The Army has sought emergency procurement of critical defence equipment from domestic industry to meet its commitment to "fight future wars with indigenous solutions".

Proposals have been invited by the Army for guns, missiles, drones, counter-drone systems, loiter munition, communication and optical systems, specialist vehicles, engineering equipment and alternate energy resources. It said in a tweet that the "process will be based on compressed timelines, wherein the procurement window will be open to Indian Industry for 6 months and industry would be expected to deliver equipment within a year of signing the contract". Procurement cases will be based on Open Tender Enquiry which have been laid out in Request for Proposal, said the Army.

Indigenous tech

The Centre has been pushing for procurement under the Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme to give fillip to self reliance in defence sector. Even in case where the equipment have been purchased from foreign equipment manufacturers, India is trying to encourage the local industry to take up the opportunity for providing upgrades.

Sources stated that the Indian Air Force has been told by the Defence Ministry to look for domestic manufacturers to upgrade Israeli Heron with more capabilities for enhanced communication systems and weaponised payloads. Similarly, the IAF has also been told to look for helicopters from HAL stable when they demanded more US manufactured Chinooks. As of now, IAF has 15 of them.

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