DRDO and PSU news and discussion

http://frontierindia.net/drdo-to-beg...ourses-at-diat
DRDO to begin nanotechnology course at DIAT

India’s premier Defence Research institution, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is about to start a new nanotechnology course at one of its units, the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT).

DRDO has a well formated Nano Science and Technology initiative programme. It has financed many projects in the fieldand initiated many centres of excellence for nano research in various universities across India, as well as started off many research studies and tasks projects.

Though DRDO is yet to have a full fledged project on nanoscience or technology for its applications in defence , it has many system projects that has nanotechnology based devices and materials being carried out in many of its laboratories.

Last year, DRDO announced a Rs 500 Crore nano foundry in collaboration with the University of Madras National Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NCNN).

http://frontierindia.net/drdos-chitr...being-upgraded
DRDO’s CHITRA centralised super computing facility is being upgraded


Due to heavy demands on computing facility for DRDO internal users, CHITRA (centre for High performance computing and Research) centralised computing facility is being upgraded. The process of upgradation is likely to be completed by march 2011. The new system will consist of around 3000 numbers of x86 cores and likely to give a sustained performance of around 30 Teraflops.

Project CHITRA houses Advanced Numerical Research and Analysis Group (ANURAG) developed 384 node cluster computing system called DHRUVA (DRDO’s High performance computer for Very Large Applications). This system gives a sustained performance of 4 to 5 Teraflops (Trillion Floating points operations per Second). DHRUVA was one of the fastest supercomputer in India at the time of its configuration and installation. The system completely meets the curent demands of missile and LCA development teams. It was developed as part of project CHITRA to set up a centralised high performance computing facility at ANURAG. CHITRA Centre is connected to all the DRDO laboratories through DRDO’s wide area network, called DRONA. As a result, this massive centralized computing resource can be used by DRDO laboratories across the country over DRONA network. Some of the salient features of DHRUVA cluster are as follows :

Number of nodes (servers): 384
Each server consist of: Dual Xeon CPUs @ 3.8 Ghz
Interconnetion Network: 20 Gbps (Full duplex) infiniband Switch and Gigabit Ethernet switch
Operating System: 64-bit Red Hat Linux

ANURAG’s supercomputer development programme was started in 1988 because of non-avilability of supercomputing technology to Defence for strategic applications. It was in the wake of this denial that the mission of developing a supercomputer inhouse was take up by DRDO in 1988 and ANURAG was established. The larger goal was to attain self-reliance in the field of supercomputerdeveloment.

ANURAG started its mission with the develoment of Processor for Aerodynamic computations and Evaluation (PACE) series of parallel computers in 1988. Prominent among them were 32-node PACE+ systems, built in 1995 and 1996, for Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). Bengaluru and Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) Hyderabad. These systems were built using HyperSPARC processors. And were primarily used to run CFD applications. In 2002. ANURAG developed a 128- node system. Called PACE++. It was built using pentium 11 processors @ 450 Mhz. This system has primarily been used to run CFD codes at DRDL. Hyderabad. Over time, the computation and memory requirments of the missile designers as well as other application developers within DRDO increased tremendusly. In early 2007, ANURAG began working on DHRUVA.

http://frontierindia.net/drdo-develo...airdrop-system
DRDO develops CADS -350 precision airdrop system

march 2011 newsletter
http://www.drdo.gov.in/drdo/pub/nl/2...2011%20web.pdf

hello sir. may i keep in touch with you.
kanchan.

http://frontierindia.org/blog/dr-kal...o-awards-2010/
Dr Kalam gives away DRDO Awards 2010

http://tarmak007.blogspot.com/2011/0...or-indian.html
NSTL to launch SMB project for Indian Navy on April 1

http://livefist.blogspot.com/2011/04...wn-longer.html
India's Anti-Tank HELINA To Spawn Longer Range Strike Weapon

Games DRDO Plays
False claims on the BMD programme are detrimental to India’s security
By Pravin Sawhney

Tall claims and empty boasts seem to have become the hallmark of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The proclivity of the Director General, DRDO, Dr V.K. Saraswat and his team to exaggerate its achievements would be amusing to discerning people. Unfortunately, this amusement has grave national security implications and Dr Saraswat, a ballistic missile expert with the indigenous Prithvi ballistic missile being his crowning glory, should know this better than most.

