Over the last decade, India has been embarked on a mission to modernise its armed forces through the induction of state-of-the-art weapon systems. India has the fourth largest military in the world but, notably, all major weapon systems and aircraft inducted in the past or being inducted for modernisation, are from foreign sources resulting in huge drain on foreign exchange reserves. Estimates are that over the next decade, the nation will be spending around $100 billion on the procurement of military hardware.

As India has been importing 70 per cent of its requirement of military hardware, the Indian armed forces remain heavily dependent on foreign sources in respect of product support for sustaining the operational potential of its war-fighting machinery. This makes them vulnerable to the labile geopolitical and geostrategic paradigms. Apart from the inherent complexities of maintaining diverse weapon systems, the nation can easily be held to ransom by the supplier nations should India not tow their line politically. Internal upheavals in the supplier nations can also spell trouble for the Indian armed forces. This was the rather traumatic experience in the 1990s following the collapse of the USSR when there was a complete disruption in product support.

Since the mid-1960s, the nation was tied down only to the USSR for the procurement of military hardware. Non-aligned India was regarded by the West as being in the Soviet camp and hence was denied access to Western technology. Some of the equipment procured from the USSR such as the MiG-21 family of combat aircraft or the T-72 main battle tank, were produced indigenously under licence successfully in sizeable numbers. However, production under licence in India was not accompanied by transfer of technology that could have helped develop a strong indigenous industrial capability.

Following the collapse of the USSR, the situation changed radically. India now had access to military hardware and cuttingedge technologies from the West. To exploit the newly emerging opportunities, the government formulated a new procurement methodology dubbed as Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP). The DPP was structured to provide the Indian armed forces wider choice through an “open tender” system and best value for money with complete transparency. The DPP also incorporated provisions for offset obligations of 30 to 50 per cent for contracts of Rs. 300 crore or more and more importantly, for transfer of technology. With every passing year, the DPP was revised and made more stringent. However, even the rather inflexible and supposedly foolproof procedure has not been immune to the virus of corruption which appears to have become endemic. The DPP has in fact appears to have completely failed in its intent and purpose as since its introduction, not many contracts have so far been successfully concluded. Several high value tenders including those for 197 light utility helicopters and artillery guns have repeatedly run aground in the final stages on account of allegations of violation of procedures or wrongdoing. The most embarrassing of these was the cancellation of the partially completed contract with AgustaWestland for 12 AW-101 helicopters for VVIP travel. The latest bombshell from the government is the suspension of all contracts with Rolls-Royce for some allegations that are not yet clear. Latest reports also indicate that there are danger clouds for the Airbus A330 MRTT looming on the horizon. Also, the UPA Government has refused to provide to the French government, guarantee for completion of negotiations with Dassault on the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) tender. One shudders to imagine the impact of these developments on the operational potential of the IAF. At this point in time fate of the other tenders in the pipeline including those for the 22 AH-64D Apache Attack Helicopters and 15 CH-47 Chinook Helicopters that are in advanced stages, remains uncertain.

While the government proclaims that it is doing everything possible to develop indigenous defence production capability, despite the huge investments in the defence public sector undertakings (DPSU) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), there appears to have been no discernible success. The indigenous industry has not even been able to provide an engine for the Tejas or even a basic trainer for the IAF. But the best that the IAF can hope for is for a new government to take charge of the nation after the forthcoming national elections and formulate enlightened and dynamic policies as well as initiate positive action to pull the indigenous industry out of the morass so as to meet with the challenges to national security. In the final analysis, it is abundantly clear that inadequacies of the DPSUs and DRDO notwithstanding, we cannot wish away the fact that salvation for the nation and its armed forces ultimately lies in the development of true indigenous capability.