It's official - India is not ready for war
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - In the first official admission that India is not ready for war,
particularly with Pakistan, Defense Minister A K Antony has blamed government
red tape for delays in modernizing the military.
"Even though our government has earmarked huge budgets [for the military], this
is not being fully reflected in our modernization efforts. Allocation of money
has never been a problem. The issue
has rather been the timely and judicious utilization of the money allocated,"
he said at a recent seminar in New Delhi.
"We need to cut down on unnecessary procedural delays, bottlenecks and red tape
in our procurement mechanism," he added.
Antony said though the government had created the Defense Procurement Procedure
(DPP), more changes in procedures were required to "optimize transparency,
fairness and to ensure speedy procurement".
The DPP was unveiled by the government in 2008 in hopes of speeding up the
acquisition of armaments, systems and platforms while ensuring greater
transparency in the procurement process.
The government on Monday indicated it was reviewing the provisions of the DPP
to remove bottlenecks and usher in greater private participation in the defense
production sector, reported the Hindu newspaper.
"DPP had been revised for the fourth time in 2008 and it still requires further
refining," said Sashi Kant Sharma, the director of General Acquisitions at the
Defense Ministry.
India's defense expenditure for 2008-2009 dipped below 2% of gross domestic
product for the first time in decades, an amount less than the global average
of around 2.5%, and which lags behind America's 4.1% and Pakistan's 3.5%.
Officials have told Asia Times Online that India did not launch a military
strike against Pakistan following the Pakistan-linked Mumbai terror attacks
last November because army commanders told New Delhi the country lacked enough
artillery to defend its territory. (See
Indian army 'backed out' of Pakistan attack , Asia Times Online,
January 20 2009.)
Sources have told ATol that the Defense Ministry's existing budgets are
exhausted and that it is unhappy with delays in military procurement. The
ministry has been pushing this year for at least a 30% hike in its budget to
nearly 450 billion rupees (US$9.2 billion) for the armed forces.
In 2007-8 about 28 billion rupees was spent on weapons acquisitions out of a
budget of nearly 33 billion rupees. While in 2008-2009, a capital outlay of
nearly 37.5 billion rupees was revised down to 30.5 billion rupees due to
delays in the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, Eurocopter and BrahMos
contracts.
The parliamentary standing committee on defense said in its 2008 report that 13
billion rupees remained unspent in 2005-06, 30 billion rupees in 2003-04 and 90
billion rupees in 2002-03. These were funds which were supposed to modernize
India's armed forces.
In total, 210 billion rupees has remained unspent in the five years (2003-7),
as deals were scrapped or delayed due to controversy and kickback allegations.
The slippages led to a year-end surrender of funds in 2007.
However, change is in the air following the Mumbai attack. The India-Pakistan
tensions which followed have put a sense of urgency in India's military
upgrading efforts, and US$50 billion is expected to be spent on modernization
over the next five years.
Last week, Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major, the new chief of the air staff,
said the Indian Air Force would utilize annual budgets and spend the full
amount it has been allocated.
There is now hope that India's military will modernize as the government
loosens the purse strings. India's wish list includes fighter jets,
helicopters, nuclear submarines, radars, warships, reconnaissance aircraft and
long-delayed Howitzer field guns, among others.
Over 300 foreign defense firms and many Indian ones are looking to impress at
the Aero India-2009 air show in Bangalore from February 11-15.
Leading companies from Germany, France, Britain, Russia, the United States,
Italy, Belgium, Israel and Australia are participating. Major aviation and
weapons systems firms attending include Boeing, Sikorsky, EADS, BAE Systems
MiG-Sukhoi, Embraer, Bombardier and SAAB.
Last month the army made a fast-track order of 4,100 French-origin Milan-2T
anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), as the indigenous Nag missile is yet to be
operational. The 6 billion rupee order for the Milan ATGMs has been on hold for
a while, like other military orders.
Since Mumbai officials say there is an emerging consensus among the political
leadership, the bureaucracy and military commanders that New Delhi cannot be
"caught napping" again, given the heightened tensions between India and
Pakistan.
Although a drawn-out war between the neighbors has been more or less ruled out
due to expected intervention by Western powers, particularly the US, India
needs to be prepared for a short war with Pakistan.
"Surgical strikes [against Pakistan] are definitely feasible," India's army
chief General Deepak Kapoor was quoted as saying this week. "But whether you
wish to take that decision or not is a separate issue," he said.
India has a long way to go to put its near obsolete military arsenal in order,
as no defense contracts have escaped the usual cycle of corruption allegations,
political brinkmanship and investigations.
One example is the Bofors gun corruption scandal of the 1980s, when several
Indian politicians, including then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, were accused of
receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm
field howitzer.
This scandal severely affected the army's artillery modernization plan, with no
powerful guns being introduced since the 1986 purchase of 410 Bofors
155mm/39-caliber howitzers.
The army has been looking to import 400 such artillery guns from abroad and
manufacture another 1,100 domestically, without success.
Several experts' reports, including at least one by the independent Comptroller
and Auditor (CAG), have highlighted the inadequacies in India's main battle
tank (MBT) fleet - the main strike force of any army. Almost all of India's MBT
fleet are of Russian origin.
The CAG report focused on India's deficiency vis-a-vis Pakistan, as the more
immediate threat, but also deficiencies with regard to China are too glaring to
even be addressed. It clearly pointed at tank, upgrades and technology transfer
issues with Russia.
Last year, Kapoor also said that Russia had been delaying technology transfer
on the T-90s, which has in turn pushed back production in India. India
purchased 310 of these tanks in 2001 and in 2007, and signed a contract for
another 347.
Pakistan has a crack fleet of about 1,300 Chinese and Ukrainian tanks.
Experts have also highlighted India's inadequacies in missile attack capability
when compared to Pakistan's China- and North Korea-backed program. India's
efforts to test a nuclear-enabled BrahMos cruise missile failed last month. ’
Among India's ballistic missiles, only the short-range (150-350 kilometers)
Prithvi is battle-ready. Though India has successfully tested the longer range
(700-2,000 kilometer) Agni missiles, they are yet to be fully operational and
are still being tested.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist. He can be reached
at sidsri@yahoo.com.
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