By IANS
New Delhi : India’s defence industry in the public and private sectors should drastically ramp up their R&D expenditure if their products are to become globally competitive, Defence Minister A.K. Antony said Tuesday.
“You say you are spending 3 to 4 percent (of your outlays) on R&D. I am sorry to say this just not enough. I am not happy with this,” he said while inaugurating a national seminar here on ‘Defence R&D and Technology Management’.
The Society of Defence Technologists (SODET) has organised the two-day event.
“You should take a leaf from the pharmaceutical sector. If you are not prepared to spend more on R&D, then you should keep your products in a museum,” said Antony, who is known to speak from the heart on such issues.
Some pharmaceutical majors like Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy’s Labs spend up to 10 percent of their annual budgets on R&D.
Technology is changing so fast, Antony told the gathering, that “you have to keep pace or your products will become obsolete. Previously it took five years (for a new generation of technology to emerge). Today it takes three years”.
Unless the Indian industry shapes up, “we would be forced to turn to foreign suppliers. I don’t say we can be 100 percent indigenous and I don’t believe that is possible, but we should reduce imports to the extent possible”.
According to Antony, India is emerging as a world power, “but unless we produce more (of our requirements) how can we say that our products are the best? Our armed forces must also acknowledge that our products are superior.
“Unless you are ready with products that satisfy the armed forces, the government will be compelled to go for imports. This will create lots of problems,” Antony said.
The minister also pointed to the government’s “serious initiatives” for strengthening India’s defence R&D base through the increased involvement of all players, whether private or public, Indian or foreign.
“Defence R&D and its integration into product improvement and development is an exceedingly complex and exacting process. This involves collaborative and network techniques so as to ensure that the output of research establishments are effectively translated into viable, state-of-the-art products,” Antony said.
“The variables that impact our defence preparedness and threat assessments, including regional and global political dynamics, are in a state of continuous flux, forcing us to constantly reassess threats to our security.
“All this is compounded by the remarkable technological and scientific revolution which began in the last century and is continuing at a dizzying pace.”
He said this “exponential” growth of technology and information “makes it all the more imperative that suitable instruments are in position to ensure that defence innovations reach their intended end users, namely the armed forces.
“The ability to move with speed in response to innovations is what will determine whether a country continues to have a winning edge or not,” he said.
In this context, Antony also served a wake up call to India’s defence industry to gear up to benefit from the foreign technology that will become available due to the newly introduced offsets policy in the import of military hardware.
“Unless you move fast, both the public and the private sector combined will not be able to absorb the technology that will come our way and the entire effort would go waste.”