The Challenges To India’s Defence Modernisation

[Zarvan]

Acquisition And Offset Strategy

To expand India’s defence industrial base, India has long relied on its offset policy to engage in transactions with foreign suppliers and promote transfer of technology, thereby leading to indigenous defence production. First introduced in 2005, the offset policy has gone through several revisions in the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) that have been released over the years (the latest one came out in March 2016). The transactions with foreign suppliers are aimed at enhancing the economic, technological, and the industrial capabilities of India.

India, as it is well known, has long relied on licensed production with overseas defence contractors. And as now offset is mandatory, India is likely to benefit from a transfer of technology with the rise in the number of offset agreements as a result of India’s increasing defence acquisition budget.

The increase in defence spending has become possible not just because of the tensions in the immediate regional security environment but also because of its rapid economic growth over the years that has given it a solid economic base. This should play a major role in increasing India’s defence offset appetite, which would give it the necessary financial resources to promote indigenous defence production.

However, India’s defence offset policy suffers from major challenges that require attention. India’s offset policy requires foreign vendors to engage with local defence companies through co-development, co-production, joint ventures, maintenance, and upgrades, but full mergers and acquisitions are not allowed. Therefore, foreign companies are hesitant to invest in a defence industry without having full stakes in the defence production.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the defence sector is capped at 49 percent, which again is a sore point for many foreign firms, as they believe that investments involve huge financial risks, and therefore, FDI cap in defence should be raised to 74 percent or even 100 percent.

Secondly, the expectation that a foreign vendor will engage in ‘complete’ transfer of technology to the Indian pattern of the system’s subsystems, modules, assemblies, and specific parts or components is too much to ask, given the commitments the offset policy of India demands.

Thirdly, India’s offset policy is based on an inflexible doctrine of indigenisation, and India’s offset policy should be made compatible with the economic dynamism of the global defence industry.

And finally, other issues in the offset policy should be addressed, such as the policy’s obligatory nature, objectives that need broadening, and most importantly, the inherent complexities, which need reduction.

Under the current offset policy, India under ‘Buy (Global)’ would purchase from the foreign or Indian seller, and under ‘Buy and Make with Transfer of Technology’ would acquire defence hardware from foreign sellers, which would be followed by co-development and joint-production. The estimated cost of acquisition proposal should be Rs 300 crore or more, ‘compensation’ or offset for the cost of acquisition under the ‘Buy (Global)’ category would be 30 percent, and foreign exchange component under ‘Buy and Make with Transfer of Technology’ would be 30 percent.

Foreign firms from major defence hardware exporting countries find such conditions difficult to fulfil as there are literally no incentives, and because of a lack of proper monitoring mechanism and issues related to intellectual property rights.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) released an incomplete version of DPP 2016 on 28 March 2016, which saw the introduction of a new category titled ‘Buy (Indian Designed, Developed, and Manufactured)’ or Buy (IDDM) for the first time since its inception in 2002. That means the Indian government has recognised the need for encouraging scientific talent in India and has placed importance on “indigenous design”, development, and manufacture. However, critics would argue that it is too early to judge or predict the efficacy of the document as it misses many critical issues and does little to address problems that beset decision-making in the MoD.

What India Needs

Each of the services of the Indian Armed Forces today needs urgent modernisation to face the complex security challenges that emanate in an increasingly unstable neighbourhood and a complex strategic regional security environment. The Indian Army, which is one of the largest standing forces in the world, possesses weapons and equipment that are bordering on obsolescence and need to be replaced. The next step should be to acquire network-centric capabilities to optimise the Army’s full potential in defensive and offensive operations.

The critical capabilities that are needed to be enhanced (as Lieutenant General JP Singh noted in an interview with Centre for Land and Warfare Studies, New Delhi) are “battlefield transparency, battlefield management systems, night-fighting capability, enhanced firepower, including terminally guided munitions, integrated manoeuvre capability to include self-propelled artillery, quick reaction surface-to-air missiles, the latest assault engineer equipment, tactical control systems, integral combat aviation support, and network centricity.”

Also, urgent steps should be taken to enhance the operational capabilities of Army aviation, engineers, signal communications, reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition branches in order to improve the Army’s overall combat potential so that it can face aggression of any magnitude.

