Article Posted on : - Feb 13, 2017

BENGALURU (PTI): Giving thrust on exports, Defence Research and Development Organisation has said it is looking at optimising defence products for which the advanced versions have been developed, by exporting them to other countries.

DRDO Chairman S Christopher on Saturday said besides bringing in economical advantage, it will also help India build its might in the region.

Apart from importing the foreign defence goods, if we can make a small change in terms of delivering or exporting some of our defence goods, that will be the happiest movement for the nation, and DRDO should strive to do that," Christopher said.

He said "thereby we will enhance the make in India policy, and the guidelines given by the Defence Minister and the Prime minister will be fully honoured."

Christopher was interacting with reporters at the curtain raiser of eleventh biennial Aero India International Seminar to be held from February 12 to 14 here, as a prelude to the eleventh edition of the Aero India Aerospace Exposition.

He said DRDO with an intention to optimise the product that is already there, is looking at opportunities to export previous versions of defence products, as it makes better or advanced versions for indigenous consumption.

"When we are going for a large platform, much more evolved, capable systems having longer endurance, higher ranges, and more number of absorbents; smaller platforms can be probably exported to other countries. We can even design and develop exclusively for somebody at lower costs," he said.

Citing 'Pinaka', a multiple rocket launcher, as an example, Christopher said "when you have Pinaka Mark-lll obviously the user will have interest on it rather than Mark-l or ll, so instead of abandoning l and ll we should produce it at a reasonable cost and export it to neighbouring countries and thereby we can get back the returns of the amount that has gone into their development."

"If there is an interest elsewhere, we will give the technology also, because today no country wants just the product, they also wants to have their own production within the country," he said.

Responding to a question on countries of export, Christopher said "with Vietnam a USD 21 million contract has been concluded for naval products; Myanmar we have already supplied sonars..there are many other countries but it is confidential on their request," he added.