More Disruption Please

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Bharat Karnad
Now let there be a course correction in defence and international relations
THE RULING BHARATIYA Janata Party’s success in the recent state elections, crowned by the stunning results in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, has stamped Narendra Modi as a political man without parallel perhaps in the history of the Republic. No Prime Minister so far has sported such keen political antennae that pick up the slightest tremors of popular anger and angst, gauge the people’s frustrations and despair, and shape the voters’ collective consciousness and cater to it with appropriate government action and policies. He can apparently do no wrong. Everything he attempts, however dubious, turns into a political windfall (to wit, demonetisation). That unerring sense of what will play at the grassroots level is instinctive, not something learnt over time. If this were not the case, Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav would now be preparing for bigger things, one as Congress party chief busying himself to replace Modi at 7 Race Course Road two years hence, the other as UP Chief Minister consolidating his hold over the country’s most populous province and positioning himself in national politics to pole vault into the Prime Minister’s seat should the opportunity arise. But compared to Modi, these two seem like amateurs, ‘bachcha log’ playing at power daddies. Then again, there’s no stalwart political leader elsewhere in the country who is the Prime Minister’s equal. With BJP boss Amit Shah playing Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Modi has tamed the opposition and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and about wrapped up the 2019 General Election as well.

However, for a politician who has overturned every political rule of business at home, remade his party, and is in the process of making the country over, the surprise is that he has not been disruptive in India’s international relations. Disruption is what got China to where it is now, has strengthened Pakistan’s hand in dealing with great powers, and provided North Korea the wherewithal to hold the US at bay. The adoption of a disruptive attitude and policy mindset that has helped other countries make it in the harsh global milieu should commend itself to Modi, who has embarked on realising a brash ‘new India’. This will run smack into the Ministry of External Affairs’ traditional advice to prime ministers emphasising continuity and caution, counsel that Modi has faithfully followed since May 2014. His foreign and military policies are a copy of those pursued by the much reviled Congress Government of Manmohan Singh. But it is not a recipe for a ‘big bang’ impact.

The ‘short-term maximiser’ policies that Manmohan Singh followed, mixed more recently with the drumbeat about terrorism and ‘surgical strikes’ to pressure Pakistan, have about played themselves out. It has never made strategic sense, moreover, for India to buy goodwill of the West and Russia by signing multi- billion dollar deals for high-value military hardware, and this approach won’t persuade the Trump administration to leave the H1B/L1/H4 visa channels slightly ajar for Indian techies to squeeze through. Nor will any big power relent on India’s membership to the UN Security Council, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, or even the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum— unless Delhi shows it means business.

What is not recognised in Delhi is just how crucial reaching a modus vivendi with Pakistan is to India’s great power ambition. Pakistan is sufficiently strong, especially with military, economic and technological aid and assistance provided by China, huge transactional fees (as a frontline state on Afghanistan) extracted from the US, and a Russia loosening up on military supplies, to seriously hinder India’s plans. Maybe Modi is aware of the importance of cultivating Pakistan. His clearing the visit by three Members of Parliament, including Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, to attend the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in Islamabad soon after the announcement of the game-changing Uttar Pradesh election results, is a good sign. Perhaps the Prime Minister will follow this up by reviving the Musharraf solution for Kashmir. Atal Bihari Vajpayee almost accepted President Pervez Musharraf’s July 2001 proposal, which offered Islamabad a fig leaf to back out of championing the Kashmir cause by forming a joint India-Pakistan body to ‘oversee’ the state’s affairs even as each country retained sovereign authority over J&K territory in its possession. It’d have turned the Line of Control into the de jure border. But with Vajpayee’s advisers distrusting Musharraf’s promises about stopping jihadi terrorism, that solution was interred in Agra.

If despite a horrible record of violating contractual obligations, the Indian Government trusts Washington, Paris and London to deliver specialised ordnance and critical military spares in crises, Modi can surely take the far lower risk of trusting Pakistan to stick to its word. And now there’s a Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is mulling the Indian model to keep the army out of politics. Were Modi to show the slightest interest in a Musharraf-type compromise, an entente with Pakistan is possible, with Bajwa likely supporting the Nawaz Sharif regime.

It will forever rid Indian policy of its Partition pathologies and the tendency to externalise communal tensions in society into mindlessly adversarial relations with Pakistan. The result will be that the United States, Russia and China, in the main, that have manipulated Delhi by calibrating their approach to Pakistan, will be bereft of that lever. It will be the foreign policy reset the country has long been looking for, raising India’s stock and Modi’s standing in the world, and comprehensively enhancing the country’s geopolitical stature and diplomatic leverage. With the big powers losing their punch, Modi can play off the US against Russia, Russia against China, the US against China, and generally position India as the global power balancer able to twist the outcomes of regional and international forums to India’s advantage.

