Indian weapons imports under the
gun By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Suspected irregularities in
the purchase in 2000 of seven Barak anti-missile
defense (AMD) systems and 200 missiles from Israel
Aircraft Industries Ltd (IAI) have kicked up a
political storm in India.
But even as
political parties seek to score points over each
other, there is concern in defense circles that
should the government break ties with the Israeli
arms company at the heart of the scandal, it would
have serious implications for India's military
modernization program.
Last week, India's Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) filed charges against former
defense minister George Fernandes, retired chief
of naval staff Admiral Sushil Kumar and the
president of the Samata Party (to which Fernandes
belongs) , Jaya Jaitly, in the purchase of the
Barak weapon system.
It has alleged that
Fernandes went ahead with finalizing the deal
despite objections raised by the government's then
scientific advisor, Abdul Kalam, (now the
country's president) and the government-run
Defense Research and Development Organization
(DRDO). The CBI has said that Kumar had
recommended the missiles based on
misrepresentation of facts. It has alleged that
kickbacks amounting to about $450,000 were paid to
Jaitly.
According to the CBI statement,
"The then-defense minister not only approved the
proposal for import of Barak AMD Systems, but
tried to get the proposal approved by the Cabinet
Committee on Security." The negotiated rate of
$268 million also was $17 million more than an
earlier agreed rate, for which there was no proper
justification, the statement said.
India's
then-scientific advisor had objected to the Barak
deal on the grounds that "[the] imported
anti-missile defense systems have a failure rate
of nearly 50% as witnessed by DRDO during trials
by the services" and that delivery would take one
to two years. By that time the indigenously
developed Trishul would be ready. These objections
were overruled by the defense minister and the
deal was signed.
The controversy over
kickbacks in negotiating defense contracts has
brought the role of middlemen under scrutiny.
Currently, India's Defense Ministry does not
recognize a role for middlemen in negotiating
defense deals. The government appears to be
realizing that given the fact that defense deals
are not possible without middlemen it would be
better to make the process more transparent by
registering the middlemen.
The kickback
controversy has also thrown the spotlight on
whether the decision to award the contract to
Barak was faulty, that is, was DRDO's rejection of
the Barak system valid. Senior officials in the
armed forces point out that the DRDO has often
managed to veto defense purchases, claiming that
it could deliver similar weapon systems, but had
repeatedly failed to match its promises.
In the process, "our military preparedness
has been severely compromised", is a lament that
army officers frequently articulate. The Trishul
system, for instance, which DRDO offered as an
option to the Barak system, is nowhere near
becoming operational.
There is concern now
that when the CBI sends its report to the Ministry
of Defense, the latter will have to blacklist
Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd, which supplied the
Barak systems, and impose a blanket ban on
dealings with it. The government is bound by law
to blacklist and freeze all deals with firms found
paying bribes and using other irregular methods to
win a defense contract.
When bribes were
found to have played a role in winning contracts
for guns from the Swedish firm Bofors, submarines
from the German company Howaldstswerke (HDW) and
guns from South African Denel, the government
blacklisted all of them. Whether deals with IAI
will suffer a similar fate is a question that is
worrying the armed forces.
Analysts point
out that the cancellation of contracts with
Bofors, HDW and Denel cost India's defense
preparedness dearly. The Bofors scandal derailed
the army's artillery modernization plan, from
which it is still to recover. The blacklisting of
HDW brought to an end a project that would have
transferred submarine building know-how to India
and adversely affected maintenance of submarines
bought earlier from the company.
Retired
Rear Admiral Raja Menon draws attention to how
India ended up alienating the Germans, who now
dominate the submarine industry. "It was a dumb
thing to do to land up on the wrong side of the
Germans. They are now coming out with the most
advanced air-independent propulsion system," he
points out. Breaking ties with IAI is likely
to be far more injurious to India's military
modernization and defense and security interests,
say analysts. The DRDO might have dismissed its
efficacy but today Indian defense officials firmly
believe that India needs the Barak system and to
shut off its supply would be foolish.
On
Monday, India's navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash
came out in strong support of the Barak systems.
"Of the 14 evaluation tests conducted, 12 were
absolutely direct hits and the other two failed,
one because of human error and other due to
technical reasons," he noted. "It's a very good
system. I don't think there is anything comparable
today in any navy."
"Barak-I is by far the
best system we have to protect our warships from
sea-skimming missiles like Exocet and Harpoon
acquired by Pakistan and others," a senior naval
officer was quoted as saying in the Times of
India. "It is the only AMD system compatible with
India's Brahmaputra-class warships. We evaluated
several AMD systems, including French and Russian
ones, but only Barak-I met the naval staff
qualitative requirements," he added. In fact, so
impressed is India with Barak-I that it is now
collaborating with IAI in the development of
Barak-II, a new-generation surface-to-air system
with a 60-kilometer strike range.
But
blacklisting IAI is not just about scrapping deals
for purchase of the Barak systems. IAI's links
with India's defense go deeper. It is one of
India's most critical military suppliers and is
involved in over a dozen other defense deals and
upgrades. It is supplying the Indian Air Force
with the $1.1 billion Phalcon Airborne Early
Warning and Control System (AWACS) and all three
services with unmanned aerial vehicles.
It
is a key player in the upgrade of several fighter
jets in the Indian Air Force, such as the Jaguar,
MiG-21, MiG-29 and Mirage-2000, and helicopters
such as MI-8, MI-17 and MI-35 and Antanov-32
transport aircraft among others. It is a partner
of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in the
development of the advanced light helicopter,
Dhruv. And India is on the verge of inking a deal
for purchase of the Spyder missile system, a
truck-mounted air defense system which can track
up to 60 targets at a time, for which IAI is the
main subcontractor.
Given the depth and
expanse of its relationship with IAI, any break
would have serious implications for India's
defense preparedness. Defense officials say that
India's relationship with IAI cannot be put in the
same category as that with Denel, so the response
cannot be the standardized. India's Defense
Minister Pranab Mukherjee admitted recently that
"these are totally different situations. The case
of Denel and Barak is not comparable."
There is the larger India-Israel defense
relationship as well that Delhi would be reluctant
to unsettle. India acquires cutting-edge military
technology from Israel. Israel is India's second
largest (after Russia) defense supplier with
military sales worth about $900 million a year.
The left parties in India have been
demanding that ties with Israel be scrapped. The
controversy over the alleged payment of bribes by
IAI has now provided them with additional reason
to demand action against Israeli companies. "They
should be prohibited from any future
transactions," said a statement issued by the
Communist Party of India (Marxists) (CPI-M).
The ruling Congress Party, meanwhile, is
playing its cards carefully. It is seeking to
separate the payment of bribes in negotiating the
Barak deal from the quality of the missiles. It
would like to watch Fernandes - a bitter critic of
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and an ally of the
previous government - sink.
But it does
not want the Barak deal and India-Israel ties to
get hit in the process. "A sharp distinction has
to be made between defense preparedness, the
product in question, and corruption in the defense
deal," says Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi.
"The security of the country is paramount. No one
is alleging that the product lacks quality. But no
matter how meritorious the quality of the product,
corruption in a deal cannot be allowed to be
condoned."
Separating the corruption issue
from questioning the quality of the Barak systems
is the easy part. The Congress is likely to find
the act of balancing the country's interests in
maintaining defense ties with Israel and the
party's interest in calming its left allies a far
more difficult task.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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