As the director general, DRDO, he is leading the nation’s home-grown Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) programme. The claims made by him about the recently tested-fired Dhanush and Prithvi II ballistic missiles on March 11 and the BMD Endo-atmospheric interceptor test on March 6 are exaggerated beyond imagination. These should have been put into perspective by the Indian defence correspondents and experts, not only for domestic but international consumption as well, because the Pakistani establishment, while ignoring DRDO’s claims on Prithvi, utilises the boasts about the BMD to its strategic advantage.

Making use of Saraswat’s chest-thumping, Pakistan is going ahead full throttle to more than match India’s humble BMD technological achievements; if at all, the programme is decades away from fruition. According to US intelligence, while ahead of India in ballistic missiles capabilities since 2001, General Headquarters, Rawalpindi continues to increase its inventory of nuclear weapons’ land vector by citing India’s BMD claims as a destabilising factor. This writer had first-hand experience of this a few months ago. During the alumni meet at the Cooperative Monitoring Centre (Sandia National Laboratory) at Albuquerque, US in October 2010, a former director of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, Brigadier Feroz Khan argued that India’s growing BMD capability had forced Pakistan to build more ballistic missiles.



Given its unbridled inventory, it is a matter of time before the Pakistan Army will alter its war-fighting doctrine to align it with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army thinking. While supplementing air power, the difference between combat aircraft and ballistic missiles will narrow down to tighter control of the latter. This will upset the Indian Air Force combat numbers superiority over the Pakistan Air Force and force the Indian Army to review its operational level pro-active strategy, referred to as the Cold Start doctrine in the media, against the Pakistan Army. Given such implications, the defence minister needs to restrain Saraswat and the DRDO from making irresponsible statements. Apparently after the recent claims on the BMD project, defence minister A.K. Antony has expressed his displeasure to Saraswat.

Prithvi and Dhanush
A brief history and technological limitations of the indigenous Prithvi ballistic missile are in order. The development of surface-to-surface Prithvi ballistic missile was sanctioned by the government in 1983 under the Integrated Guided Missiles Development Programme. As Prithvi was an offshoot of ISRO’s civilian Space Launch Vehicle (SLV), its development commenced without the General Staff Qualitative Requirements (GSQR) — technical requirements given by the user, that is, defence services, to the research organisation — implying that the defence services were neither consulted nor were they interested (ballistic missiles were still unknown to them) in the programme. As happens with most indigenous programmes, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi personally goaded the army in 1988 to accept Prithvi in order to encourage the indigenous product. Considering the Prime Minister had intervened regarding a weapon system, it was easy for the DRDO to arm-twist the other two services, the navy and the air force to seek the missile with a few minor and not design changes to suit its medium of operations.

copy right FORCE magazine
http://www.forceindia.net/featurereport7.aspx

http://frontierindia.net/drdo-inaugu...-tube-facility
DRDO inaugurates JC Bose Microwave Tube Facility

I think this is not a fair assessment of the BMD research of DRDO cause BMD tech is one of the most challenging technologies in defence and v have acheived very good results in this field in such a short span of time labs like ASL hyderabad has done commendable breakthroughs in this field.

http://frontierindia.net/indian-air-...ped-with-obogs
Indian Air Force fighters to be equipped with OBOGS

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/7939397.cms
Indian defence scientists develop hi-tech foods

Well this is self contradictory article, on the one hand, author bashes DRDO for its BMD, saying all sorts of negative things, on the other hand he says that Pakistan acknowledge growing BMDs capabilities and felt threated by these.

Pakistani's are not fool, they have resources at their disposal to see, what are the capabilities of Indian BMDs and if they felt threated by BMD then surely it must have some substance in the claim of DRDO.

Last para of the article speaks about Prithvi and Dhanush, which has not connected to topic he wanted to discuss.

I must say that, with great respect to authors past, this is half cooked article unprofessionally written article, which is not even properly researched. I must also say that in the past also many article from professionals have come which are trying to discredit the good work done by DRDO guys, particularly BMD area.

I wont be surprised that based on this or this types of reports and article, IA will make know its preference for US made BMD.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...ow/8005078.cms
DRDO develops composite oxygen cylinders for IAF, Army pilots