[Modi embracing a calculating French President Emmanuel Macron]

The stormy after-effects of the US war on Iran so far has slowed the oil and LNG traffic from the Gulf to a crawl, and slowed down the country’s exports and the economy, and disrupted global trade as well. The exchange rate hit the Rs 100 to a single US$ mark, and Rs 100 is also, what a newspaper headline a few days ago screamed, the cost of a litre of petrol had exceeded. The conservation of hard currency reserves being the government’s primary concern, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looking sombre, advised the people the week before last to abjure foreign trips, conserve gasoline, return to the frugality of the restrictive COVID regimen of working at least two days of the week from home. BJP chief ministers promptly took to public transport with media contingents recording such gestures at economising, and the traffic visibly thinned on the roads.

The country seems to be heading into dire economic straits, with plunging indices. As one of the largest imports consuming countries in the world, its hard currency reserves of some $689 billion (as of end-May) are depleting fast, but is just sufficient, other than debt servicing, for less than 10 months of imports at the current rate of importing everything ranging from capital and consumer goods to energy. Worse, net Foreign Direct Investment that the government had hoped to ride to good times plummeted by 96% in just one year, from $10 billion in 2024 to $353 million last year, compelling Delhi to make nice with arch enemy China, and ease the flow of predatory Chinese capital into the country. So, even as China screws India economically, militarily, and diplomatically, India has to grin and bear it! To salt the wounds, Nature too is playing hookey — the Monsoons are going to be off by 60%, meaning by end-2026, the country will be on the ropes, food-wise as well. And by 2027, with catchment areas running low, water rationing?

In this desperate situation just when the people are getting down to the familiar belt-tightening measures, what are the government’s priorities? There are the anomalous announcements by the government of two starkly wasteful defence deals worth $53 billion. Of this sum the Dassault Company of France is pocketing $43 billion for 114 obsolete 4.5 generation Rafale fighter aircraft (that by this combat plane’s end-phase could end up costing the country upwards of $100 billion at current value), and the German firm Thyssen-Krupp Marine Systems (TKMS) another $10 billion for six HDW 214NG diesel submarines — the de-rated export version of the advanced HDW 212 in service with the Kriegsmarine (German navy). And the Indian army not be left behind has underway a huge T-72 modernisation programme!

The difference is while Dassault has refused to part with sensitive source codes, the Indian government has said it’d be satisfied minimally with just the ability to integrate Indian designed weapons and avionics encased in the Interface Control Document (ICD). The ICD manages the communications between sensors, weapons, Electronic warfare and other on-board packages. But the French refuse to transfer even this, knowing fully well that the IAF, longtime on their hook, will prevail with the Modi government, and they’ll have India buy the Rafale with no pretence at tech transfer. Meaning, the threats issued by the defence ministry that without the ICD Delhi would walk away from the deal, are fake, all noora kushti! And that Modi is going to hand France the sort of monies it needs to invest in the development of its 6th generation aircraft (Système de Combat Aérien du Futur). (The programme to produce such an aircraft jointly with Germany and Spain, has fallen through because of the French reluctance to share source codes. So at least, Paris is consistent!)

Germany has agreed to transfer all technology of the HDW 214 for the ironically named Project 75India, because there will be nothing Indian in it! Indeed, the French Naval Group that had competed for this same deal, offering a slightly advanced variant of the Scorpene already in the Indian fleet, was upset with TKMS for agreeing to offer India the source codes, arguing that this would only set up another competitor (like TKMS did with South Korea and Turkey)! But Original Equipment manufacturers need not worry, this is the Indian miltary they are dealing with — they will talk atmnirbharta all the government wants but when it comes to putting down money, they will jump at any rinky-dink item any Western firm produces, and it is the Indian government they are dealing with, it believes in subsidising innovation in foreign countries and upkeeping Western defence industries, and not in backing Indian talent and industry! That’s atmnirbharta in practise.

The problem is these defence purchases, especially of the Rafale is problematic in the main because manned aircraft are, modern warfare-wise, already EXTINCT. Surely, the Indian air force, navy and army are not unaware of the lessons from their very own Op Sindoor experience a year ago when it was proved beyond contention that it is the system (defensive in India’s case, and offensive in Pakistan’s) that matters, NOT the weapons platform. The outcomes of the Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles hitting targets in Pakistan on May 7 would have been the same with Tejas firing it rather than the immensely more expensive Rafale or Mirage 2000. For God’s sake, an escorted Airbus A320 rigged up to trigger a Brahmos from well within Indian territory would have had the same results! And it was the integrated Indian air defence system that on May 7-9 kept out Pakistani missiles. And it was the arrangement — the system — of the Pakistani JC-10 operating in radio silence, firing the Chinese P-15Es A2A missiles from within home airspace and directed to targets by the Swedish Erieye airborne warning and control system that surprised and shot down, sequentially, an IAF Rafale, MiG 29, and Su-30MKI. These aspects were mentioned in my blog posts from that time.

But if their own experience counts for nothing, perhaps, the Indian armed services can pick-up pointers from the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian drone and autonomous weapons systems are playing havoc with the Russian forces in the Donbas region. The cheap, compact but lethal Ukrainian drones brought the mighty Russian army’s mechanised/armoured columns to a grinding halt, compelled Moscow to ground its frontal aviation, even damaging/destroying a third of the Russian strategic air force — some thirteen Tu-22M3 bombers parked on the flight lines in widely separated bases, with daring day-time raids (on youtube for all to see!), and sank several major surface combatants, including the flagship, Moskva, and a conventional submarine anchored in Sevastopol, such that now the Russian Black Sea Fleet survives only in name.

