“Indonesia has abundant raw material for military needs, yet no related raw material industry is available. Everything is imported. Even material for low quality bomb is imported”
The statement was made by PT DAHANA (Persero)’s Director of Technology and Development, Heri Heriswan, in front of some Indonesian Army’s middle rank officials who were attending the so called Widya Wisata field trip to Dahana’s campus on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.
The field trip participants, middle rank military students of Regular Training 56 for Army Command School 2018, listened to Heri Heriswan describing the given development of strategic industrial technology Heri said, DAHANA started developing defense industry in 2015.
“Since 2015, not only have we been developing commercial explosives technology, we also started developing strategic industry to reach independence in terms of defense industry,” he explained.
“It is impossible for a developed country not have an excellent military power. Excellence here means a possession of advanced defense industry. A great country depending too much on import will experience difficult situations in the event of embargo,” added Heri.
Strategic industry development and advancement, said Heri, is not merely the responsibility of the industry, but that of all of the nation components, among others, is the Army’s. It takes a huge capital to build a defense industry and therefore some reated enterpises fails to make it.
“DAHANA has never got any capital support from the government, but we never stop partaking in building explosive product independence,” said PT DAHANA (Persero)’ Director of Technology and Development.
For the last three years, DAHANA has continuously made explosive innovation. According to Heri, explosives are just like a coin with two faces. When they are contained in a paper wrap, we call them explosives; when they are contained in a metal pipe, we call it bombs.
“We keep innovating with various creations for military needs. One of our innovation is convertion of commercial explosives into military explosives, among others, are Sivor and Booster,” he added.
Currently, within the Energetic Material Center there are two plants available for such sedefnse industry development; one of them is the nitrogliserine plant, which is manufacturing facility for propellant raw material, which was initiated by Research and Development Board of Ministry of Defense, manufacturing plant for P-100 L bomb filling, dedicated for the Sukhoi airplanes. (SYA)