IN TANDEM WITH those developments, Modi has to ensure that India ends its arms dependence on foreign countries by rejigging his ‘Make in India’ programme. Apparently because of lack of clarity on its objectives, this policy has so far cued the licence manufacture by private sector players of obsolete weapon platforms, such as F-16 combat aircraft of early-70s’ vintage. Constituting a parallel capability to that of defence public sector units for assembling weapon systems based on screwdriver-level technology will not, however, make India self-sufficient in arms. Nor will it help set up a profitable, self-sustaining, high employment-generating national defence industrial powerhouse that acts as a technology innovator. For such an industry to be viable, India would need the integration of public and private sector resources, economies of scale, and a military fully reliant on indigenously designed weapons and equipment.

Yet, decisions to meet military needs with imports get more egregious by the day. The latest is the Navy’s opting for an imported carrier fighter plane at the expense of the navalised Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, thereby all but killing the latter’s development as a flagship enterprise that showcases the country’s capacity to design and produce complex weapon systems. The foreign aircraft for our Kochi-built aircraft carriers won’t be inducted before 2025, by when the naval Tejas, of reduced weight, would be available for induction. In the face of reckless foreign procurements by the armed services, Modi has to do something revolutionary: announce the termination of all underway defence deals and ban all armament imports. Since the addiction of Indian armed services to foreign military goods could cost the country $250-$300 billion over the next 25 years, going ‘cold turkey’ is the only remedy. There will be withdrawal pains, but if this ban is combined with making the military brass and Defence Ministry bureaucrats in the acquisitions loop—everybody, that is, from the armed services’ chiefs to the defence secretary—formally accountable and responsible for bringing indigenous armament projects in on time and within allotted cost frames, the impact will be enduring. With a Damocles sword hanging over their necks, you can bet there’ll be no pussyfooting.

Negative reactions from supplier states grown fat on arms sales to India can be expected. But Modi can ward them off by warning that any untoward action will mean an instantaneous cut-off of access to the Indian market. It will have a salutary effect. In this respect, Modi may care to recall that it was precisely the Western technology denial regimes of the 1980s and the consequent absence of an import option that compelled India to become entirely independent in strategic armaments—ranging from nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarines and accurate long-range missiles to nuclear weapons. Replicating such results in the technologically far less challenging conventional weapons sphere should not be difficult.

It only needs a strong-willed Modi to shut down the deeply entrenched arms import eco-system in Delhi that features foreign arms companies, commission agents, and hordes of facilitators within and outside government. If the Modi dispensation has so far escaped being tainted by defence scams and charges of corruption, of bribery and payoffs, that have tarred many reputations in the past (including Indira Gandhi’s), and brought down the governments of Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, it is a matter of luck. Unless the arms import lobby is weeded out, root and branch, the influence on Indian policy of the US, France, Russia, Israel and the UK will remain unchecked, and the resulting corruption will end up soiling the BJP Government’s escutcheon, doing Modi’s reputation and his 2019 re-election prospects no good.

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Published in ‘Open’ Magazine, March 17, 2017, at http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/mandate-2017-comment/more-disruption-please

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ITBP — best paramil, rising with new roles

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is the best para-military around, with very good operational ethos and habits. Recognizing its abilities, the Modi government has decided to put it in charge of the country’s border with Myanmar. In fact, the 15 new battalions  that the Assam Rifles (AR) — India’s oldest paramilitary organization, is raising will now go to ITBP instead, even as it takes control of the border with Myanmar, and tries to shut off the flow of arms to rebel movements and insurgents active in the northeast. A Cabinet note formalizing this enlarged role of ITBP coupled with pullback of Assam Rifles from border policing has been prepared and will be put to the Cabinet for approval very soon.

This shock of Assam Rifles, officered by the army, no less, has hit Army HQrs, which has not come to terms with its officers and the AR’s established modus operandi being directly blamed for the continuance of tribal insurgencies in that region and is, understandably, resisting the move.  Army’s loss of face aside, the failure of army led AR in the last few years has become so pronounced, a drastic solution is believed necessary. Of special concern was intelligence that army officers deputed to the AR were a mostly compromised lot. As much to blame were the Assam Rifles’ method of basing its units some 40-50 kms behind the actual border, which only helped the unhindered movement of insurgents, arms and ammo. This in turn kept the insurgencies oxygenated. There’s, moreover, enough evidence with the government to suggest that the flow of Chinese arms into the northeast was facilitated by China through the Kachin Army it controls in northern Myanmar.

