Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences and Vice-President, CSIR Dr Harsh Vardhan, has said that Aerospace and Defence have been identified to be at the heart of ‘Make in India’. Addressing scientists of National Aerospace Laboratories of CSIR on his visit to Bengaluru today, he urged them to work hard to make the Prime Minister’s ‘Make-in-India’ programme a success. He said with its more than five decade experience of providing indigenous technologies to these strategic sectors, CSIR-NAL is uniquely poised to underpin Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to raise the percentage of domestic procurement from 40% to 70% in next five years.
Dr Harsh Vardhan pointed out that Aerospace and Defence is globally, a very highly competitive area, defined by technology denial regimes and highly proprietary systems. Further, he remarked that aerospace is an area marked by large investment and long gestation periods but nevertheless it is imperative to develop streams of innovation that provide significant long-term payoffs in terms of import substitution as well as cutting-edge technologies.
He observed that it was this far-sightedness in supporting aerospace R&D with the establishment of CSIR-NAL in 1959 that resulted in its key technology successes for the strategic sector like carbon fibre composite airframe components and Fly-by-wire Flight Control systems for the Tejas light combat aircraft programme which were all denied under the technology control regime. The Minister, who was accompanied by Dr M.O. Garg, Director-General, CSIR, and Shri Shyam Chetty Director, NAL, visited various laboratories in CSIR-NAL which included the Advanced Composites Division, Acoustic Test Facility (ATF), National Trisonic Aerodynamic Facility (NTAF), Micro Air Vehicle Aerodynamics Tunnel and the SARAS Flight Simulator.