The delays in acquisitions are symptomatic of the ills plaguing the indian air force—inability to take quick decisions, lack of political will and obsolete aircraft
By Vishwas Kumar
Slow and steady, it is said, wins the race. And the defense establishment in India seems to have taken that adage a tad too seriously. For a defense deal, said to be the mother of all such deals, and which started seven years back is yet to be concluded.
In 2007, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) launched an ambitious program to boost air power by acquiring 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) at a whopping $10.24 billion (Rs. 40,000 crore). Two years after the long-drawn trial process culminated in the selection of French Rafale fighter planes manufactured by Dassault, the deal is yet to be inked. This has led to a depleted strength of 38 fighter squadrons. Compare this to China’s 84, and Pakistan’s 21. China’s People Liberation Army Air Force has roughly 550 J-7s, while the fifth generation J-20 is expected to be operational by 2018-19 and the J-31 by 2020-21. As for Pakistan, the Chinese-made JF-17s will form the backbone of its air force.
Slothful intent
In an attempt to find out which way the wind is blowing, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius landed in India on June 30 and met Defense/Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and discussed the MMRCA deal. However, the new government is unlikely to immediately take a decision on such a huge purchase. This is likely only when a full-fledged defense minister is appointed after the forthcoming budget session in July-August. Even if the deal is signed in 2015, the first plane will be produced in India only in 2019-20.
The IAF needs an ideal mix of low, medium and high range fighter planes to tackle multiple situations. At present, it lacks low and medium range planes. Its air power situation has been further aggravated by a three-decade-long delay in indigenous development and production of LCA (Light Combat Aircraft). So, the IAF has to depend on aged Russian MiGs and induction of Sukhois.
These vexatious issues were discussed recently at a roundtable conference, “Air Power in India”, organized by Vayu, a top defense and strategic affairs magazine, and Stratpost, a defense news website, and moderated by India Legal.
The panelists were Admiral Arun Prakash; Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi; Air Marshals Harish Masand, Nirdosh Tyagi, M Matheswaran, Jimmy Bhatia and P Barbora; Vice Admiral (retd) Shekhar Sinha; Briga-dier (retd) Gurmeet Kanwal; Captain PVS Satish; Major General Ashok Mehta; Air Commodore Suren Tyagi; journalist and strategic affairs expert George Verghese; and defense experts Pushpindar Singh, Saurabh Joshi and Abhijit Bhattacharya.
Mountain warfare
Speaking at the event, Brigadier (retd) Kanwal said that India’s next war would be fought in the mountains. “Kargil, a limited war fought with Pakistan in 1999, reinforced the importance of air power. Even a war with China will first start in the mountainous regions. My argument is simple. Land forces (the army) will have difficulty in maneuvering the high mountains surrounding our borders in the east and the west. Our enemies will always have an advantage due to topography. In such a scenario, air power will destroy entrenched enemy positions so that land forces can move in. So, air power should be augmented if we want to secure our borders. It has to be given priority.”
Admiral Prakash blamed India’s political leadership for neglecting the needs of the armed forces. The last ten years of UPA-I and UPA-II, he said, were one of the worst for the armed forces and were a “wasted decade” in terms of building defense capabilities.
His assessment is based on hard facts. Out of the ten years of UPA rule, AK Antony was defense minister for close to eight years, from October 2006 to May 2014. The proposal to acquire MMRCA was finalized during his tenure. Earlier, in 2001, the IAF started discussions on filling the gap between the indigenously-developed LCA and the Russ-ian imported “heavy” SU-30 MKI. Tragically, due to mismanagement, neither is the LCA close to completion, nor the MMRCA deal. And alarmingly, by 2017, there will be a shortfall of 10 fighter squadrons, even as six “aged” MiG-21 Bison squadrons are forced to continue till 2022. The Indian Navy will have two-three fighter squadrons by 2017-18.
Lacklustre leadership
The IAF, too, is to be blamed for poor leadership, Prakash said. “What stopped the IAF from taking proactive ownership of its indigenous development programs? Can our government afford costly acquisitions from foreign countries? It is said that fifth generation fighter planes, presently being developed by foreign countries, could cost Rs.1,200 crore each. Should we buy these costly planes? Does our government has so much resource to spare,” he asked. “The IAF leadership should take ownership of all on-going projects, including the much-delayed LCA because the future lies in developing indigenous weapons and technologies,” he said.
