Monday, February 7 2005 18:12 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: India is spending over Rs 10,000 crore on three ongoing defence R&D programmes which include the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and an airborne early warning system, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today (Feb 7, 2005).

"We are spending the money on three projects, Kaveri, LCA and AEWS through DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation). These are ongoing projects," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Aero India 2005 in Bangalore.

DRDO's Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) is the prime agency for building the home-grown Tejas, a single-engine, fly-by-wire, tailless delta winged supersonic fighter, that has undergone nearly 350 test flights so far. LCA is expected to replace the IAF's ageing MiG aircraft from the next decade.

Kaveri, the power plant for the LCA is being built by the Gas Turbine and Research Establishment (GTRE), which Mukherjee admitted as "taking longer time than needed as it was being indigenously developed".

"We must try to avoid both cost and time over runs. But some times it becomes inevitable in case of new products and those which are being done by us," he said about the Rs 2,500 crore Kaveri project that has been bogged by delays.

DRDO's Centre for Airborne Systems (CABS) has revived the Airborne Early Warning (AEW) system programme which it had scrapped following a crash of a rotodome radar fitted Avro aircraft near Arakkonam in Chennai in 1999. CABS will acquire three Brazilian Embraer aircraft in which it will integrate phased array radars in the current Rs 1,800 crore programme.

Mukherjee said the Defence Ministry has spent nearly 73 per cent of its annual budget allocation upto December, which is "much more than the pro rata" in the previous year.

Mukherjee declined comment on the Nepal crisis saying that "at this juncture, it is not desirable to make any comment on what has been articulated by the Foreign Ministry".

Asked about the progress made in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the Defence production sector, he said, "The sector has opened. It is not that we are dying for investment".

Stating that the FDI in Defence equipment production was a complex one, he said things have to be understood and opening means that investment will come and the practice was that it was totally closed.