The government examined ITBP’s performance not just on the Tibetan border, but also its sterling successes in one of the worst Naxal-infested areas, the Narayanpur District of Chhattisgarh. Some eight  ITBP battalions are deployed there and has resulted in the Marxist guerilla fighters in that area being on the run, desperately avoiding fights. The reason for this, it is realized, was because of ITBP tactics. Firstly, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the main force in anti-Naxal ops, sticks to the roads in the hinterland and uses lorries for movement. Owing to their road-boundnes, Naxalites routinely mine these country roads, blow up truck transports carrying CRPF units, register mounting casualties, and hurt the morale and emphasize the ineffectiveness of government forces. Further, the ease with which the Naxal cadres operate and their aggression in tangling with CRPF only burnishes their reputation with the local tribal people, firms up their support among the latter, and reinforces Naxal control of the ‘Red Corridor’ running from the Andhra region all the way north to the Nepal border.

ITBP personnel, on the other hand, used to walking  and preparing to fight in mountainous terrain — there being no roads or other infrastructure in the Himalayan uplands, have no problems in establishing their presence and wrenching back control from the Naxals in the areas its units are posted to. Deploying for 2-3 weeks at a time on long range patrols, ITBP jawans and officers live off the land, move rapidly and stealthily  in the jungles, and hunt down and eliminate Naxal fighters. Unused to such tactics by these foot-mobile government forces, the Naxals run because they can’t match the ITBP firepower either. Thus, the areas assigned to  ITBP soon become devoid of  Naxals. A DG, Chhattisgarh, reportedly mused rather loudly that if he had sufficient ITBP units, his state would be rid of these home-grown ideological insurgents  in double-quick time.

Further, AR’s inflexible strategy of staying back from the border is in sharp contrast to the ITBP’s of installing itself right on the border it monitors. This impressed the PMO as did  the other attributes (some of which are discussed above). These aspects taken together convinced Prime Minister Modi that ITBP was the force to rely on to seal the Myanmar border, prevent the rebels from easily replenishing their arms & ammo stocks owing to its support base across the border, choke off the insurgencies, and compel the rebel groups to come to the negotiating table.

This is all very good, and ITBP deserves all the kudos. But it has nested problems the government should address. As its name suggests ITBP is meant for the Indo-Tibetan border, its skills and competences honed for the specific Himalayan milieu. Dissipating its role and mission by pitting it against Naxals, the northeastern insurgents, etc. is to end up blunting its core expertise, and diminishing its utility. India needs more specialist forces on Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the main, because the Chinese PLA believes there are no big wars, only small wars that become big. In other words, the country and government need to strengthen ITBP, make it a genuinely powerful force on China border to ensure that should small-time hostilities be initiated by PLA, they remain small. ITBP’s usefulness should, in fact, be enhanced by (1) recruiting Tibetans from the exile community in India, and (2) the officers in particular given Mandarin language training in order to make them proficient in handling small scale Chinese contingencies, generating intelligence, and having the capacity to gauge Chinese intentions, all on their own. In other words, ITBP should be assisted to become an even more consequential China border force.

If, however, the ITBP ethos and tactics are prized, then why not depute on short term basis the specialist ITBP officers to run Assam Rifles, and to lead counter-insurgency state police and CRPF units in the fight against Naxals? Their task will be to train AR, CRPF, et al to become more like ITBP in their fighting skills and methodologies, and to get the jawans from these latter units off their butt, off trucks, and on foot for long term deployment without much logistics support, in the jungles of Central India to finish off the Naxals once and for all, and to shut down the flows of everything, including armed rebels, from Myanmar. This is the best solution.

On its part though,  ITBP morale is hurting because, for all its efficiency and effectiveness, it is controlled by Indian Police Service officers occupying top posts, rather than allowing the Force’s own encadred officer corps to fill these positions and run ITBP. This is cause for much heart-burning and discontent, and the Modi government will be well advised to pay heed. IPS officers, like their counterparts in the Indian Administrative Service to which most of the IPS recruits aspired, have become a generalist cadre with no specialist skills or domain expertise, and generally muck up things as IAS members do elsewhere in running very disparate agencies of government with only minimal understanding of what they should ideally be doing. If ITBP is a good force, it will become even better if their own officers are given the opportunity to run it. And because, ultimately, it is the quality of officers that distinguishes one paramil org from another, one thing you don’t want is a thoroughly disaffected ITBP officer corps.

