The ministry of defence (MoD) has selected a consortium of Bharat Electronics (BEL) and Rolta India as a development agency for the battlefield management system (BMS) project worth over Rs 50,000 crore.
The BMS project, categorised as a ‘MAKE’ programme under defence procurement policy (DPP), will be one of the largest solutions to be indigenously manufactured for the Indian defence, Rolta said.
The project is meant to deliver command and control capabilities to the fighting echelons, operating at the forward edge of the tactical battle area at the battalion and combat group levels. BMS is a situational awareness and visualisation system that aims to optimise the operational effectiveness of tactical units, Rolta said.
Software development
As part of the consortium, Rolta will execute its role and responsibility in areas of BMS application software development and applicable licensing, GIS software and GIS data services, Rolta will also jointly work with BEL for manufacturing subsystems for the soldier system, the overall system design, integration, installation, commissioning and maintenance of the BMS solution.
“The consortium of BEL and Rolta is fully geared up to take on the challenge of development of BMS for our defence forces. We also aim to maximise the indigenous content through in-house development of various sub-systems,” PC Jain, Director (Marketing), BEL said.
“The selection of Rolta is a strong vindication of our strategy to upfront invest in and build world class IP indigenously.
“This IP has been indigenously developed by leveraging our deep domain knowledge of C2ISR (Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance) and is already in wide use across various formations of the Indian Army, KK Singh, Rolta chairman and managing director said.
Meanwhile, Tata Power has announced that its strategic engineering division (SED), in consortium with Larsen & Toubro, has been selected as one of the down-selected development agencies for MoD’s ‘MAKE’ programme BMS.
The expression of interest (EoI) for BMS was issued by MoD to fourteen companies. The EoI response was submitted on April 30, 2014.
The down-selection of Tata Power SED-L&T consortium enables it to participate in the prototype development phase of this MAKE programme followed by a production order, which will be decided by the MoD after successful completion of the prototype, Tata Power said.
