"Progress painfully slow": Air Marshal AK Bharti calls for acceleration in indigenisation in defence

New Delhi [India], September 30 (ANI): Deputy Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti called for indigenisation in the defence sector to win future wars and flagged concern over "painfully slow" progress towards operationalisation.
Addressing the Aero Tech India 2025 event in the national capital on Tuesday, Air Marshal Bharti said that India requires "leapfrogging" to attain strategic autonomy in critical technologies.
He said, "To win future wars, there is no doubt that indigenisation is the way ahead. Our global partners may not always be able to share niche and critical technology with us. What we need is leapfrogging, which largely will have to be done on our own."
"We need to attain strategic autonomy in critical technologies from secure chips to communication systems to hypersonics to airborne platforms to space-based assets," he added.

Further, pointing out the slow progress, Air Marshal Bharti said that research and development in the country needs to achieve an accelerated pace of innovation.
"Indigenisation is the key to our future capabilities; considerable work is going on, there is no doubt. However, the progress from conceptualisation to operationalisation is painfully slow, and that is our pain point. And to be able to achieve this accelerated pace of innovation in the country, research and development, environment and infrastructure have to see a revolution," he said.
The Deputy Chief of Air Staff said that future warfare will be fought at the spectrums of low capital solutions, with drones and other unmanned systems at one end and high-cost equipment with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and humans fighting in collaboration at the other.
He said, "Once the kinetic action starts, future conflicts will be fought at the entire end of the spectrum. And when I say entire end of the spectrum, it is not only that they will be high tech, tanks, aircraft or ships. It will be fought even at the lower end with low-tech, low-capital solutions. So at one extreme would be low-cost mass saturation, characterised by usage of drones and other unmanned systems."
"The other extreme would be high-cost equipment, niche technologies, precise with a large weight of attack, characterised by the usage of sixth-generation technologies. Future warfare will be about collaboration between humans and machines, robots and autonomous systems integrated with AI would be fighting side by side with humans," Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti said.
Addressing the event, Air Vice Marshal Anil Golani (Retd), DG Centre for Aerospace Power and Strategic Studies, highlighted the role of the Indian Air Force during Operation Sindoor.
He also called for indigenisation to reduce the dependence on imports in the Defence manufacturing sector.
He said, "Our national security has been well understood, more so, after Operation Sindoor, where I think the Indian Air Force played a major role. The present geopolitical situation and the ongoing conflicts only underscore this point, the Indian government's defense indigenization effort has been focused in the recent past, as can be seen from the various initiatives."
"There is an urgent need to reduce our dependencies on imports and focus on innovation and manufacturing. There is a critical shortage of combat enabler aircraft that needs to be plugged. Development of next generation beyond visual range, air-to-air missiles, and standoff weapons also needs to be undertaken on priority and looking into the future," he added.
Lauding the role of MSMEs in the defence sector, Air Vice Marshal Anil Golani added that the Tejas program is expected to generate about 12,000 jobs annually over the next six years.
"The Tejas program alone is expected to generate about 12,000 jobs annually over the next six years, supported by about 115 suppliers. And this growth of the defence sector is creating opportunities for MSMEs, with their number expected to double to almost 16,000 by 2030," he said.
The Aero Tech India 2025 was organised by the Centre for Air Power and Strategic Studies (CAPSS) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in New Delhi. (ANI)