Lucknow: Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has said that Brahmos missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) will be manufactured in Uttar Pradesh’s defense industrial corridor.
The Defense Industrial Corridor has been established by connecting 6 regions of Uttar Pradesh including Agra, Aligarh, Jhansi, Kanpur and Lucknow. In this line of business, a Brahmos missile manufacturing plant is being built in Lucknow at a cost of Rs.300 crore on an area of 80 hectares.
The new plant is slated to open next year. Once operational, the plant will be able to produce 100 BrahMos supersonic missiles annually. Along with this, various plants for manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are also being started in Uttar Pradesh security corridor.
So far, 108 MoUs have been signed for the production of defense weapons and logistics, including drones.
In this context, Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh spoke at a seminar held yesterday in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh: During the 1971 war and the Kargil war, some countries refused to supply arms to India. I don’t want to mention the names of those countries now. After the inauguration of the BJP government at the centre, under the Self-reliant India project, defense related weapons and logistics are being manufactured locally. For this, Defense Industrial Corridors have been created in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
The Uttar Pradesh Defense Corridor covers an area of about 1,700 hectares. 95 percent of the land has been acquired. So far deals worth around Rs 16,000 crore have been done. Ordinary nuts and bolts are not manufactured in this safety line. State-of-the-art BrahMos missiles, drones are to be manufactured. The tri-armies will also be modernized with the weapons manufactured here.
India is facing a bipolar (Pakistan, China) threat. In this context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is showing seriousness to increase the production of arms domestically instead of depending on foreign countries for the need of arms. At one time some countries refused to supply arms to India. But now India is talking. The whole world is listening to it. Minister Rajnath Singh spoke thus.