CII-Indian Army seminar on the Future Infantry Soldier as a System (F-INSAS)

New Delhi: India’s private sector has matured as a dynamic and a self reliant sector, capable of undertaking design and development works indigenously, as well as in collaboration with foreign companies, according to General Deepak Kapoor, chief of staff, Indian Army.

Gen Deepak Kapoor was speaking at the “Army – Industry Partnership Meet 2007” an international seminar on the Future Infantry Soldier as a System (F-INSAS).

The seminar was organised by the Directorate of Infantry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) jointly.

Gen Kapoor said that the Indian industry had already demonstrated its capabilities in core sectors, such as information technology, and now the Army expected the industry to achieve excellence in the field of defence technologies as well.

Future warfare would involve numerous dimensions, with the environment oriented towards information technologies, as operational and tactical situations would call for speedy decision-making, Gen Kapoor said. Integration with other services would be vital, he pointed out.

Enhanced intelligence, training skills, flexibility and adaptability for the infantry have become increasingly important as army equipment and weapon systems have become sophisticated and complex, said General Kapoor.

F-INSAS is the need of the future digitised battlefield as it was necessary to achieve full integration of the individual soldier into higher levels of combat architechture, he said. The system would harness advanced technologies in order to enable the infantry soldier to read the battle environment instantly and respond either individually or as a tactical team with speed, precision, lethality and agility, exploiting all the supporting combat components, added General Kapoor.

The infantry soldier should have multi terrain, multi environment capability to fight as an autonomous combat platform networked into the overall war fighting system architecture, said Lt. General Rajender Singh, director general, infantry, integrated headquarters, ministry of defence (Army).

Fourth generation warfare imperatives would make the battlefield infantry-predominant as it would involve close combat and fighting in built up areas. F-INSAS would play a major role in the future battlefield in deceiving, demoralising, disintegrating and destroying the enemy, he said.

The modern war-fighting machine must possess an intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and target acquisition system along with precise, accurate and lethal firepower assets, said Lt. General Singh. An automated command, control and communications system to ‘network’ it to the rest of the war fighting machinery is also the requirement of the modern battlefield, he added.

With world’s leading defence companies willing to participate and the availability of cutting edge technology in India, through joint ventures or transfer arrangements, the Indian Army is confident of achieving a smooth integration of the best-suited components for the army’s Integrated Soldier System, in partnership with the industry, in the shortest possible time, assured Lt. General Singh.

Presenting the industry perspective, Atul Dev Tayal, managing director, Rolta Thales Ltd, said that Indian infantry is continuously engaged in counter insurgency operations in the current scenario and it was important to focus on the multi-mission and multi-role capacity of a soldier. Lethality, sustainability and mobility are important elements of success for modern infantry, he said. The industry had tremendous opportunities in the field of microelectronic, imaging and computerisation, added Tayal

Dr. Surinder Kapur, chairman, CII Mission of Innovation in Manufacturing, and chairman and managing director, Sono Koyo Steering Systems Ltd, said that encouragement by the Indian Army had made the industry ready to invest in research, development and production work that would meet expectations of public companies as well as global requirements.

CII had taken the initiative to encourage industry participation in the process of defence acquisition and had conducted eight certificate courses on defence acquisition for industry representatives, informed Dr. Kapur.

S Niyogi, deputy director general, CII, announced that DEFEXPO 2008 would be organised by CII from 16 – 19 February 2008.