Former Air Chief Tyagi said that while the Indian Navy had ownership over most of indigenous programs, this could not be implemented in the IAF due to historical and other reasons. He said that public sector organizations linked to it such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) were headed by political appointees, rather than those from the IAF. “We have very little role to play in running the affairs of HAL and other defense PSUs,” he clarified.
As for the MMRCA issue, Ajai Shukla, defense analyst and columnist, was emphatic that the acquisition process should be stopped and the deal scrapped. He said the reason was a simple cost-benefit analysis. The MMRCA project, he said, had gravely upset IAF’s budget to acquire and develop other weapons, without bringing any long-term benefits. “Our defense forces want costly weapons to fight simultaneously with China and Pakistan. We have fought one war with China in 1962 and everyone knows the result. In the meantime, China’s defense forces have galloped away. So, we have to take a realistic look at the situation,” he said. “Can our economy allow these costly acquisitions? Is there no option? These critical questions must be analyzed by the defense forces, especially the IAF,” he added.
However, Vinod Misra, secretary-finance (retd), ministry of defense, who played a key role in finalizing MMRCA’s acquisition proposal, sought to clarify matters. He said that many discussions and much planning stretching up to almost two years, had taken place before the MoD had decided to acquire the fighter planes. “In the end, we (IAF chiefs and bureaucrats) were in agreement that keeping in view the future security scenario; we needed to acquire high-end technology to develop fighter planes. That could be possible by first acquiring them from foreign vendors and then developing them indigenously with their collaborators,” he said.
MMRCA vision
The MMRCA deal ensures that initially a few planes will be acquired from foreign vendors, but the bulk will be manufactured in India. Misra pointed out that in the deal, the compulsory investments by the foreign vendor in local companies during joint production facilities was 50 percent of the deal amount, as compared to the normal 30 percent.
Tyagi, too, defended the MMRCA price tag. He said that for the first time, the concept of life cycle costs (LCC) was introduced to get maximum value for the dollar spent. LCC is the ratio between the expected time that a weapon/plane will last, in comparison to the money spent on its acquisition. “We consciously made an attempt for the first time to get a costly plane, but which was good, efficient and long-lasting,” he said. The IAF’s experience with MiGs, also called “flying coffins”, had been unsatisfactory due to the large number of accidents it was involved in due to engine and mechanical failures.
Deterrence, the best policy
Vice Admiral (retd) Shekhar Sinha suggested that India should follow the UK in its acquisition strategy, which focuses on getting value out of technology. “If we purchase good technology at a high cost, it doesn’t solve the purpose. We need a dedicated team of experts too,” explained Sinha. “We should always remember that no defense force in the world gets money to build fool-proof capabilities. What we need to focus on is threat evaluations and prepare our capabilities accordingly,” he said. “We need to build a dissuasive deterrence instead of building wholesale capabilities, which requires huge money. Can our government allocate such funds at the cost of ignoring other basic requirements like health, education, etc?” he asked.
It is important, felt the experts, to enhance the defense budget, which at present is around 1.75 percent of the GDP, in comparison to 3-4 percent of the GDP that of China. Almost 80 percent of the defense budget goes into “committed liabilities” (salaries, money for deals, etc), which leaves little for new acquisitions.
Crippled air power
Speaking of the shortfall of fighter squadrons, Pusphindar Singh said that a large number of IAF fighters were obsolete and had reached an exhaustion point in their structural limits. “Withdrawal of these aircraft is no longer a matter of choice, but a matter of necessity and safety,” he said. He summed up Indian air power’s grave crisis: force levels were reducing to alarming lows even as rivals were expanding and modernizing; the LCA program had dragged on for three decades; and the acquisition of MMRCA was floundering. The armed forces need to be far more proactive in engaging with the administration and industry and the administration itself must streamline acquisitions, keeping in mind the broader strategic picture and economic realities.
Experts said that without clarity on the country’s strategic vision vis-à-vis neighbors, the defense forces were unable to project their requirements and state of preparedness. Prakash said: “I am hopeful that the new government will come out with a strategic document to end the state of permanent confusion among the armed forces about their present and future enemies. We (defense forces) implement the political leadership’s strategic vision. All our future requirements in terms of weapons, modernization, force strength and logistics are based on projected roles. If we need more engagement in world affairs, the political establishment has to provide the budget for it.”
Ashok Mehta demanded that the political leadership come out with a written strategic document. “The armed forces have been asking the political leadership for strategic clarity for a long time. We have high hopes from the Modi government, which has got a huge mandate. During elections, Modi had promised that the defense forces would be taken care of. We hope he keeps his promise.” India’s security hinges on this assurance.