Need for setting up Aeronautics Commission stressed

BANGALORE: It is imperative for India to set up an Aeronautics Commission akin to the Space and Atomic Energy Commission to bring together all Aeronautical R and D, Development and Design and manufacturing establishments under one umbrella, Vice Admiral (Retd) Raman Puri stressed on Wednesday.

Delivering the CSIR Foundation day lecture at the National Aerospace Laboratories here, Puri said though the government had initiated a number of aeronautics developmental activities over the last few years, "what is badly lacking is a long term vision and a unified approach from concept definition of a system to its final operational deployment".

"If we recognise that aeronautics is a crucially important activity for India,it is essential to bring in a unified and well-coordinated approach with clear objectives in aeronautical R and D,technology development and design and manufacture of new systems", he said while speaking on `Strategy for Indigenous Capability Building in Aeronautics'.
   
The capital intensive nature of aeronautics in India cannot be left entirely to market forces and a deliberate way forward has to be defined for both military and civil aircraft development and manufacture in the country.

This has been recognised for quite some time by the aeronautical community and the Aeronautical Society of India has made a proposal for defining a National Aeronautics Policy and establish an Aeronautics commission on the lines of the Space and Atomic Energy Commission, he said.
   
For a variety of reasons, this proposal has not yet been approved but it has recently been revived again, he said.

Puri said the roadmap for the development of the Indian aerospace sector must not only comprehend the technology gap but also identify stages of evolution, capability and in the process set out intermediate goals and milestones.

"A very careful selection and staging of systems and technologies that will allow the Indian sector to be usefully contributing to national and global industry needs at all time, is required", he said.

Combination of nurturing and partnering is necessary to close the technology gap in those areas which offer bigger hurdles of assimilation, he suggested.

According to Puri, while the entry of private enterprise into aircraft manufacture may be a very large step, the aerospace component sector will offer the possibility of a staged growth of complexity and scale of system integration.
   
Citing the example of the automotive component industry where growing pressure was driving western manufacturers to countries like India for production, engineering and development, he said "the same pressures are visible now in the global aerospace component industry and the situation is ripe for harvest by Indian R and D centres and industry."

Encouragement to the growing aerospace component industry can be an important dimension of the total roadmap, he said.

For small to midsized structural components, requisite technology and processes can be acquired by Indian entities while for larger complex systems, JVs with global component manufacturers may offer a solution.