HAL-BEL ink deal for manufacture and development of IRST

Two major Central public sector undertakings, HAL and BEL signed a contract for co-development and co-production of Long-Range Dual Band Infra-Red Search and Track System (IRST) for Su-30 MKI in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
The development and production of IRST under the MAKE-II procedure of Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 is part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative.
The proposed IRST system will be a high end strategic technology product in the field of defence avionics and technically competitive to existing IRST system in the global market with features of Television Day Camera, Infrared and Laser sensors in single window for air to air and air to ground target tracking and localization
The system is expected to enhance the Indian Air Force’s air superiority.
Suneel Kumar Srivastava, General Manager, HAL (Korwa) and Loyola Pedro Vianney G, General Manager, BEL (Chennai) signed the contract. Arup Chatterjee, Director, Engineering and R&D (HAL) and M V Rajasekhar, Director, R&D (BEL) were present on the occasion.
The joining hands of two defence PSUs for development of technologically critical IRST gives impetus to “Atmanirbhar Bharat” in the defence sector.
This initiative also opens the future path in the field of indigenous defence manufacturing for development of high end strategic technology product of IRST for various platforms in global competitive environment.