Army procures Rs 80.43 cr-worth equipment for enhancing defensive capability

The Indian Army on Wednesday signed a contract worth Rs 80.43 crore for the procurement of 223 Automatic Chemical Agent Detection and Alarm (ACADA) Systems from the private industry.

The induction of ACADA in the field units will substantially enhance Indian Army’s defensive Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) capability for operations, as also for peacetime deployment, especially for responding to disaster relief situations related to industrial accidents.

More than 80 per cent of the components and sub-systems of the equipment, being manufactured by Larsen and Toubro Limited, are sourced locally, a Defence spokesperson said.

ACADA has been designed and developed by DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Establishment, Gwalior, and marks a significant milestone in the nation’s indigenisation initiative in the niche CBRN domain.

The ACADA system is used to detect chemical warfare agents (CWA) and programmed toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) by sampling the air from the environment. 

It works on the principle of Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) and contains two highly sensitive IMS cells for continuous detection and simultaneous monitoring of harmful or toxic substances.