For all its defences against non-performance, the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), ironically, has only to look within for ready templates of distinction. Programmes that have met targets are an isolated few but they worked well because their ethic symbolizes a fundamental breakaway from the tedium of the larger organisation’s default approach. Self-reliance, a term battered by DRDO’s track-record on showpiece programmes, shines beneath the hood in the Navy’s sonars, avionics and electronic warfare systems on IAF fighter aircraft and missiles developed under corporate foreign joint ventures.

The first two were developed on time because of the labs linking up with the armed forces right from the initial stages and, significantly, leadership that keeps young scientists on their toes. The latter, because international partnerships mandate a more professional approach to programme completion.

One of the most successful DRDO laboratories is also one of the least known, tucked away silently in the Trikkakara suburb of Kochi, fomenting applied research and technology to give the Navy real self-reliance in critical sensor systems.

The Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), the only DRDO lab to win both the Silicon Trophy and Titanium Trophy for excellence, has, in the last two decades, given the Navy an impressive 87 per cent self-reliance in acoustic sensors for warships and submarines. All Navy warships, including foreign ones, as a result, are fitted with DRDO sonars like the APSOH, HUMVAD and HUMSA, and the Navy does not need to import. Now, it is putting its finishing touches to the USHUS sonar for the Navy’s Kilo-class submarines and the Mihir dunking sonar for HAL’s Advanced Light Helicopter, all well within their projected timeframes.

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