Union Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Minister Praful Patel’s red flag to the IAF’s bid to urgently replace its fleet of 56 ageing Avro aircraft has forced the Defence Ministry to postpone the entire process itself.
The decision to postpone the acquisition was taken in a meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister A K Antony here on Monday. It means it would be another spell of long wait before the IAF gets the much-needed transport aircraft’s replacement.
The DAC last year had cleared a proposal to acquire planes through Indian private sector industry in a bid to give a fillip to the indigenous sector. Patel, however, in a letter to the Defence Ministry objected to it and said the public sector should also be invited to bid for this contract worth over `12,000 crore. Responding to the objections, Antony deferred the decision for acquisition for three months.
The DAC on Monday decided to postpone it till the next meeting of the council, officials said here.
The DAC also postponed three other proposals including the acquisition of M-777 ultra light howitzers from the US, two landing Platforms Docks (lPD) and 16 multi-role helicopters for the Navy, they said. The Army was to buy 146 howitzers guns through the Foreign Military Sale(FMS) route from US and the deal is worth over 800 million dollars.
However, the DAC cleared some proposals worth over `10,000 crore including hand held thermal imagers, thermal imaging sights, light machine guns and light armour multi-purpose vehicles.
Phase two of modernisation of air field infrastructure worth over `1,125 crore was also cleared. This comprises upgrade of 37 airfields all over the country with special focus on the north-east, officials said. The first phase of modernisation included upgrade of nearly 40 airfields and advanced landing grounds.
As regards the cost break-up of other proposals, the ministry cleared acquisition of 4,000 hand held thermal imagers worth over `1,400 crore. Thermal imaging sights for tanks, including 2,000 pieces for T-72 tanks(`1,000 crore), 1,800 pieces for T-90 tanks(`860 crore) and 1,200 pieces for BMP armoured personnel carriers(`964 crore) also got the nod.
A proposal to procure 44,000 pieces of light machine guns worth over `1,328 crore was also cleared, officials said adding these guns will be made in India. The proposal to buy 702 light armour multi-purpose vehicles pegged at `1,200 crore and a repeat order of 250 pieces of stand-off autonomous air to surface weapon system from Israel worth over `622 crore was also okayed.