How does the open tender route compare with the foreign military sales or government-to-government route for acquiring defence equipment?

It appears that India’s ambitious medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) programme has moved up to the next rung of the defence procurement ladder—the ‘technical oversight’ stage. It may be recalled that after completing the arduous task of flight evaluation of all contending aircraft by May end, the Indian Air Force (IAF) was feverishly trying to complete the staff evaluation phase as early as possible. But with as many as six global aerospace majors in the fray with their frontline fighters—F-18/A-IN Super Hornet and F-16IN Super Viper from the US companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin respectively; the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassult’s Rafale from Europe; Swedish Saab JS-39 Gripen and Mikoyan MiG-35 from the Russian Federation—for the prestigious Rs. 50,000 crore ($10 billion plus) MMRCA deal, the IAF must have had to sift through a mountain of data collected during the comprehensive flight trials. It would have been asking for the impossible for the IAF to complete the task in a month’s time, incidentally set by none other than the IAF itself. The fact that the IAF was able to accomplish the task of staff evaluation and probable short listing in a two-month timeframe, is nothing but laudable. But how will it help in accelerating the rest of the procedure to facilitate expeditious signing of the contract?

In the next phase, the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is to provide what may be termed as expert oversight over the technical evaluation process. Headed by the Defence Secretary, the three-member team consisting of one Service Officer, one scientist from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and one representative of a Defence Public Sector Undertaking (DPSU) not involved in the MMRCA acquisition will be tasked to see whether the trials, evaluations of results, compliance to QRs and selection of vendors were done according to prescribed procedures. The TOC is also mandated to provide oversight on the adopted trial methodology during trials vis-à-vis trial methodology given in the request for proposal (RFP) and the trial directive. It can easily be seen that there is plenty of room for individual dissension(s). However, the good news is that the TOC has to give its ruling within 30 days (non-extendable), based on a majority decision and put up the report to the Defence Secretary. Therefore, if all goes well—with the acceptance of the staff evaluation report by the Director General (Acquisition) and the TOC report by the Defence Secretary—a stage would be reached to enable the process of commercial negotiations to commence.