BEL Elbit DIRCM agreement terms were signed on Wednesday in Bengaluru. Bharat Electronics Limited secured an export purchase order from Israel's Elbit Systems Electro-Optics ELOP Ltd to produce sub-assemblies for Directed Infrared Countermeasure systems.

The signing took place at BEL's Bengaluru Complex. Rajnish Sharma, Director of the Bengaluru Complex, signed for BEL, and Shai Cohen, Senior Vice President at Elbit Systems, signed for ELOP. Anoop Kumar Rai, Director Marketing at BEL, was present at the signing.


What a DIRCM sub-assembly order covers

BEL described the system in its own announcement as an IR jammer. A Directed Infrared Countermeasure unit tracks an incoming heat-seeking threat and directs a modulated infrared beam at its seeker, throwing the missile off its lock. Elbit's DIRCM lines are built around this principle and are sold to protect fixed wing aircraft and helicopters from shoulder fired, heat-seeking missiles during takeoff, cruising and landing, the phases of flight when an aircraft is most exposed to such threats.

The order covers sub-assemblies rather than complete units, meaning BEL will manufacture components that feed into Elbit's finished DIRCM systems rather than build and sell a standalone product under its own name. It is the kind of subsystem work BEL has taken on elsewhere too, including the guidance and electronics package it supplies for the indigenous Khagantak-243 glide bomb.

The BEL Elbit DIRCM agreement builds on an older partnership

BEL and ELOP have worked together for years. BEL holds a Technical Collaboration Agreement with ELOP covering the manufacture of electro optical infrared payloads, and it has separately entered into a licensing arrangement with Elbit Systems for helmet mounted display systems. BEL has also carried Global Supply Chain Partner status with ELOP since at least 2019, when it won an export order worth about USD 33 million from the Israeli firm to build EOIR payloads at its Chennai facility.

That order, like this one, ran through BEL's export book rather than its domestic defence contracts, a distinction the company has leaned on to describe its manufacturing base as serving customers beyond India as well as the armed forces at home. The traffic runs both ways. BEL has also taken on Israeli technology at home, winning the Indian Army's Negev LMG day sight contract for optics built under licence from an Israeli firm.

Who else was in the room

BEL named three more officials from its side at the signing: Giriraja N, Executive Director for Electronic Warfare and Avionics, and Srinivasa Rao H P, General Manager of Integrated Materials Management. Bnaya Ziv, Head of DIRCM Systems at Elbit Systems ELOP, represented the Israeli side alongside Cohen.

Part of India's defence export push

BEL framed the signing as another milestone in India's expanding defence export footprint, language it has used for earlier ELOP orders as well. BEL is a Navratna defence public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defence, and its export book has grown alongside the government's wider Aatmanirbhar Bharat push to build a domestic manufacturing base that also sells abroad. Industrial ties of this kind sit under the same broader umbrella as the India Israel Special Strategic Partnership, which both governments have said they want to deepen.