IT will help Defence forces to emerge as exporter

The Indian defence forces, in collaboration with the private sector, could position itself as an export-oriented organization, especially with India at the forefront of the information technology revolution and with a strong presence of an R&D base. This was stated by Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain while addressing the seminar on 'IT in Defence: Challenges for Industry' organized by CII.

According to Narain, "Defence sector, in collaboration with the private sector, could look into exporting armaments in the coming years." The Indian defence sector has been able to produce its own chips for defence purpose, with the help of Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), he added.

While IT is emerging as a boon to the new economies, its application is posing serious challenges to the national security. In this context, he added that with the growing application of IT in defence, netwars and cyberwars have become particularly relevant. It has opened up a new entry on the spectrum of conflict by targeting information and communication systems either seeking to destroy it or obtain critical information about the adversary. Further commenting on the impact of IT, in the context of warfare in the 21st century, Narain said that it would far exceed the impact of air power and mechanization in the 20th century. Cyberwar will be the blitzkrieg of the 21st century. The challenge, therefore, is turning the 'balance of information and technology' in our favor.

In his address at the inaugural session, General S. Padmanabhan, Chief of the Armed Staff, spoke about the deployment of IT in Indian defence and defence related areas. He stressed upon the need to create synergy between the expertise and strength of the private and public sectors to effectively meet the challenges posed by digitalization. He said that the Indian Army is focussing on training all levels of the armed force in IT. Although, the army was slow previously in adopting IT tools, now most of the functions such as inventory control, personnel management, material management etc were fully automated, he added.

In keeping with the information age, army was also encouraging the use of Internet and intranet. The Army Chief added that armed forces were working towards providing access to relevant data and information up to unit level by Web-based systems. Plans to establish a fully integrated, secure and reliable network infrastructure with suitable bandwidth and built in redundancy were on the anvil, he said.

Lt. Gen. S.S. Mehta, Deputy Chief of Army Staff, reiterated the need to seek greater industry cooperation to share defence problems and in solving problems for a more effective management of information systems. It had become imperative for services to work in association with the industry to function in a transparent, more efficient and cost-effective environment.

The Indian army, in partnership with the Indian IT industry, would be able to scale the milestones of the IT Roadmap 2008 successfully, he stated. In consonance with the National policy, 2-3 per cent of the Defence budget had been earmarked for IT and a large number of 'automation projects' had been undertaken, he said.

Brij Mohan Lall, Past President CII, in his address, elaborated on the need for deploying IT in defence. He said that even though defence offered major business opportunities to the Indian IT industry, the companies were not focussing on the defence sector due to payment and procedural delays in dealing with the services. Offering CII's support in enhancing the use of IT in defence, Lall informed the gathering about the launch of a Web-based CII online directory of IT industry at www.ciidefence.com where the industry focussed on the defence sector could post their data for the perusal of armed forces.