New Delhi: The Indian Army’s communication system will be strengthened further.

According to the Ministry of Defence, around Rs 500 crore is being spent on the procurement of equipment for better performance of the communication system of the Army.

The ministry said that it has inked a contract with ICOMM Tele Limited, Hyderabad, on Thursday for the procurement of 1,035 5/7.5 Ton Radio Relay Communication equipment containers.

ICOMM is a group company of Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL), which is the one of the largest infrastructure companies in India. It began operations in 1989, and provides comprehensive infrastructure solutions in the fields of defence, power, telecom and solar space.

The value of the contract under ‘Buy (Indian) Category’ is nearly Rs 500 crore. The delivery of the containers is scheduled to commence from the current financial year (2023-24), the ministry said.

The ministry also said that this step will give further boost to indigenous manufacturing of defence equipment and incentivise the private sector to engage in realising the vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’.

The Radio Relay containers will address a long overdue requirement of mobile communication detachments of the Indian Army. These containers will be utilised to provide a protected environment for communication equipment to function in a failsafe and reliable manner.

The containers will be mounted on authorised specialist vehicles and be moved as per operational requirements, ministry officials said.

They also said that the company would produce the containers with all equipment and sub-systems sourced from indigenous manufacturers.

The development of such state-of-the-art equipment will also help boost exports to friendly countries, the Defence Ministry added.(IANS)