condition under which using it! All these things were not known to them. With the help of the division here, brigade here, we sent them to some of our units in forward areas, and they came back and then they knew what the problem was, and where the products were to be used.’ DeshGujarat