‘Sindoor 2.0 will be a more advanced version since India has learnt its lessons’, said COAS General Upendra Dwivedi, addressing the Delhi Defence Dialogue on Wednesday. He then called for the democratisation of technology, geographic diffusion, and the use of demographics in terms of citizen soldiers and merchants for modern warfare.
"... SAMBHAV (Secure Army Mobile Bharat Version) was used for Sindoor 1.0. Now we are going for phase two, which will be a much more advanced version. Open source analysis and predictive analysis in Sindoor 1.0 — it helped us. A lot of volunteers and the diaspora came forward to help us... We were very much empowered as far as Sindoor 1.0 is concerned; we have learnt our lessons. Therefore, whether it is Sindoor 2.0 or any other battle thereafter, we are looking at it in a big way on how to harness this initiative...”
"Industry 4.0 has moved to Industry 5.0... 4.0 was when the AI, quantum and all this were talked about. But 5.0 has realised that the rebalancing is required to bring in the human element. Technology is there not to replace humans, but to support them... Now, why is it important for us, especially for the Indian army... This industry, 5.0, is music to my ears because we are looking at human-centric technology adoption. We look at humans amplified by AI. The creativity, the empathy factor, problem solving, and turning data into decisions must remain in control of the human beings,” the Army Chief further added.
Delhi Defence Dialogue was inaugurated by the Defence Minister of India, Rajnath Singh, on Tuesday here in New Delhi. The dialogue is being conducted by Manohar Parrikar, IDSA, on the theme “Harnessing New Age Technology for Defence Capability Development”.
Meanwhile, Defence Research and Development Organisation Chief Samir V Kamat also shared his viewpoint at the dialogue, saying that to ease funding for research and development (R&D) in startups and industries, DRDO is looking to introduce a "new chapter" in the General Financial Rules (GFR).
"We are now looking at a separate chapter for R&D in our GFR. Secretary DSP has been tasked to come up with such a chapter. This will then help us in funding cutting-edge R&D in startups, MSMEs even large industries, which will then speed up our innovation. One of the challenges of funding cutting-edge R&D in industry was who would be accountable for the failure. Unlike DARPA in the US, which has a mandate from its Senate and Congress, where if failures occur, they don't have to answer to the Senate why it has caused loss to the taxpayer. Only 10 to 15 per cent of DARPA projects succeed because they really look at moonshots when it comes to technology. We don't have such a mechanism in India," he cited.
"If our projects fail, we have to answer to CAG and the Parliament why a loss has been caused to the government. But R&D has to be looked at as an investment, not an expenditure. Because even if a project fails, the lessons that you learn from that R&D can be used in several other places," the DRDO chief then added.
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