Govt steps in to overhaul DRDO

May 14, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

New Delhi

Peeved at delays in the completion of armament projects and in order to improve the functioning of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the ministry of defence (MoD) on Thursday announced sweeping measures to overhaul the organisation including establishment of a Defence Technology

Commission to be headed by defence minister A.K. Antony. The government wants a “leaner” DRDO and is planning to merge some of the DRDO laboratories with other public-funded organisations. Defence sources said some of the life-science laboratories of the DRDO could be merged with other organisations as the government wants the DRDO to focus on its core strategic areas such as weapon development programmes. The government also announced the proposed development of a more advanced version of the Arjun main battle tanks (for the Army) and the Akash surface-to-air missiles (for the Air Force).
Pointing out that the measures would revitalise the DRDO, the MoD said, “The key measures include the establishment of a Defence Technology Commission with the defence minister as its chairman, de-centralisation of the DRDO management, making DRDO a leaner organisation by merging some of the DRDO laboratories with other public funded institutions with similar discipline, interest and administrative system, engagement of an eminent human resource (HR) expert as consultant to revamp the entire HR structure of DRDO and establishment of a commercial arm of the DRDO.”
The Defence Technology Commission is expected to decide on crucial areas of weapon development and the path that the DRDO should chart. The government proposes to decentralise the DRDO by creating “seven technology domain-based centres covering clusters of labs”.
The government has also proposed that the “new commercial arm of the DRDO would be created as a private limited company ...”. This commercial arm of the DRDO will deal with putting DRDO technologies to civilian use. The DRDO director-general will be re-designated as DRDO chairman and the director-generals of the seven proposed centres will report to him.
It may be recalled that several projects such as the Akash surface-to-air missile and the Nag anti-tank missiles that are part of the Integrated Missile Development Programme (sanctioned in 1983) were delayed along with other projects such as the Arjun main battle tank.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/13071" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-82919e31d20ff965f1add83fc29cb784" value="form-82919e31d20ff965f1add83fc29cb784" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80979644" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>