Indian Army joins National Additive Manufacturing Symposium 2026 to advance defence indigenisation

Key facts

• The Indian Army participated in the National Additive Manufacturing Symposium (NAMS) 2026 organised by the National Centre for Additive Manufacturing (NCAM) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) at SCOPE Convention Centre, New Delhi.
• Lt Gen Rajiv Kumar Sahni, Director General of the Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (DG EME), led the Indian Army delegation comprising Maj Gen Shivendra Kumar Bhattacharya and Maj Gen P S Bindra.
• DG EME underlined additive manufacturing’s role in Combat Force Regeneration at the battlefield edge, rapid prototyping, and sustaining unmanned systems against emerging "Drone Tsunami".
• Panel discussion titled "AM for Strategic Autonomy and Enhanced Combat Force Regeneration: Smart Manufacturing for Defence Applications" examined integration of additive manufacturing with digital twin frameworks, predictive maintenance, and data-enabled decision tools.
• Discussions addressed decentralised production, forward-area manufacturing, supply-chain compression, lifecycle sustainment, and challenges of material qualification, certification protocols, interoperability, and cyber-physical security.
• Industry experts presented metal additive manufacturing advances such as topology optimisation, lattice structures, and light-weighting for high-performance defence platforms.
• Academia, represented by IIT Delhi and 3D Graphy, focused on quality assurance, standardisation, non-destructive evaluation, in-situ monitoring, and simulation-driven digital twins for certified outputs.