New Delhi: In a key impact of Defence.Capital‘s efforts, India’s defence ministry today announced that it has adopted a policy framework for synergised use of simulators by the four armed forces for their training solutions.

“The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has promulgated the framework for enhanced and synergised utilisation of simulators by the Indian Army, the Indian Navy, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Coast Guard (ICG),” the government said.

“The overarching vision is to transform to simulation-based training across all military domains for combatants, leaders, maintainers, administrators, life science experts, procurement and financial agencies and thus, achieve cost effective, efficient, safe, fast-paced and smart training,” it said in a statement.

The framework lays emphasis on indigenous design and development as well as outsourcing of operation and maintenance of simulators to the Indian companies. The framework has the following goals and objectives:

•        To reduce live equipment utilisation.

•        To ensure capability plans cater for phased induction of simulators.

•        To duly factor requirement of simulators at the planning stage of procurement.

•        To coordinate among various agencies of the government and factor combined requirements of simulators during procurement.

The policy will be applicable to all types of simulators in use/to be procured in the future by the armed forces. Avenues of application of simulation technology will be constantly explored to achieve a high level of op preparedness while reducing expenditure on training and preserving the life of equipment.

A detailed action plan with assigned responsibility to all the constituents of MoD and industry association will be followed to revitalise the exploitation of simulators by the four armed forces.

The Indian agencies involved in development, production and maintenance would be engaged by the armed forces to ensure highest level of indigenisation for production, deployment and maintenance of the military simulators.

Defence.Capital had organised a round table of former Indian Army general-rank officers, with several decades of experience, to recommend modern and simulator-based training solutions for the armed forces in July 2020, a report of which was submitted to the MoD and the armed forces chiefs.

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