DAC clears Rs 1.10 lakh crore of hardware, 98% of it from Indian firms

The Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Rajnath Singh, granted Acceptance of Necessity on 7 September for capital proposals worth about Rs 1.10 lakh crore. The defence ministry said roughly 98% of the planned buys will come from Indian industry. AoN is in-principle administrative approval. It is not a signed contract. It is the gate that lets the services start detailed tenders.

For the Army the list is CBRN reconnaissance vehicles, high-mobility vehicles, self-propelled mechanical mine layers, Advanced Light Helicopters, trawl tanks and the Sarvatra bridging system. The CBRN vehicles are meant to detect, identify, monitor and mark ground contaminated by chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents. Trawl tanks and Sarvatra bridges are for getting fighting formations across broken ground and water gaps. Mine layers raise the pace at which a defensive belt can be put down without dismounted crews doing the work by hand.

Navy and Air Force items

The Navy received AoN for Arudhra radars and for design, development and later purchase of marine gas turbines. Arudhra is intended to replace air-route surveillance radars at naval air stations. The turbines are ship propulsion. The ministry’s stated aim is to cut dependence on foreign engine suppliers for that class of plant.

The Air Force received a bundle of proposals the ministry described as lifts to the fighting capacity of fighters, transports and helicopters. The council also approved ground-based multi-purpose jammers and the Defence Forces Secure Access Card. The jammer is meant to work against adversary radars. DEFSAC replaces paper identity cards, passes and permits with an interoperable radio-frequency smart card across the services.

Where the money sits in the wider ledger

Indigenous defence production reached Rs 1.78 lakh crore in FY 2025-26, according to a PIB factsheet, up 15.6% from the previous year. Exports in that year were put at Rs 38,424 crore, against Rs 686 crore in 2013-14. Private firms accounted for 24% of production. Those figures explain why the 98% domestic share on this AoN list is the sentence the ministry chose to lead with.

Singh left for Colombo on 8 September for a three-day defence visit after chairing the meeting. The council paper and the Sri Lanka diary are separate jobs. The paper is a shopping list with a domestic-content target. Contracts, trials and delivery dates will decide whether the 98% line holds once metal is cut.