Director General of Naval Armament Inspection (DGNAI)

About Us

The weaponry in navy, i.e. naval armament (NA) stores, comprise the entire gamut of gun ammunition, torpedoes, missiles, mines and other explosive materials. The reliable performance of these weaponry during the prescribed shelf life is vital to win a war. At the same time, safety of these stores during storage and during disposal is also of major consideration due to involvement of safety of men and material. The naval armament inspection (NAI) organisation is responsible to the Indian navy to ensure inspection and QA of NA stores during design, production, proof, storage, in service usage and disposal; a dedicated involvement towards NA stores, 'from Womb to Tomb'.

The origin of this organisation dates back to pre-independence era where, initially the duties were performed by the Royal Army Inspecting Officers.

Post-Independence, in 1948, Indian Navy decided to set up its own inspection agency and thus the NAI Organisation came into existence on 11 Nov 1949. Major Priestly of the Royal Army was appointed as the first Deputy Inspector of Naval Ordnance (DINO) at Bombay. The office of DINO was subsequently shifted to New Delhi in 1951 and re-designated as Director of Naval Armament Inspection (DNAI) and formed part of Naval Headquarters. On 16 Sep 1953, Lt TR Srinivasan took over as Naval Armament Inspecting Officer, Visakhapatnam. The first independent NAI unit was set up in Oct 1953 at Gun & Shell factory, Cossipore at Calcutta. Captain VA Kamath was the first Indian naval officer who took over as DNAI in Jul 1962.

In order to meet the growing inspection and QA requirement of NA Stores, various NAI units were subsequently established at Kanpur, Jabalpur, Pune, Delhi, Trombay, Ambernath, Karanja, Alwaye, Kochi, Hyderabad, Sunabeda, Tiruchirapally and Trivendrum. The post of the head of the organisation DNAI was re-designated as Director General of Naval Armament Inspection (DGNAI) in the year 1997 and the rank was upgraded from Commodore to Flag Rank (Rear Admiral) in Mar 2002.

At present Rear Admiral Brijesh Jhang, MSc(Ele), MSc(Def Studies), ptsc, psc, LDMC is at the helm of affairs as the DGNAI.

Mission

• Adopt modern quality assurance tools and techniques.
• Establish NABL accredited test lab facilities at Controllerates and promote creation of centres of excellence at field units for in service surveillance (ISS), in-house life extension/assessment and indigenisation of critical naval armament stores.
• Emerge as effective interface between the user needs and the design/production/maintenance agencies to achieve desired quality products.
• Establish a viable model to encourage private participations in indigenisation of critical naval armament stores and their components.
• Establish real time connectivity with production/field units towards minimising delays in exercise of AHSP functions.
• Training of service officers and civilian staff at premier institutes in the field of modern quality assurance tools and techniques.

Vision

Maximize operational availability of safe and reliable armaments through innovative and continually improving quality assurance solutions by leveraging domain knowledge in armament life cycle processes and also catalyse timely indigenisation through in-house expertise and synergy with design, production and proof agencies.

Organisational Structure

Making the Professionals

It is said that Rome was not built in one day. Similarly, the making of a true NAI professional is not an easy task. One has to undertake a strenuous journey to become a specialist in armament inspection. Following are the glimpses of the journey one has to undertake to become an NAI Professional:-