The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : ‘Supply of equipment from DRDO laboratories to be speeded up’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 06, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

‘Supply of equipment from DRDO laboratories to be speeded up’

Staff Reporter

‘Private firms will be stakeholders in producing defence equipment’

Photo: M. Govarthan

For scientific community: The Chief Controller, R&D, DRDO, W. Selvamurthy, releasing proceedings of the national symposium on acoustics on Wednesday. K.S. Rangasamy, Chairman of KSR institutions (second right), which hosted the event receiving a copy of the proceedings. —

TIRUCHENGODE: Supply of defence equipment from the laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will henceforth be quick, W. Selvamurthy, Chief Controller, Research and Development, DRDO, has assured.

“The delays of the past had to do with the manufacture of new equipment, which consumed time in research, trials and re-trials. Now that the core equipment are ready, further improvements and variations of the original equipment are just addition and that may not take much time,” he said at the inauguration of the national symposium on Acoustics, held at the K.S. Rangasamy College of Technology here on Wednesday.

Dr. Selvamurthy was referring to the Cauvery engine and Light Combat Aircraft, which he said would get operational clearance by 2010 and ready for induction by 2011.

Yet another reason for the delay, he pointed out, was that the DRDO was responsible for supplying the equipment – right from inception to mass production using public sector units. “Our [DRDO] scientists were involved in design, prototype production, evaluation, certification and almost every possible job in the production line.”

He added that it was not the case in the West, where the labs primarily concentrated on research and development alone and handed over the production to private companies.

In response to a question on having such a set up in India, Dr. Selvamurthy responded saying that at present the private sector was involved in some stages of the production, which hastened the delivery process.

The next stage, he added, would be in involving them in the research stage itself. “Very soon, private companies will be stakeholders in producing defence equipment.”

The scientist told the symposium participants that he expected concrete recommendations at the end of three days of deliberations so that the scientific community had things to ponder over. “Release of proceedings and stopping at that would be a ritualistic exercise,” he said.

Acoustic experts Stanley I. Elrich, Allan D. Pierce and Baldev Raj, who is also the director of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, received medals and citations for their contributions to the field. As many as 96 papers are to be presented at the three-day symposium, where the topic of discussion is ‘Sono-Chemistry in Nano-industrial applications.’

Chairman of KSR group of institutions K.S. Rangasamy, Principal P.S.S. Srinivasan and others participated.

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