By IANS,
New Delhi : Defence Minister A.K. Antony Thursday stressed the need to combine the country’s software development skills with indigenous manufacturing to provide state-of-the art communication systems for the armed forces.
“The single biggest challenge facing societies and nations is the vulnerability of communication and network devices to attacks, or threats in the electronic, cyber as well as the physical domain,” Antony said in his address at the inaugural session of two-day Defcom India 2012 seminar here.
According to Antony, indigenisation of information, communication, electronics and cyber technologies for the defence forces is required urgently as the tactical communications environment is becoming increasingly dynamic.
“Industry and development organisations have a key role in modernising and indigenising Indian army’s tactical communications system (TCS) and network centric operations,” Antony said.
The seminar is being jointly organised by the integrated headquarter of the defence ministry, the corps of signals of the army and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Antony added that decision makers in the armed forces should be able to receive reliable and actionable information under all circumstances, which only a robust TCS can deliver.
Corroborating Antony’s views, Army Chief General Bikram Singh said there is a need to achieve self-reliance and technical sovereignty in TCS through indigenisation of designs and standards.
“While the transition to the TCS environment will be gradual, it is important that the soldier in the battle space does not have to deal with multiple communication devices,” General Singh said.
“The overall aim should be to develop reliable, mobile, high-speed convergence networks that are inter-operable with even legacy systems and function in a joint services environment,” he added.