India will become self-reliant in defence production in next 5 years: DRDO chief

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chief Satheesh Reddy asserted on Friday that India will become completely self-reliant in defence manufacturing in the next five years and will not need critical technologies from outside.

The DRDO Director General was delivering a lecture at an event organised by the Aeronautical Society of India and said that India is self-reliant in a number of areas such as radars, electronic warfare systems, torpedoes and communications systems.

“We have our own aircraft carrier today and we can develop our own tanks today. The LCA (Light Combat Aircraft Tejas) from where evolution into various other projects like Mark 2 RV stealth aircraft (started)…these are the areas we are moving in and I am sure in most areas in the coming five years, we will be completely self-reliant where we are not looking for any technology or system from outside,” Reddy said.

“We have propulsion technology, we have re-entry technologies, we have the technology which can take a re-entry system which will deliver a payload and have yet another re-entry system which will bring the missile back when it re-enters the atmosphere on its return journey,” Saraswat said.

“After I became a scientific adviser, I met him (Kalam) at his residence just a month before his demise. He came up with the idea of the reusable missile, delivering a payload, coming back, then take another payload and launch it ‘Work on this type of system’, he told me,” Reddy recalled how the former President  APJ Abdul Kalam had advised the now DRDO chief Satheesh Reddy to work on reusable missiles systems.