Indian Army-CII's DEFCOM 2007 seminar kicks off today

New Delhi: The Indian Army's Corps of Signals, in conjunction with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), is conducting its annual defence communication seminar at New Delhi from today. The event, christened as DEFCOM 2007, aims to improve the synergy between the armed forces and the country's telecom and IT industry.

The forum has been created to enable the armed forces to highlight their particular communication and IT related requirements so that the industry can align its policies and products in a manner that will allow it to provide the best possible solutions for the armed forces.

The theme for this year's seminar is "Strategies for future defence networks and relevance of electromagnetic interference/ electromagnetic compatibility (EMI/EMC) in future battlefields."

The seminar is to be conducted over a period of three days, from 10-12 May 07. While the inaugural session will have the defence minister, AK Antony, as the chief guest and General JJ Singh, chief of army staff, as the guest of honour, the union state minister for defence, M Pallam Raju, will chair the closing session on 12 May.

The communication infrastructure of the Indian Army is undergoing a paradigm shift from platform centric to network centric warfare. The older voice predominant network is now being replaced by state-of-the-art packet switched infrastructure, which can handle voice, video and data simultaneously. Also called "Triple Play" in telecom parlance, the switched infrastructure consists of optical fibers, digital microwave radios, satellites and tactical wireless equipment.

According to most scenarios, future battlefields are likely to be cluttered with a plethora of electromagnetic emitters, including communication equipment, radars, jammers etc. Management of the electromagnetic space, in order to avoid interference amongst these systems, would thus pose a major challenge.

As future wars are likely to be very short and intense, with flexibility and mobility of forces holding the key to the outcome, the winner is likely to be the force that can concentrate resources at the decisive point quicker than the opponent. There would be tremendous emphasis on wireless communication networks and issues related to electromagnetic interference and compatibility would play a paramount role in battle.

Battlefield management, accordingly, will require communication infrastructure to be survivable, robust and secure. Recent combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon has only underlined this point.

The Indian army's vision document expects the force to network enabled by the year 2009 and network centric by the year 2012. The DEFCOM 2007 seminar aims at gathering views from experts in the armed forces and the industry, as well as the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), ministry of defence and the academia in order to develop view points for the best way forward.

It is also expected that DEFCOM INDIA 2007 will provide an ideal platform for the Indian industry to interact with a cross section of defence services officers.