BEL-Rolta consortium to drive Rs 50,000-cr battlefield management system project

A consortium of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), India’s leading defence electronics company, and Rolta India Limited, a provider of innovative IT solutions for many vertical segments, has been selected as a development agency for the Battlefield Management System (BMS) project worth over Rs 50,000 crore by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The Battlefield Management System project, categorised as a ‘Make’ programme under the DPP, will be one of the largest solutions to be indigenously manufactured for the Indian Defence.
 
This project is meant to deliver command and control capabilities to the fighting echelons, operating at the forward edge of the tactical battle area at the battalion and combat group levels. BMS is a situational awareness and visualisation system that aims to optimise the operational effectiveness of tactical units.
 
Bharat Electronics has been proactively working on battlefield management systems. The company has established the test bed of BMS for continuous evaluation and implementation of user requirements. Having worked on several Tactical Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence (Tac C3I) systems of the Indian Army, in association with DRDO, BEL has the unique capability of developing and integrating Tac C3I systems and will lead the consortium.
 
Rolta has also invested significantly in BMS technologies indigenously and has over the years delivered cutting edge command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) systems, to the Indian Military. Deployed across the country, military commanders use Rolta Technology as a force multiplier. As a part of the consortium, Rolta will execute its role and responsibility in areas of BMS application software development and applicable licensing, GIS software and GIS data services. Rolta will also jointly work with BEL for manufacturing subsystems for the soldier system, the overall system design, integration, installation, commissioning and maintenance of the BMS solution.
 
P C Jain, director (marketing), BEL, said, “The consortium of BEL and Rolta is fully geared up to take on the challenge of development of the Battlefield Management System for our Defence forces. We also aim to maximise the indigenous content through in-house development of various sub-systems.”
 
K K Singh, chairman and managing director, Rolta India Limited, said, “We are also very excited to be associated with BEL, a leader in Defence electronics. The selection of Rolta is a strong vindication of our strategy to upfront invest in and build word-class IP indigenously. This IP has been indigenously developed by leveraging our deep domain knowledge of C2ISR and is already in wide use across various formations of the Indian Army.”