Earlier in the month, I had the opportunity to attend a 4-day long ‘Defence Tech Summit 2020’ held in IIT Madras as part of their “Shaastra 2020” celebrations. For the uninitiated, “Shaastra” is IIT Madras’ annual technical festival, with the summit being one of their flagship events. Although I registered very early for the program, the itinerary and the finer details were still being worked out and I was wondering what can a 4-day long event hold for people like me who have a definitive interest in the field. Closer to the date though, I realised that this event was being organized by the enthusiastic 3^rd year graduation students under the able guidance of Lt. Gen. Palepu Ravi Shankar (Retd.), whom I had the fortune of meeting with during the summit.

Inaugural Keynote Lecture

As vast as defence technology seems to encompass, the summit did justice to all the facets of defence. To begin with, on day 1, we had the inaugural keynote lecture by Dr. V. K. Saraswat, member of Niti Aayog, and formerly Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Indian Minister of Defence.

As part of his lecture, he gave a whirlwind tour of all types of warfare through the ages. Warfare had evolved starting from human warfare (fought with primitive weapons like swords) to weapons warfare (fought with guns, tanks, aircrafts, submarines) to economic warfare (fought by control of market forces) to cyber warfare (fought by wargaming, modelling and simulation of systems). Dr Saraswat emphasized that warfare had undergone substantial change in recent times spread across multiple domains like asymmetric warfare, propaganda warfare, psychological operations (psy ops), information warfare and even space warfare. Hybrid warfare had made us rethink our understanding of victory, he asserted. He gave a few examples like China controlling 10% of all European port capacity (impacting governance by gaining economic influence and control) and Chinese spies infiltrating critical industries (national aggression by massive cyberattack and swarms of unmanned warfare). His emphasis on the various cyber threats to national security were well received by the audience.

Moving on, he elaborated on how future warfare looked like from an Indian perspective. In the physical domain, India was dealing with contact-less wars, missile warfare, space control weapons, etc. In the cognitive and social domain, asymmetric strategies, local and limited conflicts under the nuclear hangover demanded India’s attention. Finally, in the information domain, India was forced to deal with disruption technologies to create theatre / battle space blind spots.

He then showcased the exciting Indian missile journey varying from tactical missiles to strategic missiles with a special emphasis on Brahmos, the supersonic cruise missile jointly developed by India and Russia and how Brahmos was now the best-in-class missile across the entire world.

He didn’t hesitate to point out that missile technology had evolved further and Russia had now developed hypersonic missile Avangard and that soon various other nations would follow suit and India would be forced to react to this new development.

One of the first advocates of A-SAT testing, Dr. Saraswat had advised the central government to give a go-ahead for this way back in 2012. He explained how India had joined an elite club of countries who could bring down a rogue satellite which could have been used to hamper our communications networks.

He concluded by calling out that future wars would be less extensive but more lethal. Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAV) Swarms, Nano weapons were the general directions in which future warfare was headed, he opined.

Panel Discussion on “Defence Startup Ecosystem in India – The Way Forward”

Is the field of defence manufacturing a government monopoly? After all, India is the world’s largest defence equipment importer. So, does the government buy technology from outside at a costly price or should it own technology at a cheaper price? To this effect, does the government focus on indigenisation? Do the private players have any say in what they want to manufacture or how they want to manufacture? How can young talent interested in genuine invention, contribute to strengthening the defence ecosystem. How do the individuals even get to know of what challenges are the armed forces faced with? Are there specific startup funds and venture capital firms who are eager to bet their money on a winning solution to a complex problem? How do the armed forces and the government help in POC approvals, trials and actual deployment of the innovative product?

A star-studded panel discussed about these questions and much more. While Gen Raj Shukla, Director General, Perspective Planning, explained how varied Indian Army’s necessities can be for products and services and how more often than not, the armed forces publish out their necessities in the form of product requirements and problem statements. He pointed out that indigenisation had seen an uptick in the recent past and that the Ministry of Defence had launched a Defence India Startup Challenge as part of the IDEX 2018 initiative.

Mr. Sanjay Jaju, Joint Secretary, Defence Industries Production Wing, Ministry of Defence, briefed about how the various arms of Ministry of Defence (including DRDO) work in tandem with the armed forces to manufacture defence equipment and weapons. He explained about the various steps involved including POC, trials and production. He quoted several examples of how the government of India had organized a Defence Expo and also started multiple Defence Incubation Programs.

Group Captain Sameer Joshi (Retd.), CEO of NewSpace Research and Technologies, gave us a entrepreneurial perspective of how the defence ecosystem works in India. He gave his own example of founding NewSpace and working towards achieving cutting edge solutions for aerospace in drones, AI modules and AR and VR simulations.

Mr. JD Patil, Senior Executive Vice-President of L&T Defence, explained his company’s role in collaborating with Ministry of Defence in manufacturing various equipment and how the organization was investing heavily on innovation.

To cap it all, the moderator of the panel, Lt. Gen. Palepu Ravi Shankar (Retd) emphasized that Defence Ecosystem is not and should not be a one man show with just the government working towards manufacturing as this would only stifle innovation. He opined that to have innovation at a sustained level, there has to be mushrooming of multiple startups trying to find answers to various challenges and problem statements shared by the armed forces. To this effect, a viable ecosystem strong enough to accommodate and nourish these various startups has to be made available.

