Amanjeet Singh Salyal

Amanjeet.singh@htlive.com

Chandigarh : The drone technology posed serious threat in the recent past and work is going on to develop a good drone system that can take care of the air defence system, said Air Marshal RKS Shera, air force commanding-in chief, maintenance command, Indian Air Force (IAF), said.

He was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the one-day national-level Nodal Technology Centre (NTC) symposium in association with PHD chamber of commerce at the Harjinder Hall in 3 BRD Air Force, Chandigarh, on Friday.

He sought cooperation from industry, academia and defence public sector undertakings to find a good solution.

He said we have seen how drones were used in conflict zones (like Syria) and they pose a threat.

He said it is a huge challenge to maintain vintage assets and modern, state-of-art aircraft which are getting inducted to its fleet.

“There is a large canvas of vintage and state-of-art aircraft and imagine the kind of challenge the maintainer has to ensure that legacy machines fly safely. We have to find out what is bothering us in those machines as ten years technology changes and the component starts becoming obsolete. So we have to put a system in place where we can see forward what will happen after five years as far as components are concerned,” he said.

Senior officials and domain experts from Ministry of Defence, air headquarters, headquarters of maintenance command, army headquarters, naval headquarters, Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification, Defence Research and Development Organisation, academia and industry, including Confederation of Indian Industry, Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India andFederation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry alsoparticipated.

The event witnessed presentations, display and demonstrations of niche technologies under development by the academia and industry, who together discussed ways to exploit the indigenisation opportunities in the Indian Air Forc