BrahMos to be fitted with NGMMCB
The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) has approved procurement of indigenous Software Defined Radio (SDR Tactical) and Next Generation Maritime Mobile Coastal Batteries (Long Range) for the Indian Navy on 8 August 2019.
The SDR is a complex and state of art communication system, which has been indigenously designed and developed by DRDO, BEL and Weapons Electronics System Engineering Establishment (WESEE).
It would enable information sharing, collaboration and situational awareness through high-speed data and secure voice communication with anti-jamming capability.
Next Generation Maritime Mobile Coastal Batteries (NGMMCB, Long Range) would be fitted with supersonic BrahMos surface-to-surface cruise missiles and would be deployed along the coast.
The NGMMCB has been developed and manufactured in India by Indo-Russia Joint Venture Company, BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited.
Both these indigenously developed equipment are of the latest generation and would give a fillip to the Make-in-India initiatives of the Government, said the Defence Ministry.
Continuing its focus on ‘Ease of business’ in the defence acquisition, the DAC also approved amendments to the Defence Procurement Procedure 2016.
The amendments are designed to simplify processes under the ‘Make’ category as well as ‘Offsets’.
The Ministry has taken several steps to ease licensing, promote exports and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Defence sector.
The process of acquiring defence industrial licence has been eased to significantly enhance ‘Ease of Doing Defence Business’.
Applications have been received from various companies and 63 of them were disposed off within the time-frame in 2018-19.
To promote defence exports, 668 No Objection Certificates were issued to companies during 2018-19, said the Ministry.
Steps have been taken to rationalise the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for reducing the time taken for granting permission for exports.
The average time taken has reduced by 100% to 32 days now.
Defence exports have recorded a substantial rise to Rs.10,745 crore in 2018-19 from Rs.4,682 crore in 2017-18.
FDI in Defence and Aerospace in the last five years was Rs 1,664 crore. Before 2014, the figure was Rs 1,321 crore.
‘Make in India’ portal for Defence Production has been revamped and re-launched. A new portal, www.defenceexim.gov.in has been created for end-to-end processing and communication of export license applications and generating and disseminating export market leads.
In addition, the MoD launched a dashboard to keep track of the major components of Defence Production, including defence exports, defence offsets, defence projects under ‘Make in India’, startups in defence sector, investments in defence corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and artificial intelligence projects in defence. fiinews.com
