SME Times News Bureau | 18 Mar, 2020
Consequent to the separation of duties between Department of Defence (DoD)
and Department of Military Affairs (DMA), the first meeting of the Defence
Acquisition Council (DAC) under the chairmanship of Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh
was held with the Acquisition Wing being the Secretariat of the DAC.
This would lead to better coordination and faster processing of cases with
the Acquisition wing being in the overall charge of the Capital acquisition
process.
The Light Combat Aircraft Tejas indigenously-designed by Aircraft
Development Agency (ADA) under the Defence Research and Development
Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is
going to be the backbone of Indian Air Force in future.
While orders of 40 Tejas aircraft had been placed with HAL in initial
configurations, DAC paved the way for procurement of 83 of the more advanced
Mk1A version of the aircraft from HAL by finalising the contractual and other
issues.
The proposal will now be placed for consideration of Cabinet Committee on
Security (CCS).
This procurement will be a major boost to 'Make in India' as the aircraft
is indigenously designed, developed and manufactured with participation of
several local vendors apart from HAL.
The Defence Acquisition Council also accorded approval for acquisition of
indigenous Defence equipment for about Rs 1,300 crore. The proposals were for
procurement of Aerial Fuses and Twin-Dome Simulators for Hawk Mk32 aircraft for
the Indian Air Force.
The DAC approved an amendment to the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP)
2016 to enable review by a Costing Committee of bids submitted.