Defence ministry claims breakthroughs in critical technology

India has achieved notable breakthroughs in five "critical technology" areas to effectively combat and frustrate the discriminatory technology denial regimes, defence ministry sources said.

The sources said a gallium arsenide foundry, a joint project of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Department of Electronics, has been commissioned and the first Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit chip -- dubbed Anupama and containing 0.5 million transistors -- has already come out. India has thus become self-reliant in special purpose microprocessor design. Such chips are an important component of missiles, aircraft and other crucial systems. A dedicated silicon foundry is in position and a small number of microprocessors will come out later this year.

India is also producing the Pace Plus parallel processor, which is 20 times faster than the Cray-XMP supercomputer once denied to India. Some defence scientists have also designed Shatranj, a war game.

Defence scientists have also made a breakthrough in the indigenous development of electronic components under a programme called Code.

The fifth important breakthrough in ''critical technology'' area is the establishment of a propulsion system allegedly twice as efficient as that for solid propulsion. Called ''ramjet propulsion'', it is intended for the indigenous Akash missile under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme of the DRDO.

In a related step, a homing device for Nag, the third generation anti-tank missile, has been tested.

The sources claimed that though development of such technologies would usually have been very expensive, working together had resulted in fast and cost-effective solutions. This, they said, was an effort to combat denial of technology by some countries.