In Hot Pursuit
April 24, 2020
The longing for self reliance in our armed forces has been long
overdue and needs attention. The spirit of indigenisation needs a renaissance
to contemplate India as a modern nation. During partition, Independent India
received 70 per cent of British Indian Army, 80 percent of its Royal Indian Air
Force and 60 percent of its Royal Indian Navy. In the first budget of
Independent India, the Ministry of Defence was allocated with 92.74 crores to
facilitate our immediate requirements.
Most of our assets were of foreign origin and hence our late PM
Jawaharlal Nehru laid his faith on public enterprises for self- reliance. A
number of institutions, laboratories, enterprises were raised to realise this
goal. In the process 52 DRDO laboratories, 41 Ordnance factories were set up.
Today, India is the second largest importer of Arms after Saudi Arabia
importing 9.5% of the global share which should have been completely the other
way around. So, Indigenisation has always been our "Achilles heel".
There have been many success stories in our struggle for
indigenisation. Some have been in the pipeline for decades and many have been
shelved due to cost and time overrun. Quality standards is another cause of
concern and even completed projects did have less or no procurement in the
forces. Our biggest failure is that we couldn't come up with a quality assault
rifle and we are still struggling to make a working engine of 90kN. Even the
transfer of technology (ToT) too hasn't done wonders in stimulating our
localization. Apart from genuine cases, the government too hasn't shown keen
interest in procuring indigenous products.
Geopolitics has played a vital role in import substitution in our
act to balance global powers. Integrated Guided Missile Development Program
(IGMDP) under Dr. APJ. Abdul Kalam is one of the silver lining in our many
efforts of indigenisation. Though there are many indigenious projects
currently, I look upto the LCA project and the recent LCA Tejas FOC variant
flight trial with much optimism.
Long Awaited
The Light Combat Aircraft Tejas project was initiated in 1983. It
had its first test flight in 2001. Recently, on March 17, 2020, HAL flight
tested LCA Tejas FOC variant (SP- 17, formerly SP- 21) for the first time
piloted by HAL's Chief of Test Flying, Air
Commodore KA Muthana VSM. This is something to rejoice because the FOC
variant has been long and much awaited to take its flight. The HAL has taken 12
months to conduct this flight trial since it got the FOC certification from
CEMILAC (Center for Military Airworthiness Certification). The successful
flight trials are due to the great efforts of HAL, ADA, IAF, DRDO and other
such organisations involved in this great indigenisation process.
The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) cleared the procurement of
83 LCA Tejas MK1A and awaits the nod of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)
to proceed for large scale production. The procurement amounts to approximately
Rs. 39000 Crore. This would be the single biggest indigenious procurement for
the Indian Air Force. The rate of production of LCA Tejas is 8 aircraft P/A
till 2017 and now improved to 16 P/A. These positives are add-on with the HAL
posting a record revenue for the financial year 2019-20.
Open Up Purses For
R&D
The amount we spend on our R&D which is less than 0.7% of our
GDP is pathetic, whereas the US spends 2.8%, China spends 3.2%, UK spends 1.7%,
France spends 2.2% and Russia spends 1.1% of its GDP. We need to narrow down
this gap and spend much on R&D to innovate. At the heart of this lies
patent filing which can make us a global player.
SIPRI REPORT 2019
The SIPRI report 2019, released on 9 march, 2020 has many
positives and negatives for India. The global arms trade had increased by 5.5%
in the period 2015- 19 compared to 2009- 14. It is for the first time that
India has been listed in the 25 largest exporters of major arms list with a
share of 0.2% in the global arms trade during the period 2015- 19. The top 3
clients of India are its neighbours namely Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Mauritius.
Myanmar has a share of 46%, Sri Lanka with 25% and Mauritius with 14% amounting
to 85% of India's arms export which are mostly carried on through the Line of
Credit (LOC) mode facilitated by the Government of India. A recently released
data of the Ministry of Defence says that India currently exports to 40
countries across the globe. The percentage change of India's arms export share
from 2010- 14 to 2015- 19 is a staggering 426% and ranks at 23rd among 68
states identified as major arms exporters.
The cause of concern for the Indian State is that it is still
hugely dependent on foreign nations for its defence needs and stands second in
Top arms importers list with Saudi Arabia in the first place. The top three
suppliers of India are Russia maintaining its supremacy with a share of 56%
followed by Israel with 14% and France with 12%. One thing to rejoice with this
import data is that, India's share of arms import has reduced to 9.2% during
the period 2015- 19 from 14% during 2010- 14. The other thing to notice is the
fact that India has a much diversified supplier list such as Russia, France,
Israel, USA, UK, South Korea, Ukraine, UAE, etc
in comparison to Pakistan and China.
The Brahmos missile system and the Akash- Surface to Air missile
system are in the interest of the South East Asian nation and talks are
optimistic in the South Block. A separate export variant of the LCA called the
TejEX is also in the development process. Such high value highly critical
exports will augur well for India in its future and rise us in the export
ladder.
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