Nearer home, a tough and resolute Iran absorbed all that the US threw at it and then proceeded to have its way in the Hormuz in the face of a stalled American military effort. It is attacks by the Iranian Shahed-136 drones and long range missiles hitting Saudi refineries and the main LNG processing plant in Qatar, that led to the regional oil economies shutting down and the Gulf states pressuring the US to end the fight. To add insult to American injury, the most advanced US nuclear powered aircraft carrier, Gerald Ford, stationed off Israel, was hit by Iranian missiles and quickly retreated to the safety of Greece or some such faraway place, off-theatre, for “repairs”.

And, by way of hard currency outgo, there’s the $500 billion worth of goods Modi-Jaishankar have agreed to buy from the US — a promise the visiting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio extracted from them last week. Of course, international economics doesn’t work this way, but just add the costs of the Rafale and TKMS contracts plus $500 billion in buying something, anything from the US, and soon India’s reserves will look like Pakistan’s.

In the context of a sinking Indian economy and a generally bad international political scene that Delhi apparently is unable to get a handle on, the Modi regime has nowhere explained why the country is being thus beggared, why such extraordinary expenditures on Rafale and HDW 214 are considered necessary, and why the IAF and Indian navy are being indulged when more economical, indigenous, alternatives are available and known to the Defence Ministry (and detailed in my books and writings, and in posts on this blog).

What can India do with the $53 billion that will be saved by junking the Rafale and HDW deals?

So, one more time, I will outline the alternatives that will spur defence industrial growth in the country and ought to be the solution. Rather than peddling license-produced products to the Global South, with this solution defence minister Rajnath Singh will be in a postion soon to crow about genuinely Indian designed and produced armaments and weaponry in foreign militaries.

Rafale is entirely redundant to need, and India and the IAF would be better off without it. If aircraft are mere launchers of weapons from safe, standoff range — which in truth is all that manned aircraft my be called on to do in the future, then Tejas — exactly the same 4.5 generation aircraft as the exorbitantly-priced Rafale, is fine. It may be prudent, however, to accelerate the manufacture of Tejas Marks 1A and 2 by asking the private sector firms tasked with producing the advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) to set up assemly lines to roll out the Tejas variants for IAF use and export. It will thus be an integrated programme to develop and showcase wholly indigenous aerospace talent and technologies for incorporation into drones of all types for all aerial missions, and into space-based systems (for sub-orbital warfare, for instance).

But this won’t happen.

In the event, the inescapable conclusion is that IAF and those in the government supporting the Rafale deal are doing so with the intent to kill off the Tejas-AMCA line, as they did in the mid-1970s when they approved buying the British Jaguar aircraft and finished off the home-grown HF-71/72 multi-role combat aircraft. Because where’s the money to payoff foreign companies and financially support Tejas and AMCA? The Jaguar deal was struck during the Morarji Desai-led Janata Party interregnum (following Indira Gandhi’s Emergency) and the commissions and the loot in train were parceled out to everyone in the procurement loop, major portion going to the then defence minister Jagjivan Ram (proof of which was published, incidentally, in the Surya magazine edited by Maneka Gandhi, presently the BJP MP from Sultanpur!)

And because DRDO and DPSUs have proven limitations — inefficient, ineffective, low labour productivity and with a long record of bringing NO project they undertake in on time and within cost, it is time for a profusion of new companies manned by young and eager tech innovators to be given the opportunity to lead the design and development efforts and for the private sector majors (Tata, L&T, Godrej Aerospace, Mahindra Aerospace, Bharat Forge, et al) to compete on a commercial-penalty basis with the DPSUs to manufacture the new, freshly Indian designed armaments incorporating every new technology our innovators can think up, and realise. That way lies “MADE in India” and a true atmnirbhar Bharat.

Re: HDW 214. Yes, Indian submariners exult at the metallurgy and structural engineering that permitted the HDW 209 in service still to pull off steep dives and quick ascents from the depths without a creak! But that was in the 1990s. Today, L&T can produce micron tolerances to weld together titanium double-hulled nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarines (SSBNs). In fact, it is precisely such capabilities that make nonsense of the navy’s claim that India’s hand needs to be held by Germans in Project 75i. To repeat for the umpteenth time, the preferred course should be for the navy to just buy the design for the HDW 214, and certain select technologies, like optronic masts, etc. from anywhere — tech the country lacks. L&T has the capacity to convert a design into an engineering plan and proceed with the project. According to industry sources, India could buy the HDW 214 design for a mere Rs 500 cr instead of coughing up Rs 70,000 cr for the entire package, when most of the technologies in it are already in the country. Further, the NG (New Generation) in the name is there because of the German Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system for longer endurance. Except the AIP system designed by DRDO and jointly developed with L&T and already successfully shore-tested, is actually in the same timeframe per estimated use schedule as the German one that will be affixed on the 214. Meaning, an Indian sub could go out to sea with the indigenous AIP system in the time the HDW 214 begins its production run here. Buying the whole German package means India buying technology the country already possesses, as already stated. Does that make sense? With respect to the select technologies, secure it from foreign vendors, but this time begin by reverse engineering these items right away. Contract an upcomng engineering firm for the reverse engineering task.

Is it anybody’s case that L&T cannot weld together technology-wise the far simpler conventional sub when it is producing the immensely more complex SSBN systems at a clip? How come so straightforward and obvious a take on indigenous tech-industrial capability is not evident to the Indian Navy or, worryingly, the Indian Defence Ministry and the Indian government????

And, in any case, how is the above path not preferable to India remaining a perennial arms dependency?