News Excerpt:

The Ministry of Defence has signed a ₹200 crore contract with Big Bang Boom Solutions Private Limited (BBBS) for anti-drone systems under the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) initiative for the Indian Army and Indian Air Force (IAF).

About iDEX Initiative: 

• The iDEX initiative was launched in 2018. 
• iDEX aims to achieve self-reliance and foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging Industries, including MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutes and academia. 
• iDEX has partnered with leading incubators in the country to provide hand holding, technical support and guidance to the winners of iDEX challenges.
• The objective of the scheme is to provide financial support to nearly 300 Startups/MSMEs/individual innovators and about 20 Partner Incubators through the Defence Innovation Organisation (DIO).
• The Government encourages the start-ups to contribute to the defence sector and develop aerospace set up in the country by providing substantial grants, easier and faster access to test facilities/infrastructure available with various Government agencies, co-creation and co-innovation using smooth operating procedures and minimal documentation, and facilitating procurement, thus making the entire regime conducive for them.

BBBS’s Vajra Sentinel System:

• BBBS’s Vajra Sentinel System is a state-of-the-art solution designed to detect, track and neutralise drones at extraordinary ranges. 
• It utilises passive Radio Frequency (RF) sensor technology to eliminate false alarms, and its sensor and jammer combination meets stringent military standard specifications for durability and reliability. 
• It has a number of state-of-the-art tech improvements, such as Advanced Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar and kamikaze drones, which can be upgraded on demand by the user.
• The system’s core sensor, built around Artificial Intelligence and computer vision algorithms, enables precise identification, classification and location identification of drones, adding that its sophisticated decision-making matrix enables autonomous decision-making for countermeasures, including signal jamming.