New Delhi: The Indian Army on Friday signed the second procurement contract of 'Tactical LAN Radio' through Innovations Defence Excellence (iDEX) continuing with the commitment towards the 'Make in India' initiative.

"The contract with Astrome Tech Pvt Ltd, Bangalore for procurement of indigenously developed 'Tactical LAN Radio' was signed in the presence of Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar, the Vice Chief of Army Staff at New Delhi. With this initiative, the Indian Army has taken the lead by signing two contracts under iDEX to date," the Ministry of Defence said.

A tactical LAN solution is being developed indigenously for creating secure tactical LAN in remote and difficult terrain.

The Ministry further added, "'Tactical LAN Radio' is a state-of-the-art high bandwidth backhaul wireless radio equipment for provisioning of reliable and failsafe communication. The solution offers an enhanced range of communication and embedded frequency hopping mechanism to preclude chances of interception and long-range point-to-multipoint high-bandwidth communication. The system also incorporates enhanced safety features and can operate continuously for 48 hours on a single set basis without any breakdown."

iDEX was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 12, 2018, during Defence Expo India 2018.

The aim of iDEX is to create an eco-system to foster innovations and encourage technological development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging R-D institutes, academia, and industries including MSMEs, start-ups, and individual innovators and provide them grants/ funding and other support to carry out R-D which has good potential for future adoption by Indian Defence and Aerospace Organisation, the Ministry said.

"Over the past four years, iDEX under 'Defence Innovation Organisation' has emerged as a front-runner in establishing the right kind of contact with start-ups and innovators and has gained substantial traction in the defence start-up community," they added. (ANI)

It further said, at present a total of 42 projects of the Indian Army are part of the Defence India Start-up Challenge (DISC), open challenges and iDEX PRIME scheme which involves handholding of 41 start-ups for the development of latest state of the art solutions for challenges posed by the Indian Army.

For each challenge a dedicated nodal officer and a category 'A' establishment as 'Centre of Excellence' from the Indian Army has been nominated for handholding and continuous support for the progress of the projects. Balance 'Acceptance of Necessity' accorded iDEX projects of the Indian Army are also under finalisation and are likely to fructify into contracts shortly, the Ministry added.