The Director General of India’s Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), VK Saraswat today announced that he would soon be launching new programmes to develop 155mm/52cal artillery guns in both towed and self-propelled configurations. “This,” he said, was to “take care of future artillery requirements of the next decade, without having to rely on the vagaries of foreign import.”
He also took a traditional swipe at his customers, the Indian armed forces, saying, “The services have always been the single most important factor shaping our programmes. We look to the services not as our customer but more importantly as our partner in development, whose inputs are essential and critical to the course of our development projects. But while we welcome all inputs and guidelines, we also feel the need for the services to firm up realistic requirements at the earliest so that we may properly plan our project requirements.”
DRDO should take up keenly the most critical area of production processes,design,quality control,materials and manufacturing.Often DRDO products while of good design are let down by poor execution of manufacturing and quality control.External cosmetics,fir finish,quality materials and durability is another thing that our OFB chaps have still to get right,Private sector,liberal acquisition of def tech and modernised manufacturing parctices have to be got ASAP.Otherwise there will always be a gap between what DRDO does and others execute.
100 % agree with Anon@2;23 PM
100 % agree with Anon@2;23 PM
"launching new programmes to develop 155mm/52cal artillery guns in both towed and self-propelled configurations".The need of the hour is ready made availability of products. please dont sell your dreams to the armed forces and ask them to fight war!!!!
Strange enough, the catch lies in :
"…we also feel the need for the services to firm up realistic requirements…"
now what is realistic?? Since weaopens and equiment ti be used is a comparative and operational based requirements, does DRDO mean that firm and realistic requirement mean what is within the limited capability of DRDO? If that is the expectation, then he is asking Armed Forces to run his shop !
The Armed Forces need military machines and equipmemt to meet their operational responsibilities. In assessing that they have to compare and pit their equiment against that of possible adverseries. If DRDO can not meet the requirements allgging QRs to be imaginative then they are venturing into the job of the Services to lay down conditions. They should keep developing their capabilities but should not srave the Armed Forces of equipment of current and near future requirements in the name of their imagined capabilities. After all defence of of the nation is their responsibility too in one way or the other.
What is the proven capabilities so far..
It is on the fringes and not even ready to take off.
DRDO chief must appreciate that…
More on
DRDO 155 mm artillery gun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRDO_155_mm_artillery_gun
shiv saab!!! change the headlines to " BE REALISTIC MR.V.k.SARASWAT"
Where is the manufacturing expertise for all of this? DRDO thinks it can do anything for everyone. Stop doing this. Otherwise, your customers (the Indian Armed Forces) will be waiting forever or be provided with an inferior product. Be honest in your abilities, do not over promise and under deliver.
Hi.
Mr Saraswat is also correct in his statement to certain extent.
"The armed forces must tell DRDO what they want in the next 10 years, so that DRDO will be plan and produce the required technology and bring forward to manufacturing."
If yo want something today, and informed DRDO, they want it in 2 years it is impossible. Everyone is speaking about delays in India weapon development, but do you know that almost all weapon development in the developed world are delayed and have huge cost overrun? From Australia, Britain, France and US, they all have huge delay and cost overrun.
I am not saying DRDO is very good, they have thier share of blunder, but in the recent years they have showed a lot of improvement.
The problem lies in the bureaucratic of India. Decision making is slow in MOD, DRDO and also the armed forcess…….while others take calculated risk and decisive action.
I am from the manufacturing sector in Malaysia. Many times, the solution for manufacturing comes from trial and error, and evertime we take a decision, we will not whether it will be the best decision or not. If we fail we will continue trying, until we get it right.This is only way to perfect manufacturing process. To do this there must be leader who is willing to take risk and decisive action……..merely talking will not help.
Lets hope DRDO & Armed forces work together to achieve thier future objective.
Tem work is the only way to success
Subra