Defence Research and Development Service
scientific civil service of India
Defence Research and Development Service (DRDS) (Hindi: रक्षा अनुसंधान एवं विकास सेवा) is a Central Group 'A' Civil Service of the Government of India. DRDS scientists are Gazetted (Group A) defence-civilian officers under the Ministry of Defence. They are responsible for developing new technologies and military hardware for the Indian defence and security forces.
History
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) came into existence in 1958 by the merger of the Technical Development Establishment and the Directorate of Technical Development and Production with the Defence Science Organisation. DRDS was formed in 1979, and a separate Department of Defence Research and Development was created in 1980, which later on administered DRDO and its 52 laboratories/establishments. A senior DRDS scientist was made the Director General of DRDO, Scientific Adviser to the Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister of India) and ex officio Secretary of the Department of Defence Research and Development.
However in 2015, the post was bifurcated and the senior DRDS scientist held the post of Director General of DRDO and the Secretary of the Department of Defence Research and Development. And a younger and experienced DRDS scientist was made the Scientific Adviser to the Raksha Mantri (SA to RM). Further in 2015, the post of Director General, DRDO was renamed as Chairman, DRDO.
Recruitment
DRDS scientists are recruited into DRDO by one of the following means:
Direct Recruitment through Scientist Entry Test.
Transfer of officers from other Group A technical civil services, particularly through the Indian Ordnance Factories Service.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Defence Research and Development Service” as scientific civil service of India. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as scientific civil service of India. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30693302. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1979, 1980 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Defence Research and Development Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.