Admiral Mehta strong supporter of indigenous systems: Pillai

Bangalore, Sep 2 (UNI) Defence Research Development Organisation Chief Controller A S Sivathanu Pillai expressed happiness over appointment of Vice Admiral Sureesh Mehta as the new Chief of Indian Navy saying that he was a strong supporter of indigenously developed systems in the Navy.

"I met Admiral Mehta recently when we handed over BrahMos missiles to be inducted in the Eastern Naval Command. He is energetic and looking forward to induct new indigenously developed systems in the naval force," he said.

Interacting with the media after delivering a lecture on 'emerging technologies', at R V College of Engineering here, Dr Pillai said DRDO had developed various systems and weapons for the Indian Navy. Recently it had provided sonar systems, used for anti-submarine warfare, had been inducted in war ships and submarines of the Indian navy. It was in the process of developing ultra low frequency sonars that can be used in the naval helicopters.

He said the light weight torpedo developed by the DRDO that could be used on different platforms had been accepted for production.

The navy has asked the DRDO to work on anti submarine corvettes.

Four corvettes would be built and it will be fully indigenous. "We have finalised the programme jointly working with Navy. The process has started following the green signal given by the government to the scheme. In next four to five years we will complete production of all the items required for corvettes," he said.

DRDO had also developed technology to take up underwater painting of the ships. This would help save lot of time and money for the Naval force as it would eliminate taking the ships to dry docks for such works. This was developed at NMRL in Ambarnath, he said.

DRDO was also developing other modern systems for the Indian Navy like electronic warfare systems, underwater communications and radars, he added.

UNI RS VK GM1812