Mighty India Power

India intends to develop defenses capable of intercepting longer-range enemy missiles, the Hindu newspaper reported yesterday New Delhi ultimately hopes to be able to counter weapons with ranges as high as 3,700 miles, said V.K. Saraswat of India's Defense Research and Development Organization. The South Asian state is today capable of shooting down missiles with a range of roughly 1,200 miles, he said. Bolstering missile defenses has taken on special importance for New Delhi as its regional rivals have added to their arsenals of nuclear warheads and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, according to the newspaper. Saraswat stressed that India maintains a no-first-use policy ( The Hindu , June 3)

In an effort to strenghten indegenisation of artillery equipment, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has launched a programme named Component Design and Execution (CODE). The programme targets 70% indegenisation, up from the present 30%, in the next eight years. DRDO director A Sivathanu Pillai said the stress would be on localisation of component production, for which around 30 different industries have been identified. Talking to reporters after handing over 16 MBT Arjun tanks to the 43rd regiment of Indian Army at the DRDO facility at Avadi, Sivathanupillai said the Ministry of Defence has given special importance to self-reliance in artillery equipment manufacturing. The MoD has been keen on self reliance as it suffered a lot during the four-decade long development of MBT Arjun, when they found difficult to get technology and components from foreign countries. MoD also believes that indegenisation would also considerably bring down the cost of design and