A plane that can fly six times faster than sound; an underwater vehicle that negotiates complicated trenches and ridges without human assistance; an electronic bomb that clogs a hostile nation’s entire electronics within minutes.
Sounds futuristic! Ideas lifted straight from science fiction titles! These are some of the cutting edge technologies, which the defence research and development agencies want to develop in the next decade.
But challenges are daunting. First, the budget is too meagre to carry out high-end strategic research. Officially, the DRDO got more than Rs 5,000 crore in the last two budgets. But only one third of the money was available for research. However, the DRDO is expected to develop missiles, fighter planes, indigenous jet engines, battle tanks and nuclear-powered submarines, etc. Remember, India did not even design and develop a car of its own till Indica.
The rest of the fund, explains DRDO chief M Natarajan, is utilised to make deliverables like Agni and Prithvi missiles — besides running a mammoth organisation with 50 odd laboratories and 7,000 scientists.
India’s defence R&D budget has increased from Rs 3,173 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 5,314 crore in 2005-06. But it is to be noted that the USA spends 16 per cent of its defence budget — $420 billion — on strategic research, whereas 20 per cent of China’s defence expenditure, $ 29 billion, was utilised on research. Even Israel spends 9-11 per cent of its defence budget on R&D.
Shortage of manpower is another crippling factor. When the Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA) project began on the drawing board, the team had more than 120 scientists looking after different aspects. However, when the plane was finally ready to fly, less than 25 scientists were there. Thanks to the boom in the information technology industry that required trained engineers and scientists.
Another straining factor was the US-imposed sanctions in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear test. “Unlike others, we just can not go to the technology market and purchase technologies and components,” says V K Saraswat, who heads the ballistic missile defence project.
Despite the odds, six LCA prototypes are flying now. The work is under progress on a naval version of the LCA and the medium combat aircraft.
Another futuristic technology — the hypersonic plane — is likely to take wings in 2009 as a technology demonstrator. If successful, this will be the first step towards realising Avatar — aerobic vehicle for hypersonic aerospace transportation — which was conceptualised by the former DRDO chief A P J Abdul Kalam.
Besides carrying weapons, the hypersonic plane could be used as a reusable missile or a low-cost platform to ferry civilian and military payloads into space. It can also be used for surveillance.
Imarat, the eight-meter-long hyper-plane will be powered by a scramjet engine that consumes oxygen from the atmosphere and burns liquid hydrogen, explains Saraswat.
A lighter than air platform for surveillance, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, air to air missile Astra, a longer range variant of Agni that can cross continents, underwater unmanned vehicles, single missile that can hit multiple targets, submarine launched ballistic missile and e-bomb to jam all electronic networks pose some of the future technology challenges for DRDO.
Understanding the seriousness of the research required to overcome the technological hurdles, the DRDO has decided to collaborate with universities and other research institutions. In its diamond jubilee year, it came to the Indian Science Congress for the first time. At its recently concluded 95th session in Visakhapatnam, the DRDO was given a plenary session to showcase its successes, explain the challenges and seek solution from the academic community. In previous science congresses, DRDO’s role was limited to only one public lecture by the chief.
Dwindling popularity of DRDO’s academic linkages that began with Kalam’s integrated guided missile programme, over the last few years is also a cause for concern for the DRDO, which looks up to universities and civilian research establishments for out of the box solutions for complicated problems.
As a part of the linkage, the DRDO has set up five centres of excellence in universities and IITs for focussed research on materials, aerospace, milli-metric devices and life sciences. It also has five research boards on aeronautics, armaments, naval systems, life sciences and extra mural research to propel strategic research in academic establishments.
However, there was barely any worthwhile project coming out of these boards in the last three years. “Funds are available but not enough proposals are coming from the boards,” Natarajan laments.
Reinforcing the academic linkage, energising research in DRDO laboratories and encouraging students to participate in defence research will be the biggest challenge for the DRDO, which intends to give a new lease of life to defence research.
