By Anantha Krishnan M
Express News Service
Bangalore: In its bid to give a renewed thrust to all weapon systems development in the country, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has silently launched a new center operating out of its head quarters in New Delhi. The System Analysis and Modeling Centre (SAM-C) is the outcome of one of the strongest recommendations of the Rama Rao Committee, which played a key role in DRDO's structural revamp. The SAM-C has the principle role of identifying all weapon systems that are projected for Indian defence. The unit is currently headed by senior missile scientist Dr N Prabhakar, in his capacity as the Chief Controller (Research and Development).
An official confirmed to Express that the idea of creating SAM-C was to maintain consistency across various weapon spectrum. "The Indian forces are fast-moving towards network-centric warfare capabilities. Hence it is important to have the proper command, control structures and integrate the systems into a coherent entity," said a top scientist, who didn't want to be identified. DRDO has so far kept most of the operations of SAM-C under wraps, with its team members already undertaking weapon assessment missions.
Set up in September 2013, one of the main task of SAM-C is to optimise the DRDO resources spread across seven clusters (52 labs). Missiles, aircraft, sensors and command, control and communication systems will all be assessed by the SAM-C team over a period of time. "Currently the team has around 20 scientists drawn from all DRDO clusters, including aeronautics, missiles, combat vehicles and naval systems. We have identified some major problems and are currently addressing the same," the official said.
When asked whether the setting up of SAM-C would prevent DRDO from running into 'time and cost over-run whirlpool,' the official said that the unit has kept performance, schedule and cost as the three measures of merit. "We did overshoot the timelines, not once on many occasions. Till some time back, it was a learning curve for all of us. Today, the scene has changed and most of our indegenious efforts are leading us from the front. Our delivery schedules will improve and we are already giving a major thrust to our R&D efforts," the official said.
SAM-C is setting up a test bed to analyse systems of systems, in addition to run the mandate of prediction and negation of futuristic threats. "The results will be visible in the next three to four years. You are witnessing the new phase of DRDO with a highly decentralised working pattern already in place to ensure faster delivery mechanism. SAM-C is on the fore front of these changes," the official added.
Copyright@The New Indian Express
