Indian Military News

[ramana]

The Week's Prasanan reports



Missile for MissileMO Beat

PMO BEAT



By R. Prasannan



Manmohan Singh tried to be even-handed while giving away the National Technology Day awards to DRDO scientists. He commended their work on missiles, tanks, aircraft, electronic warfare, radar and communication systems. Then he went ballistic: “Our current level of self-reliance in defence R&D is less than our capabilities.”



DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat, who has shot down incoming missiles endo- and exo-atmosphere, made an interception bid within the solemn atmosphere: “...The responsibility for self-reliance should be shared by all stake-holders of MoD [ministry of defence],” meaning the brass-hats and the babus.



Another ICBM from the PM: “...Some defence projects have been delayed... DRDO [should] learn from these experiences and work more closely with the armed forces....”



Saraswat's ABM: “DRDO neither has the power to impose its products on its customer nor the mandate or capacity to produce the developed systems all by themselves.” A point missed by those who compare defence scientists with space and atomic scientists! Space savants don't have to sell their PSLV to anyone. DRDO has to 'sell' Tejas, Arjun and Lakshya to phoren-crazy customers.



Saraswat then launched his own ICBM at the brass-hats: “...While the temptation may be overwhelming to field proven, state-of-the-art imported systems, they [the services], too, have a role to play in the economic and industrial growth of the country.”



Defence scientists have been saying ad nauseam that the services should order local ware in bulk for the industry to grow. But the Army has ordered just 120 Arjun tanks and the Air Force 40 Tejas warjets. No plane-maker in the world, save Hindustan Aeronautics, would set up assembly lines for 40. The services say the systems have to be proven 100 per cent.



No such problem when importing! The MiG-29, indeed the world's finest interceptor, was bought eyes closed when Gorbachev offered it for the first time outside the Warsaw Pact. The Sukhoi-30, the world's best plane of its class, had not even flown when India committed to buy 230.



Qualitative requirements (QR) are diluted if the foreign seller reduces price. But no dilution for Arjun, come hell, highwater or Pakistan's Al Khalid tank. QRs are upped for local ware, midstream. Some missile caught the fancy of IAF in 2004 and the QR for Tejas was changed, after the prototypes had clocked hundreds of test hours. The entire wing, made of locally-invented composite material, had to be re-engineered from square-one on the graph sheet. Nag, the third world's first top-attack anti-tank missile, is still in the lab because the generals asked for a longer range, after it had completed trials.



The Navy asked DRDO to build an electronic warfare system in the 1980s. When DRDO delayed, the Navy went for import. The Public Accounts Committee was horrified that the Navy had “firmly stuck to the short time-frame given to [DRDO] while liberally revising the delivery schedule of the foreign vendor”.



Indeed, DRDO men need to be pulled up. They bite more than what they can chew. They promise the moon, and deliver meteors. They think of themselves as product-developers; they should be technology-developers. Hopefully, the Rama Rao report, which A.K. Antony is implementing, will rectify the lacunae.



Tailpiece: In the 1930s, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ordered the Royal Air Force to take Hampdens and Wellingtons even before the prototypes had been tested. He sent the Bristol Beaufort into production straight from the drawing-board. When the Luftwaffe locusts came to bomb Britain into Stonehenge age, the RAF pilots raced to meet them in more than 10,000 rookie planes. That trust, which the brave-hearts had on the wise-minds of their country, created 'the finest hour'.

prasannan@the-week.com

Sadly in India there is little confidence in the boffins!



Anyway watch the space I think the PM is seized of the matter and is driving the reform.