NEW DELHI: Adding to Indian Army’s CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) capabilities the force has signed a contract for the procurement of 223 Automatic Chemical Agent Detection and Alarm (ACADA) systems.
The contract was signed on 25 February 2025 with Larsen and Toubro (L&T Ltd) at a cost of Rs 80.43 crore, under the Buy Indian (IDDM) category.
The Army on Tuesday said “Induction of ACADA in the field units will substantially enhance Indian Army’s defensive CBRN capability for operations, as also for peacetime, especially for responding to disaster relief situations related to industrial accidents.”
The ACADA system is used to detect chemical warfare agents (CWA) and programmed toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) by sampling the air from the environment.
This will give a significant boost to the Government’s Atma Nirbharta drive since more than 80% of the components and subsystems of the equipment will be sourced locally.
Under the Buy (Indian-IDDM) the procurement of products is done from an Indian vendor that has been indigenously designed, developed and manufactured (IDDM).
ACADA has been designed and developed by DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Establishment, Gwalior and marks a significant milestone in the nation’s indigenisation initiative in the niche CBRN domain.
It works on the principle of Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) and contains two highly sensitive IMS cells for continuous detection and simultaneous monitoring of harmful/ toxic substances.