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Tribune News Service
Jammu, March 29
As part of ‘Industry, Academia in Support of Indian Army’— a programme conducted by the Army Design Bureau, an industry-academia team visited Ladakh from March 13 to 18.
An interaction with the Army exposed the team to the actual conditions in which a soldier performs his duty and gave them a first-hand experience to realign their work to meet the Army’s operating requirements.
The industry-academia team consisted of six representatives from firms specialising in the manufacturing of defence products and six members from IIT Mumbai, Delhi and Gandhinagar. They were accompanied by senior Army officers from the Army Design Bureau.
The four-day programme started with an interaction at the Fire and Fury Corps in which the team was briefed about various challenges being faced by the Army in the region followed by a briefing and demonstration on various innovations done in-house under the ‘Nav Kiran’ programme to mitigate the problems.
‘Nav Kiran’ is an innovation cell under the aegis of Fire and Fury Corps to encourage generation of new ideas and facilitate development of in-house solutions to various challenges being faced by soldiers in Ladakh and Saichen. The academia and industry were impressed by the innovations made under the ‘Nav Kiran’ programme. The team then visited forward areas in Siachen and eastern Ladakh bringing themselves closer to the prevailing operating conditions for a more realistic experience and pragmatic understanding of the environment.
The tour ended with an exhaustive interactive session at Fire and Fury Corps attended by Lieutenant General PJS Pannu, General Officer Commanding, Fire and Fury Corps, senior officers of the corps and technical graduates of the Army serving in Ladakh.
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