The Indian Army signed the second procurement contract through Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) on Friday.
The contract was signed with Astrome Tech Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, for the procurement of indigenously developed ‘Tactical LAN Radio’.
The Ministry of Defence said that the Indian Army has taken a lead by signing two contracts under iDEX till date.
Tactical LAN Radio is a state-of-the-art high bandwidth backhaul wireless radio equipment for provisioning 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 the enhanced safety features and can operate continuously for 48 hours on a single set basis without any breakdown.
A Defence Ministry official said that Tactical LAN solution is being developed indigenously for creating secure tactical LAN in remote and difficult terrain.
The ministry said that iDEX was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 12, 2018 during the Defence Expo.
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, industries including MSMEs, startups, individual innovators and provide them grants or funding and other support to carry out R&D which has good potential for future adoption by Indian Defence and Aerospace Organisation.
Officials said that over the past four years, iDEX under ‘Defence Innovation Organisation’ has emerged as a front-runner in establishing right kind of contact with the startups and innovators and has gained substantial traction in the defence startup community.
At present, a total of 42 projects of the Indian Army are part of Defence India Startup Challenge (DISC), Open Challenges and iDEX PRIME scheme which involve handholding of 41 startups for the development of state-of-the-art solutions for the challenges faced by the Indian Army.
The ministry said that 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.
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