Excellency Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Dr. VG Sekaran, Chief Controller R&D, DRDO, Mr. Venkataramanan, CEO &MD, Larsen & Toubro, Mr. Suslov, First Dy. Director General, Strela Plant, Orenburg, Mr. Maksichev, NPOM & Jt MD, and friends from Russian Federation, R. Adm (Retd.) Mohapatra, Partner Industry Captains, Exhibitors, my colleagues from BrahMos JV, Friends from Media, Students from Engineering Colleges, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Ever changing world scenario poses numerous challenges to a country especially in the fields of economy, defence and international relations. The strength of a country is derived from its robust economy strength, which every nation translates into military power aimed at maintaining a position of strength in international negotiations and in evolving strategic friendships.
The military strength is an amalgamation of strong force level backed by robust research, development and production infrastructure with reasonable self-reliance. Every progressive nation wishes to be self-reliant depending upon its financial, research & development and industrial strengths along with skilled human resources. At the same time, in the world of evolving war strategies, new technologies keep emerging from time to time to gain superiority over others creating a dynamic environment. In this context, it is safe to assume that one of the methods to gain access to cutting edge technologies for building self reliance, without spending much of valuable time, cost and energy is not to re-invent the wheel and it is the formation of JV with a country who can share such technologies and partner to see the results.
India being the largest democracy in the world and not having permanent membership in United Nations has its own regional and international aspirations to be one among the top developed nations. Towards achieving this, it becomes obvious that there are two crucial steps to be taken. First, use of JV as the viable and positive model towards attainment of selfreliance in the field of critical technologies and state-of-art new generation weapon systems. Second, build “Military Industrial Complex” for large scale production of quality weapons and equipment and for export.
The journey of BrahMos JV started on 12 landmark signing of the Inter Governmental Agreement at Moscow, by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam on behalf of the Government of India. We have travelled 15 fruitful, successful and active years. On 19 15 year completion as “Ardhik Diwas- Partnership Day” discussing the Inter Governmental Relationships & High Technology Joint Ventures. Shri AK Antony, Raksha Mantri acknowledged the success of the Joint Venture and said “This unique BRAHMOS missile in real sense a Brahmastra, it can take multiple forms from multiple platforms against different targets and yet remain universal”. Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne, Vice Chief of Army, Director Generals of DRDO and NPOM and all formation contributors like Former Ambassadors, Chiefs of Armed Forces, Financial Advisors and Technology Leaders also addressed the gathering. The expert panel made conclusion that the BrahMos is a role model for other JVs. We have given the Proceedings to all the industries. Now we are meeting again to exclusively acknowledge the contributions of Industry Partners.
Let me recall the remarkable contributions from DRDO, especially from RCI, DRDL, R&D(E), ASL and ITR during the initial stages of design and development. The formation of PJ-10 for undertaking DRDO tasks and funding infrastructure for system integration and Test & Evaluation has been timely and help to the JV.
During this journey, when there were no production orders visible, the industries came forward to support the programme with their own funds. That means, they got tremendous confidence that this Project will be successful and Product will be inducted. So, it is a friendship of confidence and at this point of time, I must acknowledge the Industry Captains for this kind of decision particularly from our Industries to invest even before the production order.
After the successful first flight trial in the year 2001, Indian Navy gave a frontline warship INS Rajput and we had demonstrated a successful launch from the ship in the year 2003. This paved the way for the production orders. Once user confidence came, the intensity of partnership increased.
BRAHMOS is unique with its higher weapon effectiveness, reliability and multi platform, multi mission and multi target capability. Today, it is the world leader in Cruise Missile family establishing the ‘BRAND’. All the Three Services Integrated as partners with flexibility to adapt to customer needs who demand continuous upgradation with state-of-the-art technology. BRAHMOS is a product of customers’ delight, demanding day by day more and more. Team BrahMos proactively establishing an independent complex for Product Support near to the deployment positions which added the confidence of the Services.
This is the first JV Between India and a foreign partner to design, develop and market advanced defence system with a unique equity Share Ratio of 50.5% : 49.5% making a company Governments funded Pvt. Sector. This JV has become the first to penetrate to the world market for weapon system export.
Today, we have realized the “Missile Industry Consortium” in India with Public-Private partnership and in Russia as a Corporate entity for large scale production of BRAHMOS missiles and systems with the full participation of Quality Assurance agencies. I am seeing all the Industry Captains in front of me celebrating the success of BrahMos JV. Can we build around this success to create a much needed “Military Industry Complex” and make our country strong. Therefore, it is essential that the Public-Private industrial consortium established for BrahMos needs to become a National Model, if we are really interested in self-reliance.
BrahMos JV has evolved an elaborate technology mapping and new versions in the approved BrahMos Vision 2050. This again calls for more participation from the industries, if we have to realize the missions. It should be noted that with the increased demand on the industries particularly the recently announced Defence Procurement Policy 2013, the preference given to “Buy Indian”. This necessitates Indian industries must embark on R&D in a big way and compete with the so called multinationals who are establishing R&D Centres in India. Investments in R&D with highly skilled scientists will spurt innovations in Indian industries and will outsmart the foreign industries forcing them to come for joint ventures in high technologies. Thus, the dream of Military Industrial Complex will emerge for high technology defence systems.
As BrahMos family, all of us re-commit ourselves unitedly to meet the increasing production demand, maintaining the quality for the Indian and Russian Armed Forces and also to contribute for export of BRAHMOS to friendly countries.
Jai Hind !!