"It is in this regard that Lt Gen Shankar announced the launch of a new tech platform https://defstart.com which would allow budding entrepreneurs, mentors, armed forces, venture capitalists to come onto a common stage. DefStart is India’s first Defence Startup Community. It aims to enable defence based startups to transform their idea into a real world indigenous defence product".

BrahMos – the path treaded and the future path

What are the visuals you see in front of your eyes when you hear about the Iraq Wars? The Tomahawk cruise missiles? The immense manoeuvrability and speed offered by these cruise missiles helped the US defeat Iraq with utmost ease almost within the blink of an eye. Back then, India could only dream of such technology. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who often said “Only strength respects strength” was keen on partnering with the Russians to work on Liquid Propulsion Ramjet engine and in turn develop state-of-the-art cruise missile (which later came to be called the Brahmos). This fascinating story was shared by Dr. Sudhir Mishra, Director General (Brahmos), DRDO who has been pivotal in developing the supersonic cruise missile. While explaining the technical details of the Brahmos missile, Dr. Mishra also detailed the unique joint-venture partnership between India’s DRDO (50.5% stake) and Russia’s NPOM (49.5%) to establish Brahmos Aerospace. Brahmos was a multi-platform, multi-trajectory missile which also was capable of eliminating targets on land and sea. Needless to say, Brahmos has definitely added to India’s arsenal and helped in maintaining a minimum deterrence.

What does UAVs have in store for us?

The session on Brahmos was followed by a lecture on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) presented by Sqn Ldr V S Srinivasan (Retd) from Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), a strategic Aerospace and Defence arm of the Tata group. He clarified that UAVs (being just the flying component) are just one part of the largest system of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) which encode potential and capabilities of both flying and ground control systems. The audience was surprised to know that the first flight of a UAV was in 1896 (even before the first flight by the Wright brothers). Also, the fact that UAVs have been in use in real wars right from WW2 was another surprising fact for the audience. While it is obvious that UAVs have wide-ranging use in non-military civil (law & order, disaster management) and commercial applications (agriculture, land management), the greatest benefit of UAVs is in the military domain. Some of the military applications include border surveillance, intelligence gathering, decoys and reconnaissance missions. In the end, Sqn Ldr spoke about the various UAVs (high altitude and tough terrain and long endurance) designed and developed by TASL.

Fireside chat on counter-terrorism with Lt Gen Satish Dua

One major challenge Indian forces face is the constant threat of terrorism not just at the border but also deep inside our territory. How does the state in general and the armed forces in particular handle this threat and develop a counter-terrorism strategy. In addition, state also has to deal with insurgency in various parts of the country and hence a counter-insurgency strategy too needs to be as robust as counter-terrorism strategy. Who better to talk about this than Lt. Gen. Satish Dua, the former Chief of Integrated Defence Staff who has been the brain behind multiple counterterrorism operations? A fireside chat organized with him was the right opportunity for the summit delegates to understand how a counter-terrorism / counter-insurgency operation works. Added to this, Lt Gen Dua also spoke about the famous Surgical Strikes that India conducted against Pakistani terror camps in POK in 2016. He is regarded as the brain behind these precision surgical strikes. The summit delegates were excited to be hearing from an authentic source and Lt Gen Dua obliged by answering all curious questions posed at him.

Systems Analysis

How does a defence equipment or a weapon get designed, developed and built? In order to meet all the requirements given out by the armed forces, how does the DRDO brainstorm and arrive at various specifications (technical or otherwise). Usually, these equipment or weapons are large and complex with a lot of components within. In other words, these are generally regarded as ‘system of systems’ trying to comply to all requirements and compliances. It is in this regard that ‘System Analysis’ plays an important role and Dr Chitra Rajagopal, Director General (Resource & Management), DRDO explained the various systems and the interactions between them to have a fully functional system of systems. Dr. Chitra Rajagopal also spoke extensively about wargaming that is carried out by DRDO on behalf of the armed forces. Various types of wargames like roleplaying or professional wargames actually help the armed forces to achieve military preparedness, weapons testing and strategy building.

Visit to L&T Shipyard at Kattuppalli

On the final day of the summit, the delegates visited L&T Defence’s shipyard at Kattuppalli, north of Chennai. Within the shipyard, the delegates were taken on a guided tour within the facility and witnessed various ships at different stages of construction. Appropriate technical details and specifications were explained at every stage. Delegates had a better understanding of the various maritime and ship terminologies by witnessing ships first hand.

In Summary …

Defence Tech Summit was a great platform for interested students and corporate professionals to come under one roof to hear about the challenges faced by our armed forces, the indigenisation efforts undertaken by the government, the long road ahead in terms of setting up a sustainable defence startup ecosystem and the huge opportunities available for young budding entrepreneurs to make their mark. While Lt Gen Palepu Ravi Shankar (Retd.) needs to be thanked for providing this wonderful opportunity to bring all stakeholders under one roof, the students also need to be applauded for organizing the summit in a very impressive manner.