DRDO products such as the Nag, Akash and Trishul missile have either failed or have been deliberately scuttled owing to the availability of options from abroad. This presents the new Defence Minister with what will be the trickiest dilemma he will probably face
As the new Minister for Defence, Mr Manohar Parrikar, takes charge, we need to assess the successes, failures and opportunities that the defence sector in India faces. Perhaps, one undeniable success has been the strategic missile programme, be it ballistic or cruise. Quite possibly, because India 20 years ago was one of the most embargoed countries on the earth. The developmental trajectory of these missiles had to be independent of foreign technology. While the other constituents of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme lagged behind due to the non-availability of foreign options such as surface-to-air or anti-tank missiles; India really did not have an alternate source for ballistic and cruise missiles. It was in this vacuum that the Agni and the Prithvi missiles came about. In spite of their excruciatingly slow development, they taught India’s scientific establishment two things — first ‘how’ to go about building, testing and perfecting a missile, and, second and more important, “why” certain components and parts in missiles just have to be a certain way.
While the ‘how’ is important in the production of any weapon system, it is the ‘why’ that connotes innovation and the ability to develop future systems. Take, for example, the Agni missile which, almost every two to three years, comes out with a new variant with a substantial reduction in size and an equally substantial increase in range. Similarly, the cruise missile Nirbhay, tested last month, started out with a range of around 700 kilometres and within the space of two to three years, has doubled the range to 1,500 km with no increase in size. The Prahaar missile is yet another example of this — which started of as a Defence Research and Development Organisation initiative — a missile that does everything that a Prithvi missile does at a fraction of its size.
On the other hand, DRDO products such as the Nag, Akash and Trishul have either failed or been deliberately scuttled owing to the availability of options from abroad.
This presents the new Defence Minister with what will be the trickiest dilemma he will probably face — how does a country support indigenous development that very clearly can produce amazing results with time, patience and in the absence of alternatives; but confers a short period of disadvantage to the Armed Forces, when economically feasible alternatives exist that can confer short-term advantages to the Armed ForcesIJ For example, acquiring the Rafale will very clearly give the Indian Air Force significant advantages, but will it help Indian industry develop the successor to the Rafale especially when it understands ‘how’ to build a Rafale but not ‘why’ certain design choices were made and, therefore, how to translate the knowledge gained into a tangible follow on productIJ Developing the Tejas missile, on the other hand, will clearly satisfy both the criteria, but will saddle the Air Force with a plane whose abilities are no match for the Rafales in the short to medium term, though sustained development may enable it to achieve some level of parity in the long run.
The question then comes down to this: How well do India’s security managers think they can handle the situation for the next 20 to 25 yearsIJ Are they or are they not able to manage conflicts in that period to avoid the exposing the Indian Air Force in any significant way where the performance differential of the Tejas will adversely affect the situation and are they able to channel enough resources so that the timelines for the Tejas’ performance deficit are compressed into a short enough period so that its next development cycle produces a fully combat ready aircraftIJ The clearest example of this is the Israeli Shafrir air combat missile. The first variant of this infrared missile was a disaster and failed to score any kill in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Yet, Israel persisted in its efforts and by the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the Shafrir 2 became quite possibly the deadliest air combat missile, accounting for 89 enemy aircraft shot down. This was possible because Israel accepted and factored in the short-term performance deficit of the Shafrir 1 and invested in further development in the hope that the Shafrir II would be a stellar project (which it was).
However, this is because Israel has always been clear about its security goals. In India, the Armed Forces have not fought a single serious war since 1971. Obfuscating security objectives is seen as the highest form of art the Ministry of External Affairs can practice, and the MEA’s dogged pursuit of the nonsensical delusions like non-alignment and strategic-autonomy has meant the Indian Armed Forces have not taken part in joint operations to learn from the mistakes or successes of others.
This strategic isolation combined with our socialist system means that on one hand, public sector defence enterprises do not work to the rules of the market and cannot balance means with ends. On the other, it also means that our Armed Forces have been led to believe that the Indian situation is somehow unique. A few years back, at a meeting at the Centre for Air Power Studies, after an intensive briefing by the French and British of their air campaign in libya, the whole briefing was dismissed as “irrelevant” by the presiding officer. That briefing was about how their air forces could discriminate targets on the ground with great precision — identifying Muammar Gaddafi’s forces from the rebels from distances of several tens of kilometres (in some cases upto 150 kilometres) and use a new missile — the brimstone — to target that one jeep without causing civilian casualties. Why is this relevant to IndiaIJ
Well, because unbeknown to the presiding officer a certain chap called Hafiz Saeed openly holds court in lahore, not 20 kilometres from the Indian border; and that most terrorist training camps in Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir are located within 50 kilometres of the Indian border, usually in girls’ schools.
Clearly, then, the onus of defence reforms is not on the DRDO alone. The MEA needs to get its act together and provide clarity to the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces for their part need to realise that ‘nothing but the best’ and their inability to absorb short term disadvantages is a grave disservice to the nation. But most importantly, Mr Parikkar needs to realise that the next time a big terrorist attack happens on Indian soil and the Airforce chief presents him with no option — the culprit is not the DRDO but the Armed Forces.