*New Delhi: *India’s weapons-buying is frequently crippled by “multiple anddiffused structures with no single point accountability, multipledecision-heads, duplication of processes, delayed comments, delayedexecution, no real-time monitoring, no project-based approach and atendency to fault-find rather than to facilitate,” assesses a damningDefence Ministry report exclusively accessed by NDTV.
As a result of these flaws, the government’s flagship “Make in India”initiative for the defence sector, launched in 2014, “continues to languishat the altar of procedural delays and has failed to demonstrate its truepotential.”
The 27-point internal report prepared late last year by Minister of Statefor Defence Subhash Bhamre is a stinging indictment of the way the DefenceMinistry functions.
Of 144 deals in the last three financial years, “only 8%-10% fructifiedwithin the stipulated time period,” it says.
Significantly, a chart identifies how each step of the nine-stage processof ordering weaponry sees enormous delays.
The Defence Ministry says the Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard do notwork as a system.From the stage of Request for Proposal (RFP), when the government formallyreaches out to arms manufacturers to submit their sales pitch, to thedeal-closing clearance given by the Competent Financial Authority, thedelays are a whopping 2.6 times to 15.4 times the deadline.
The problems begin at the level of the headquarters of the individual armedforces, when the demand for new purchases is first raised.
Pointing at a “lack of synergy between the three services”, the report saysthat the Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard do not work as a system,which “puts greater strain on the limited defence budget and as a result,we are unable to meet the critical capability requirements.”
What’s more, different departments of the ministry “appear to be working inindependent silos” driven by their interpretation of policy and procedures.
Later, once a weapons purchase enters the Request for Proposal (RFP) stage,the average time taken to clear files is 120 weeks – six times more thanrules laid down by the ministry in 2016. “The fastest RFP clearance wasaccorded in 17 weeks while the slowest took a monumental 422 weeks (overeight years),” the report noted.
The report points out that the Armed Forces, as eventual users of theweapon systems, “continue to view the Acquisition Wing (of the DefenceMinistry) as an obstacle rather than a facilitator”. So there needs to be a”tectonic change in mindset of the ministry officials and the need of thehour is assigning responsibility and accountability.”
At the level of Trials and Evaluation conducted by the Armed forces, “theaverage time taken is 89 weeks, which is three times more than authorised.”The armed forces are a part of the problem here, as they list “ambiguoustrial directives, leaving scope for varied interpretation.”
Dr Bhamre says in his report that the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC)stage needs to be done away with altogether. “I am not sure whether any TOChas brought up any relevant issue, and is assessed to be yet another delayin the procurement procedure.”
The Cost Negotiation Committee (CNC) stage sees delays “about 10 times morethan that allowed” because of the inability of the Defence Ministry tobenchmark costs with global standards “especially where an item is beingprocured for the first time or involved Transfer of Technology.”
Shockingly, even if a weapons system actually makes its way through thisbureaucratic quagmire, an acquisition can be shot down when the filereaches the Finance Ministry or the Cabinet Committee of Security since”currently, the MoF or CCS is not aware” of the defence ministry’s plansand needs.
The report also flags the “raining of numerous queries, a few of them evenof a basic nature.”
In other words, the Finance Ministry doesn’t seem to have any idea of whatto do with a complex agreement once it is presented by the Defence Ministryfor financial clearance so that a contract can be signed.
Given the fairly hopeless bureaucratic jumble within the government, thereport lists a series of remedies to de-clutter the process, revolvingaround “accountability” and “ownership”, to ensure the purchase of weaponscan realistically be expected.
But ridding the government of this debilitating red-tape will not be easy.
Just last week, 17 years after the Air Force stated a requirement for 126modern fighter jets, the Defence Ministry shot down a process to build morethan 100 of these jets in India under “Make in India”.
The two main firms competing for this order were America’s Lockheed Martin,which offered its F-16 Block 70IN fighter, and Sweden’s SAAB, which wascompeting with its Gripen E/F jet.
America’s Lockheed Martin had offered to build its F-16 Block 70IN fighterin India.Now, the government wants the Indian Air Force to broaden the scope of thiscontract to also include multi-engine fighters, a decision taken soon afterthe controversy over the Rafale fighter deal where the government wasaccused by the opposition of not being transparent in its handling of thecontract with the French government.
For the Air Force, which is seeing its squadron strength drastically fallbecause older jets need to be retired, there is a strange sense of deja-vuabout it all.
In 2001, the IAF projected its requirement under the Medium Range CombatAircraft (MRCA) deal for single-engine jet fighters. The scope of the dealchanged dramatically when the government said that they wanted to includetwin-engine fighters in the IAF’s fighter-fly off. Since twin-engine jetsare heavier and more capable, “MRCA” warped into “MMRCA,” or MediumMultirole Combat Aircraft, a deal which was ultimately scrapped altogetherin 2016, after an incredible 15-year process. Finally, in 2016, realisingthat the Indian Air Force was desperate, the government agreed,controversially, to buy 36 Rafale fighters from France in an off-the-shelfpurchase worth more than Rs. 58,000 crores.
But there was still a semblance of hope because two years ago, thegovernment had also promised to open a brand new process for single-enginefighters, which would be acquired in significantly larger numbers, made inIndia and bought at considerably lower per-unit costs.
With the decision to scrap this deal, and given the ministry’s own trackrecord, it seems clear that the Indian Air Force will not be inducting anynew type of fighter for several years to come other than the indigenousTejas, which is smaller and less capable than the variants of the F-16 orGripen the Air Force was looking to acquire.
In December, NDTV emailed a set of questions on the report on DefenceProcurement to the Defence Ministry’s spokesperson, who acknowledged thembut offered no answers. Separate reminders through phone messages were alsoacknowledged but, again, no answers were provided. – NDTV