Government Gives Nod to Nine Indigenous Defence Projects: A Major Boost to AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan

The Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP 2020), which supersedes the Defence Procurement Procedure 2016 (DPP 2016), is a serious effort by the Ministry of Defence to improve the capital procurement procedures. While there is a fundamental architectural continuity between the two documents, DAP 2020 encourages ‘forcible indigenisation’ and tweaks the defence planning system, which forms the basis of capital procurements.

‘Make’ Procedure has following two sub-categories:

Make-I (Government Funded): Projects under ‘Make-I’ sub-category will involve Government funding of 90%, released in a phased manner based on the progress of the scheme.

Make-II (Industry Funded): Projects under ‘Make-II’ category will involve prototype development of equipment/ system/ platform, for which no Government funding will be provided for prototype development purposes.

Mr. Tribhuvan Darbari MD & CEO Texmaco Defence Systems, Chief Executive Texmaco Rail & Engineering and Chairman CII Sub-Committee on Defence and Aerospace (ER), stated that in-principal approval of four such projects under ‘Make-I’ category and five under ‘Make-2’ category given by the Ministry of Defence is not only a landmark step towards operationalising  the vision of our Hon’ble Prime Minister for the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” and “Make-in-India” programme, in the segment of Defence Manufacturing but also shall give a boost to the ongoing efforts of facilitating entry of MSME’s and Start-ups in the Defence Manufacturing Ecosystem.

The Defence Ministry has cleared nine such projects: Four under the ‘Make-I’ and Five under the ‘Make-2’ categories of the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020.

The four projects which are approved under Make-I are communication equipment with Indian security protocols, airborne electro-optical pod with the ground-based system, airborne stand-off jammer for the Indian Air Force (IAF) and light tank for the Army.

Five projects which have also been offered in ‘Make-II category’ include full-motion simulator for Apache helicopter, full-motion simulator for Chinook helicopter and wearable robotic equipment for aircraft maintenance for the IAF, and integrated surveillance and targeting system for mechanized forces and autonomous combat vehicle for the Indian Army.