Take up more responsibilities: Parrikar to DIAT

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar has urged the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT) to shoulder the responsibility to generate new knowledge, fulfill defence needs and also take this technology to civilian and commercial use after fulfilling the defence needs. Parrikar, who was speaking at the 8th convocation of DIAT in Pune on Tuesday, also asked the institute to involve the alumni more for better brand building and growth.

Parrikar said that DIAT is fully complementing DRDO laboratories by carrying out fundamental and exploratory research leading to development of new science and technology at Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 1, 2 and 3 and work with DRDO labs which take it to higher levels of 4, 5 and 6. “This ecosystem was developed with a lot of thought and is serving long term benefits to the defence of the country,” Parrikar said.

DIAT awarded 110 M.Tech, 23 PhD and 8 MS by Research degrees during the convocation. Thirteen M.Tech students received medals for topping M.Tech programmes. S Christopher, secretary, department of defence, said that production value of systems based on DRDO technologies that have been inducted into the services has crossed Rs two lakh crore and is rising progressively. This year, it would go up to Rs 2.5 lakh crore, he said.