In a bid to push for indigenisation, the Indian Navy has issued 22 proposals, worth about ₹2200 crore, to the defence industry for acquisition in the last two years, Vice Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Krishna Swaminathan said on Tuesday

“Of the 22 Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) (proposals) issued in the last two years, 13 have been converted into acquisition contracts, valued at ₹1,194 crore,” Swaminathan said at the curtain-raiser for the third edition of the Indian Navy’s Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation (NIIO) seminar, Swavlamban 2024.

These are part of the 171 projects Indian Navy accepted from among 2,000 challenges posed to the MSMEs and start-ups since the start of the Swavlambam in 2022. The Indian Navy reaches out to the MSMEs and start-ups to find out indigenous innovative solutions to fill technological gaps and build next-generation weapons, sensors and other systems.

The seminar will be held over two days from October 28 at Bharat Mandapam here.

Two task forces at work

Vice Admiral Swaminathan also said that two task forces have been constituted to work on specific issues with quicker turn around times besides the in-house Technology Development Acceleration Cell (TDAC), which will continue to look at the process of engaging with MSMEs and start-ups for technology advancements.

The Indian Navy has assigned different work to the two task forces to avoid overlap of work to make the maritime force future war ready.

One task force is looking at future technologies, niche technologies, the Vice Admiral pointed out. They are looking at fuses, radars, quantum computing, interface devises, niche electronic technologies, weapon technologies, and indigenisation of ammunitions, he stated.

The Indian Navy is also pushing for increasing the indigenous content on manufacturing of its maritime platforms which are largely classified as ‘float’, ‘move’ and ‘fight’ components.

“Its difficult to say about the indigenous component we have got for the shipbuilding as a whole.. Progressively, for example, for the latest ship we are building, the indigenous content could go up to 90 percent,” he said as the India Navy seeks to become fully aatmanirbhar by 2047.

Apart from a few weapons we import, much of the float and the move component is made in India, he said.

As of now, 63 ships of different categories are being manufactured by the defence PSUs as well as private industry.

The Indian Navy is going to put a proposal for acquisition of 6 megawatt diesel engine before the Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the Vice Admiral revealed.

The Navy Vice Chief also stated that its about time that the country indigenises propulsion systems for its warships – gas turbine and diesel turbine engines.

Impact of global conflicts

He also spoke about disruption in supply chain due to global conflicts and said traditionally engines have been coming from Russia and Ukraine and if they cannot give it to us, then we have to get our own.

Navy’s Officer-in-Charge of TDAC Commodore SK Singh, who gave a presentation on Swavlamban 2024, said the NIIO seminar will focus on future warfare and emerging technologies, boosting innovation ecosystem, and indigenous defence ecosystem.

The plenary session will centre around “inculcating innovation and creative culture”, “innovative technology and national security and “strengthening innovative defence product manufacturing,” Commodore Singh briefed reporters.

There are seven to eight fresh challenges that the Indian Navy will throw at the industry to seek solutions, which will be disclosed at the seminar.

The Indian Navy announced hosting maiden Naval Hackathon seeking solutions to five problem statements including on “speech separation” to identify people talking in a group, drone swarm coordination, navigation and real-time tracking of flying objects and maritime situational awareness.

Other than that, Swavlambam 3.0 document will be released and innovators will be felicitated.

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