The attrition rate in Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) would not affect its projects, said Dr V K Saraswat, director general of DRDO and scientific advisor to the Defence Minister, at a function here on Friday. He stated that the scientists who left DRDO were not worthy and their leaving would in no way impact the DRDO’s performance.
Over the past six years, around 630 scientists had quit the DRDO. To a question on this, he replied, “We can see those attrition rates in other industries too. It does not have any impact on DRDO’s performance.”
Dr Saraswat, who arrived in Chennai to inaugurate DRDO’s Research and Innovation Centre (RIC) at IIT-M Research Park, said, “It is a unique experiment we have engaged in along with IIT-Madras for the benefit of national security. Here, we synergise research works of students, scientists and industries. We carry over high-end applied research according to the various defence needs.”
He added, “In future, there will be a high number of contactless wars—wars where there would be no soldiers on the war field. Only machines and robots will engage in war. We will create ‘intense electronic warfare systems’ with the help of censors, software and image processing technologies.”
The research centre has spread over to 36,000 sq ft and 12 projects were identified till date. The research carried out here would be based on a tripartite arrangement between the DRDO, IIT-M and the industries. The Intellectual Property Rights for the products would be shared.
On the anti-ballistic missile programme of the country, Saraswat said, “In the first phase, we developed anti-ballistic missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km. We are nearing completion of the research. The second phase is yet to take off.”