Minister of State for Defence Dr. Subhash Bhamre has conveyed that Defence sector being a User driven sector, Defence Forces are actively involved in various policies & procedures related to procurement, indigenous design, development & manufacture of defence equipment, co-development & co-production with foreign OEMs, thus contributing towards ‘Make in India’ . Some of the major areas, where defence personnel are involved, are listed below:
‘Make Procedure’: ‘Make’ procedure as given out at Chapter-III of Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP)-2016, envisages involvement of Defence personnel at various stages of development of a defence equipment. The ‘Make’ projects are identified through a consultative process with involvement of members from Services Head Quarters (SHQs). Project Management Unit (PMU) headed by Service officer, established at SHQs, is responsible for monitoring the implementation of ‘Make’ projects of respective SHQ. The Integrated Project Management Team (IPMT) mandated to steer the Make project, is also headed by Service Officer.
Technology Development Fund (TDF) Scheme: TDF scheme launched by the Government aims at funding the development of defence and dual use technologies that are currently not available with the Indian defence industry, or have not been developed so far, thus creating an Eco-system for enhancing cutting edge technology capability for Defence application. The scheme envisages constitution of Empowered Committee and Technical Committee with representation from Armed Forces as members, which are involved in identification of technologies, Project Monitoring & Mentoring activities.
‘Buy & Make (Indian)’ and ‘Buy & Make’ Categories of Capital Acquisition: ‘Buy & Make (Indian)’ and ‘Buy & Make’ categories of capital acquisition under DPP, envisage tie-up between Indian Vendor/ Indian Production Agency & foreign OEM, for indigenous production of defence equipment involving Transfer of Technology (ToT) of critical technologies to promote ‘Make in India’. The Defence Personnel are engaged at various stages of procurement to progress the projects categorized under these categories.
Army Design Bureau (ADB): SHQ (Army) has established an Army Design Bureau (ADB) in August – 2016 as a single point coordination with Industry & Academia. The mandate of ADB, inter- alia is to act as a central repository of technical know-how, to bring forward the innovation undertaken by field formation, to generate long-term research requirement for Indian Army etc.
In addition, a large number of personnel from the Armed forces are posted in DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation) to provide impetus to design & development of projects of the Armed forces, thus contributing to indigenization process.