Article Posted on : - Feb 11, 2011

India will develop the 5th-gen fighter with Russia.

BANGALORE (BNS): The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will play a major role in the Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) programme in which India is partnering with Russia, the defence agency chief said here Friday.

“DRDO has a major role to play. Six DRDO laboratories are presently working on the project. Our role in the programme would include development of stealth technology, avionics systems, aero dynamic systems and other composite materials for the advanced fighters,” DRDO Chief V K Saraswat told reporters at Aero India 2011.

“We will also be conducting tests and trials of the fighter aircraft,” he said.

India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has inked a deal with Russia’s Sukhoi Corporation to build the new generation supersonic fighters for its air force.

When asked about India sharing its intellectual property rights with the Russian engineers while working on the programme, Saraswat said that both countries would mutually work on it. “There will be mutual consent on this issue,” he said.

He said that India has maintained a strong strategic partnership with Russia in the past and it is still continuing. “We have strong (defence) collaborations with Russia, Israel and France. We are entering into cooperation with the UK,” the DRDO chief said.

On sharing a similar strategic partnership with the US, he said, “Defence technological cooperation with the US has developed. We have set up a Defence Technology Group and identified some 30 working areas including C4I, nano materials and night systems where we are working together.”

“Earlier, a number of areas were identified to work with our US counterparts. However, our inclusion in the Entities List restricted us from working in those areas,” Saraswat said.

On the removal the defenec agency from the US’s Entities List, he said that the dual use licensing process, which was the ‘law of the land’ in the US, was very strict. “Since most of the DRDO products, both military and civilian, have dual use purpose, we will have to see how our equations with the US evolve over the period of time on the licensing issue.”

US had last month issued a notification to remove the DRDO from the Entities List. The notification removed India from several country groups in the Export Administration Regulations, resulting in the removal of export license requirements that were tied to India's placement in those country groups.