Defence Industry

Cassidian creates strategic partnerships with India
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Issue Vol 26.1 Jan-Mar 2011 | Date : 09 Feb , 2011


Cassidian considers India as a key market with an expanding defence and security industry and even more so as a rapidly growing country which offers excellent opportunities for long-lasting strategic partnerships. Therefore Cassidian is fully committed to invest in India’s industry and people and is ready to listen to and learn from its Indian customers. In the past few years, Cassidian created several partnerships with organizations such as the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which build a solid basis to expand the cooperation with Indian companies. For all customers in India, EADS DS India Private Ltd. acts as the primary point of contact.

Missile_warning_systemAn excellent example for the commitment to increase the industrial footprint in India is the new Cassidian Engineering Centre Bangalore which has been established to provide engineering services to European partners as well as Indian customers. The Engineering Centre is the first defence related centre of this kind created by a foreign company in India. 25 Indian engineers from the Engineering Centre in Bangalore have already been sent to the facilities at Manching and Ulm to attend technical and intercultural training courses.

Major programme is the Eurofighter Typhoon which is developed and manufactured by Alenia Aeronautica/Finmeccanica (Italy), BAE Systems (UK) and EADS (Germany, Spain). Up to now, the orderbook comprises more than 700 orders from six customers (Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Austria, Saudi Arabia) and 250 aircraft have been delivered. Deliveries of 15 aircraft to Austria as the first export customer have been completed and deliveries of 72 aircraft to Saudi Arabia as the second export customer are making progress. The Eurofighter Partner Companies (EPCs) and the four nations of the European consortium Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain are fully committed to deepen the strategic partnership with India. Paving the way for a long-term cooperation, the Supervisory Board of Eurofighter GmbH represented by the CEOs of the four industrial partners EADS, BAE Systems and Finmeccanica/Alenia Aeronautica visited New Delhi from 25th to 26th October 2010.

Cassidian offers integrated solutions for network centric operations, flexible and interoperable services as well as outstanding communication capabilities based on the latest technology. As an example for the commitment to India, Cassidian acted as the design and integration authority to the Indian Army for its test bed system called Parikshak. This system is being used to help the Indian Army investigate the capabilities that could be delivered for the new Tactical Communications System (TCS) project.

NeuburgIn 2008, Cassidian has been awarded with India’s first major public safety TETRA network contract by the police of the state of Andhra Pradesh. The new network will cover the region of Cyberabad, the high-tech hub that surrounds the city of Hyderabad, which is a strong root for India’s current economic growth. In 2009, Cassidian signed a contract to deploy a modern TETRA radio network to secure the Indian Parliament. Cassidian has teamed up with its local partner Sanchar Telesystems Limited to provide the Indian Parliament in New Delhi with a digital, GPS-based, encrypted communication system.

In 2010, Cassidian was awarded a contract by the Indian Defence Research Design Organisation (DRDO) to supply consultancy services to the Indian Armed Forces in developing the system architecture of its Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) programme.

Cassidian maintains close cooperation with the Indian industry and R&D organizations. One example is the successful cooperation with DARE to develop a Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS) for Indian rotary wing and wide-body aircraft. The sensor has been adapted to the Indian forces’ self-protection suite and has been certified as “indigenous equipment”. It is foreseen to produce approx. 500 sensors for India’s “Cheetah” helicopter programme.

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