AMN / CHENNAI
India and Russia today signed 7 MoUs at Defence Expo at Thiruvidanthai, near Chennai. These MoUs were signed between the Indian Private Defence sector manufacturing companies and Russian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for manufacture, development of spares, sub-assemblies and assemblies of identified Russian origin platforms in use by the Indian Armed Forces. The MoUs were signed during third India-Russia Military-Industrial Conference held on the sidelines of DefExpo 2018.
The MOUs related to manufacture of special operation vessels for underwater platforms, heavyweight torpedo, anti-torpedo defence system combat vehicles, manufacturing spare parts and providing service and maintenance of items and upgrade of optic electric sighting for Sukhoi aircrafts, providing jamming stations for MIG type helicopters and providing technical and logistic support for T90 and T72 tanks.
The Indian delegation was led by Secretary (Defence Production) Dr Ajay Kumar while Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russian Federation Mr Oleg Ryazantcev led the Russian side. The Russian delegation comprised senior representatives of the Government and representatives of the leading Defence Industries. Around 75 Indian defence sector manufacturing companies and 28 OEMs from Russian industry participated in the conference.
Deliberations during the conference were aimed to focus on needs for improvement of after-sales support of Russian origin defence platforms being exploited by Indian defence forces and also to facilitate domestic manufacturing of some of the identified spare parts through collaborations between Indian vendors and Russian OEMs.
Two rounds of India-Russia Military-Industrial Conferences were held in past, first one in March 2017 in New Delhi and second one in August 2017 in Moscow.