Reason being both were bought and selected under the single-vendor FMS which not only guarantees everything is above board but also means there is no need for comparative selection processes which is incredibly time consuming and opens the door to unsuccessful firms lodging complaints and stalling the entire process- the RSH/LUH is a primary example of this. This contract should have been signed 3-4 years ago goddammit and Antony has been sitting on it for more than 2 years now and all he had to do was use his discretion and the procurement would have moved foreword but because of his desire to protect himself above all else the procurement is in no-man's land and god knows what is going on with it.
Man you really are on a rant and got completely biased towards him now. C130J and C17 were not faster because they were FMS route procurements, but because they were just procurements in low numbers and with specialised requirements and therefor there wasn't really a competition (the later also for political reasons, but that's another issue).
Take the M777 howitzer procurement, the ATGM procurement, or even the P8I procurement, all competitions, even if the final procurement goes through FMS route and ALL of them had their own set of delays! So FMS is not the golden way to not get delays.
You are also wrong about the LUH competition, because the first re-issue was based on the fact that IA's RFPs did not clearly stated if civil or military versions could be the base of the offer, so once again a mistake in the RFP of the forces, while the recent issue of the competition is not based on a complaint by a loosing vendor, but that MoD sees a relation in terms of corruption in that and the VIP helicopter competition (which I can't see at all).
And how can the LUH contract been signed 3-4 years ago, when the forces still evaluated the helicopters in 2011/12 (Leh trials)?
So basically all your accusations are wrong and that because you are trying to make him look self oriented, ONLY because he tried to follow the rules and tried to keep the defence procurement clean! You are attacking him because he is the head, but you are ignoring all those that caused the briberies and corruption cases, which are officers in the forces. Every failed or delayed indigenous development was blamed on him and not the project managers and scientists. General VK Singh that is more acting like a politician with a clear self centric policy, or the former Admiral were heros suddently, although the biggest mishaps and shortcomings happend under their watch.
Antony was far too soft for too long against the forces and scientists, he should have integrated a joint chief and he should have set limits to when an investigation is started or that an evaluation is put on hold only after an issue is proven, or that he allowed monopolies of DRDO and Co. But to claim he did everything wrong, because he wanted to have a clean image, rather than a clean defence is just as the bogus reports about IN being weaker than 10 years ago or not combat ready!
The fact remains, that our forces are far stronger and far more capable than by the time he took over!
The fact is, that he focused the defence procurement on ToT and offsets back into our industry to improve it and get more foreign vendors to India for defence production (Airbus, Boeing, LM, Sikorsky, AW, the Russian vendors...all are based in India now and divert credible ammounts of production to India!)
The fact is, that he constantly invited the privat Indian industry to play a bigger role in Indian defence (the last was the offer to take over the Avro replacement, or the Pilatus production instead of giving it to HAL, but it's the privat industry that keeps rejecting it!)
The fact is, that he pushed the procurement strategy not only to competition to reduce costs and gain side bendefits, but now also geared it to combine the production in India with Indian partners (government owned or private) like in the FICV, the howitzer competitions, or even MMRCA.
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If we look at both sides, it's hard to deny that he pushed more in favour for the Indian defence industry than anybody before, be it through indigenous developments, JVs, co-developments, licence productions, offsets and ToT. It was under his watch that we got possibly the most crucial co-developments for the future, be it Brahmos, FGFA, MTA, or Barak 8 and we can only hope that the next DM will follow his ways for more co-developments for India as an industrial hub for the global defence, because that's the best for India and Indias defence!
