Chief of Army Staff Gen Dalbir Singh here on Wednesday inaugurated the Army Design Bureau (ADB) which will facilitate the weapons and technology building efforts between the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), industry and the army.The Bureau has been formed in a bid to meet the Army's long-standing need to create and modernise weapons indigenously. It will work as a repository of all technical know-how of defence equipment manufacturing. Gen Dalbir Singh stressed on the need to "reduce the inventory of import and indigenise more". He said industry was always keen on innovating new products for the Army, but there was always a mismatch between what they produced and what the Army needed. "I talked to my Vice Chief of Army Staff and told him that we needed to interact with the industry and the academia, IITs ... and tell them what we need ... keeping this in mind, we thought that a central agency must be constituted," he said.
Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen M.M.S. Rai also spoke at the event and called "self-reliance in military hardware" as vital."ADB will enable the Indian army to harness the prowess of Indian industry and academia by providing a platform for discussion and exchange of ideas between all stakeholders. It will bridge the gap in understanding the requirements and will strengthen the collaborative efforts of Indian Army, industry and academia to achieve greater self-reliance in defence," he said. Ashok Kumar Gupta, Secretary-Defence Production, said ADB "would facilitate and promote indigenous research, design and development of defence equipment towards meeting the requirement for weapons and equipment domestically, rather than depending upon foreign imports". A live demo of the ADB's website, inaugurated by Gen Dalbir Singh earlier, was also shown at the event.