India needs to take urgent steps towards extensive naval modernisation so as to secure its security interests in the Indian Ocean Region and beyond. India should look to augment its naval power by acquiring capabilities for maritime domain awareness in the area of responsibility, including space-based surveillance, maritime reconnaissance, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The Indian Navy should be equipped with modern capabilities in fields of tactical aviation, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), anti-air/anti-missile, land-attack, mine counter-measures, and electronic warfare. It is equally important to make sure that Indian Navy is integrated by the networking of ships, submarines, and airborne platforms via satellites. In the end, the government should commit to self-reliance and indigenisation, with the objective of harnessing national strengths in ship-building, engineering, electronics, and information technology (IT).

The Indian naval modernisation, though much delayed, has begun to pick up steam as seen from the recent developments where deals worth thousands of crore have been made to expand India’s naval fleet and India’s naval dominance capabilities.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is a full-spectrum force equipped with very capable platforms and trained manpower, but the numbers are inadequate for intense and lengthy operations. India must take urgent steps to maintain an edge over the adversary through technology and force employment.

The IAF is at the forefront of technology, but India should push towards self-reliance, as it has to develop its own technology and defence industrial base. India’s track record in R&D, however, has been dismal, and it is continuing to face a number of challenges in terms of meeting the quantitative requirements to defend the Indian skies. As per one of the recent reports, the IAF has only 32 squadrons of fighters, the lowest in a decade, while it needs at least 42 squadrons to protect its western and northern borders from Pakistan and China. Also, as aircraft such as MiG-21s and MiG-27s in the IAF are old and ageing (which date back to the Soviet era), India is likely to lose another 14 squadrons by 2019-2020.

Commercial negotiations with France on the deal over Rafale fighter jets are far from over, and India has yet to start the production of its first indigenously built aircraft Tejas (the project is more than 30 years old). India has to focus urgently on air dominance and control of the air by building capacity to indigenously produce future capabilities for the design and development of aircraft, heavy attack helicopters, and other combat and surveillance-related capabilities for further projection of air power.

From India’s point of view, the most crucial component that has to be implemented for better integration of the services of the Armed Forces is a robust and an efficient Command, Control, Computers, Communication, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) system. An integrated Indian C4ISR system will be central to augmenting India’s overall defence capability.

With better integration of the services of the Armed Forces, it is also essential that there is integration between the Armed Forces, defence and intelligence agencies, and other government and private organisations as well. This would provide a joint force that would protect the country from traditional as well as asymmetric threats while providing flexibility, analysis, interpretation, and efficiency. This would also give advantages such as information assurance, control and disruption of information, data processing and management, quicker decision-making, and larger system integration.

A strong political will and an enabling framework for the involvement of players from different sectors (such as private sector or academia) for indigenous production of such capabilities would be essential, which is turning out to be a key national security imperative.

Conclusion

Threats from China and Pakistan leave India with no other option but to augment its defence capabilities to secure its national security interests. India’s pace of defence modernisation, however, has been slow because of a number of inherent holes in the system, such as the lack of a National Security Strategy doctrine, or a long-term strategic defence plan, which are impediments in terms of evolving a clear-cut strategy to meet the defence requirements of the Armed Forces by making a thorough analysis of the security challenges in the immediate regional security environment.

Moreover, India’s inability to produce advanced, sophisticated weapons systems and advanced defence technologies indigenously has severely affected its aspirations of becoming self-reliant in defence production, thereby remaining heavily dependent on foreign sellers for defence purchases, which in a way or other, do expose India’s vulnerabilities. Adversaries may seek advantage in case they happen to know India’s vulnerabilities, which in turn would have severe implications for India’s national security. Therefore, the policy priority for the Indian civil and defence establishment should be to take necessary decisions to ensure that India’s defence requirements are met as soon as possible through indigenous production.

India’s indigenous defence production capabilities have, however, not grown because of a number of challenges. There is a lack of the greater political will that has severely affected decision-making in terms of acquiring weapons on time as per the needs of the Armed Forces. The Indian defence industry suffers because of under-utilisation of human resources that has negatively affected India’s defence R&D base. Because of the unfriendly defence industrial procurement system, it has resulted in few co-development and co-production ventures with foreign firms.

The lack of a conducive financial framework for the local industry to do business in the defence sector, especially for the private sector, has also negatively impacted private participation in the defence sector. Therefore, the urgent focus for the Indian government should be to encourage private individuals and entities in India that could contribute in indigenous defence production. This would mean that India would achieve its goal of self-reliance only if it allows more private players in India to participate in the defence sector, and the true potential of the Indian minds are utilized.

Also, initiating or implementing further defence reforms, such as streamlining procurement and offset policy and introducing newer positions and staffs for better policy coordination, would be essential if India wants to reduce the qualitative and quantitative gaps between its defence industrial base with that of the other major powers.

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