Continuing with the commitment towards the ‘Make in India’ initiative the Indian Army has signed the second procurement contract through Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) on 09 June 2023. The contract with M/s Astrome Tech Pvt Ltd, Bangalore for procurement of indigenously developed ‘Tactical LAN Radio’ was signed in the presence of Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar, the Vice Chief of Army Staff at New Delhi. With this initiative, the Indian Army has taken the lead by signing two contracts under iDEX to date.
A tactical LAN solution is being developed indigenously for creating secure tactical LAN in remote and difficult terrain. ‘Tactical LAN Radio’ is a state-of-the-art high bandwidth backhaul wireless radio equipment for the provisioning of reliable and failsafe communication. The solution offers an enhanced range of communication and embedded frequency hopping mechanism to preclude chances of interception and long-range point-to-multipoint high-bandwidth communication. The system also incorporates enhanced safety features and can operate continuously for 48 hours on a single set basis without any breakdown.
At present a total of 42 projects of the Indian Army are part of the Defence India Start-up Challenge (DISC), Open Challenges and iDEX PRIME scheme which involves handholding of 41 start-ups for the development of latest state of the art solutions for challenges posed by the Indian Army. For each challenge a dedicated nodal officer and a category ‘A’ establishment as ‘Centre of Excellence’ from the Indian Army has been nominated for handholding and continuous support for the progress of the projects. Balance ‘Acceptance of Necessity’ accorded iDEX projects of the Indian Army are also under finalisation and are likely to fructify into contracts shortly.
