New Delhi: The Defence Research and Development Organisation has begun work on new weapon systems like laser beams and high-power microwaves.
Speaking at a function today, the DRDO chairman, Dr Samir Kamat said th shift towards cutting-edge technology, to fight the next war, has begun. Fo that, space situational awareness and underwater domain awareness was required. New technologies were also necessary to defend important military and strategic assets from hypersonic weapons. Direct energy weapons (like lasers and high-power microwaves) were necessary as we as cyber-related weaponry, both offensive and defensive.
For that, more resources were necessary and also, closer links with academia, Dr Kamat said that if India had to become a military-industrial complex like the United States more resources were necessary. Currently research and development (R&D) gets five percent of the budget. In the United States and China, it is closer to ten percent.
“We have to be risk averse,” he said, as there are bound to be failures, temporarily perhaps, in R&D. He regretted that in the current circumstances, a string of failures would lead to a “CAG (Comptroller General of India) audit. Which is why tolerance for risk has to go up,” he added. Even celebrated organisations like DARPA or the
Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States faced failures.
One other option for DRDO was to create centres of excellence by collaborating with academia. This could work well as it has done in the case of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University in the United States, he added.
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Sources – Times Now News
