India needs indigenised weapons to meet security challenges: Air Force Chief

Two days before the 92nd Anniversary of the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh on Friday emphasised that India needed to have an indigenised weapons system to keep up with the growing security challenges.
The Air Force chief, while addressing a press conference, said that it was the need of the hour to have indigenised weapon manufacturing for the country’s interest, as depending on imported arms ‘can create choke points’.
“When it comes to conflict situations, if you rely on getting your weapons from outside, there will always be different and changing interests, which can create a choke point for you. If you need to fight a war, you need to have them manufactured in India”, Singh said.
He went on to add that if India just kept on importing, it would not be able to stock up everything forever. “It may result in wastage,” he said.
Furthermore, the Air Chief Marshal urged manufacturing firms to step ahead and increase their production rate.
“When it comes to building the capacity, one is capability, another one is capacity. So, building the capacity, it becomes important for our manufacturing agencies to come forward and increase their production rate,” Singh said.
“The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) also has its own limitations and looking at the numbers involved, we need the private industry to chip in to meet the production challenges,” he pointed out.
AP Singh also spoke about Agniveers and expressed his thoughts on inducting them into the Indian Air Force.
“Our feedback on Agniveers has been very positive. We were asked if we could absorb more than 25 per cent of Agniveers, and we said that we could”, AP Singh said, adding that the decision on this has to be taken by the government.
Replying to a question about whether the Indian Air Force, if need be, could carry out strikes like Israel is doing in its enemy territories, AP Singh exuded confidence and said that the Air Force is capable of hitting enemies in foreign lands just like it did in 2019 Balakot airstrikes.
The Indian Air Force is going to celebrate its 92nd anniversary on October 6, with a grand event scheduled to be held at Chennai’s Marina Beach where several Air Force jets will set the sky on fire.