Acute shortage of design engineers is putting hurdles in the way of developing futuristic weapon platforms in the country, top defence scientist M Natrajan said in New Delhi on Friday.
"As against the need for a minimum over lakh design engineers, we are making do with just 6,000 of them in the Defence Research and Development Organisation and this will come in the way of development of future missile and space weapons," the scientific adviser to the defence minister said.
Design engineers are critical to producing state of art weapons like submarines, electronic warfare system, setting up networking of armed forces and for forays into frontiers of space and missile technology, he added.
"There is no dearth of talent in India as our engineering institutions are churning out experts. But what the need is to orient the courses to roll out more design engineers, as this expertise is a must to forge ahead in warship, submarine, aircraft and space and satellite programme," he said during an interaction with the media at the Defence Expo 06, which concluded in New Delhi on Friday.
Natrajan said DRDO, like other critical agencies, was facing 10 per cent exodus of scientists and engineers every year. "But this is not a brain-drain, as these engineers are moving to better pastures within the country," he added.