Article Posted on : - Feb 27, 2015

BENGALURU (PTI): The exclusive consortium of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Rolta India Limited has been selected as a development agency for a more than Rs 50,000 crore Battlefield Management System (BMS) project by the Defence Ministry.

The BMS project, categorised as a "Make" programme under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), will be one of the largest solutions to be indigenously manufactured for the the country's defence, BEL, a Navaratna PSU, said on Thursday.

It said the project is meant to deliver Command and Control capabilities to the fighting echelons, operating at the forward edge of the Tactical Battle Area at the Battalion and Combat Group levels.

BMS is a situational awareness and visualisation system that aims to optimise the operational effectiveness of tactical units, BEL said in a release here.

Stating that BEL has been proactively working on battlefield management systems, it said the Company has established the test bed of BMS for continuous evaluation and implementation of user requirements.

Having worked on several Tactical Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence (Tac C3I) systems of the Indian Army, in association with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), BEL has the unique capability of developing and integrating Tac C3I systems and will lead the consortium, it added.

The release said Rolta has also invested significantly in BMS technologies indigenously and has over the years delivered cutting edge Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C2ISR) systems, to the Indian Military.

Deployed across the country, military commanders use Rolta Technology as a force-multiplier.

It said as a part of the consortium, Rolta will execute its role and responsibility in areas of BMS application software development and applicable licensing, GIS software and GIS data services.

Rolta will also jointly work with BEL for manufacturing subsystems for the soldier system, the overall system design, integration, installation, commissioning and maintenance of the BMS solution.

"The consortium of BEL and Rolta is fully geared up to take on the challenge of development of the Battlefield Management System for our Defence forces," BEL Director (Marketing) P C Jain said.

"We also aim to maximise the indigenous content through in-house development of various sub-systems," he added.