The Indian Army signed the second procurement contract through Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) for the procurement of indigenously developed ‘Tactical LAN Radio’ on Friday. The contract with Bangalore-based Astrome Tech Private Limited was signed in New Delhi in the presence of Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar, the Vice Chief of Army Staff.

A tactical LAN solution is being developed indigenously under the ‘Make in India’ initiative for creating secure tactical LANs in remote and difficult terrain.

‘Tactical LAN Radio’ is a state-of-the-art high bandwidth backhaul wireless radio equipment for the provisioning of reliable and failsafe communication. The solution offers an enhanced range of communication and embedded frequency hopping mechanism to preclude chances of interception and long-range point-to-multipoint high-bandwidth communication.

The system also incorporates enhanced safety features and can operate continuously for 48 hours on a single set basis without any breakdown.

With this initiative, the Indian Army has taken the lead by signing two contracts under iDEX to date.

Launched by PM Narendra Modi in April 2018, iDEX aims at creating an eco-system to foster innovations and encourage technological development in defence and aerospace by engaging R&D institutes, academia, industries including MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators and providing them grants/ funding and other support to carry out R&D which has good potential for future adoption by Indian Defence and Aerospace Organisation.

Over the past four years, iDEX under ‘Defence Innovation Organisation’ has emerged as a front-runner in establishing the right kind of contact with start-ups and innovators and has gained substantial traction in the defence start-up community.

At present, a total of 42 projects of the Indian Army are part of the Defence India Start-up Challenge (DISC), Open Challenges and iDEX PRIME scheme which involves handholding of 41 start-ups for the development of latest state of the art solutions for challenges posed by the Indian Army. For each challenge a dedicated nodal officer and a category ‘A’ establishment as ‘Centre of Excellence’ from the Indian Army has been nominated for handholding and continuous support for the progress of the projects. Balance ‘Acceptance of Necessity’ accorded iDEX projects of the Indian Army are also under finalisation and are likely to fructify into contracts shortly.