India clocked the highest ever defence exports of Rs 13,000 crore in 2021-22 with the country’s public sector firms increasing their contribution in it and the US being a major destination.
The other major regions were South East Asia, Middle East and Africa, said Sanjay Jaju, Additional Secretary in the Defence Ministry. While India’s defence imports from the US have gone up significantly in recent years, Indian companies have been increasingly becoming part of the supply chains of US defence companies.“The private sector accounted for 70% of the exports while public sector firms accounted for the rest,” Jaju said and pointed out that earlier the private sector used to account for 90% but now the share of DPSUs has gone up.
Jaju explained the methodology of accounting the defence exports, saying only the components which need defence authorisation are accounted and listed under the SCOMET 6 category. This means, several aviation components and dual use items which do not come under the list are not counted, he said.
In January this year, India signed a $374.96 mn deal with Philippines, its single biggest defence export order, for the supply of three batteries of shore-based anti-ship variant of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will inaugurate a symposium and exhibition on July 11 on ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Defence’ organised by the Department of Defence Production. Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar said 75 newly-developed AI products and technologies, having applications in defence, will be launched. “The nature of modern warfare is changing. AI will play a significant role in all forms of modern warfare,” he said.
The Defence Ministry had in 2018 created a task force to work out an action plan to prepare armed forces for AI and the challenges, he said adding a “lot of work was done” based on the feedback of the task force. “These are products tried and tested, and have been deployed or in the process of being deployed,” Dr. Kumar said.
A high-powered council chaired by Defence Minister, Defence AI council, is spearheading the initiative. Over 100 products are also in the process of being developed, Dr. Kumar said.
The products to be launched are in the domains of automation, unmanned, robotics systems; cyber security; human behaviour analysis; intelligent monitoring system; logistics and supply chain management, speech/voice analysis and Command, Control, Communication, Computer & Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems and operational data analytics.