DRDO products can go to friendly countries: India

New Delhi, Dec 9: The DRDO is not involved in the export of military equipment but some of its developed products and systems can be sold to "friendly countries", the government said on Tuesday.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation has been mandated towards making the country independent of foreign technology in the areas of defence, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said.

It was primarily engaged in the design and development of strategic complex and security sensitive systems for the armed forces, the minister told the Rajya Sabha in a written statement.

A number of defence systems designed and developed by DRDO have been inducted into the Indian armed forces.

"However, some of the DRDO's developed products and systems like radars, electronic warfare systems, missiles, naval systems can be exported to our friendly countries," Parrikar said.

He said some countries had shown their initial interests to acquire DRDO developed systems.

The DRDO, being a designer of these systems, needed to play a lead role to adopt these systems to customer needs (export version) after taking into account the national security concerns, the minister said.

"Technologies of DRDO developed systems are transferred to industries for production and delivery to users as per their requirements," he said.

"Production agencies can accept orders from other users after meeting the requirements of the armed forces."

IANS