Posted in China, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian para-military forces, Indian Politics, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Myanmar, SAARC, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism, Weapons | 30 Comments

Tejas & the single-engined fighter aircraft debate

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Perhaps, of interest: A video debate on the merits of sticking with Tejas vis a vis producing the Swedish Gripen E or the American F-16 Blk 70, featuring RK Tyagi, former Chairman, HAL, AVM Kapil Kak (Retd), R Rajagopalan ORF, and yours truly. Also included are the commercial pitches made by Saab and Lockheed Martin reps at AeroIndia 2017. Judge for yourself what makes more sense. It is at:

 

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, United States, US., West Asia, Western militaries | 13 Comments

Counter China on Tawang solution, and rid Maldives of Abdulla Yameen

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

It is not surprising that in the wake of the Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s most recent visit to China, Beijing has hinted at its solution of choice to resolve the border dispute. India, this solution goes, can have the rest of Arunachal Pradesh and freeze the border at the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh and in the Central Sector, but will have to cede the Tawang Division containing the Tawang Monastry, which is at the very core of China’s Tibet problem.  “The major reason the boundary question persists is that China’s reasonable requests have not been met,” says Dai Bingguo, the former Counselor in the Zhongnanhai and one of the latter day architects of China’s India policy. “If the Indian side takes care of China’s concerns on the eastern section of the border, the Chinese side will respond accordingly and address India’s concerns elsewhere.” http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/china-ready-to-cede-land-for-part-of-arunachal-pradesh/articleshow/57438182.cms.

So, what’s the problem with Dai’s solution? First of all it only exacerbates India’s strategic problems while robbing Delhi of the one serious leverage it does have — Tibet. With Tawang in Chinese custody, China will kill two birds with a single stone. It will position China permanently on this side of the Himalayan watershed and enable it to consolidate its military position on the plains. That strategic problem the Chinese PLA faces of credibly sustaining military actions on the Indian side of the LAC will be instantly gone. Beijing will then feel free to build up militarily on its own territory in the Tawang wedge with what horrific results for India’s security can only be imagined.

But let’s assume Dai’s solution is a mere negotiating gambit — the first move, what should India’s response be? Not jump on this wretched deal as the best Delhi can get, which I suspect is what Jaishankar will suggest to prime minister Narendra Modi. This counsel Modi should reject with extreme prejudice.  A reasonable counter should skirt around the Tawang issue by promising measures to ensure the Tibetans in India don’t pose any security problems to China in the future, and to tie this up with Beijing getting Pakistan to vacate its occupation of Balawaristan (Gilgit-Baltistan and all of the Northern Areas). To sweeten this transaction, Delhi could offer to sign on to the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project.

Of course, this is “a bridge too far” for the Chinese to get to, let alone cross,  and is generally unrealizable even with Beijing’s friendship with Islamabad that in Chinese words is “deeper than the sea, and higher than the mountains”,  but that’s the whole idea. If China can forward a perfectly ridiculous, one-sided, solution of India ceding Tawang and tout it as reasonable, then why should Delhi quail at responding in kind with a nonsensical remedy with an equally straight face?

The larger strategic calculus is simple enough. Resolving the territorial squabble by other than legitimating the LAC as international border makes no sense, because now the Indian Army is fairly well entrenched at the eastern and the western ends, and however much the PLA may huff and it may puff, it cannot easily overcome the Indian military buildup in these regions. Should an Indian government at any time begin to think strategically for a change and shift the Indian armed forces’ operational focus north and east-wards, away from Pakistan, Delhi will have the monies to get 17 Corps going, raise two additional mountain offensive corps, and the wherewithal to conduct a remorseless kuttayuddha (covert war) in Tibet using Tibetan exiles in India, and to link up this effort with the activity of the radicalized Uyghur Muslim “splittists”  gathering strength with the defeated Baghdadi’s ISIS guerillas now reportedly streaming back home, and intent on realizing a “river of blood” in Xinjiang — yea, per the old saw of the enemy of my enemy is my friend — then we can create a really bad situation for China at its western extremities. To obtain that condition, why not persist with the status quo?

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Isn’t it time to rid the Maldives of the troublesome President Abdulla Yameen Gayoom? He is proving to be a major headache. When he visited Delhi in April 2016, he gave no indication of what he had up his sleeve. And, in any case, is Indian intelligence even in the neighbourhood so poor that the Modi govt had no inkling of Yameen’s long-lease of the Faafu Atoll to the Sauds? If there’s any strategic foresight anywhere in Delhi, it is time to show  it in Male. Modi should  immediately dispatch a naval flotilla with a MARCOS contingent to the Maldives and  instruct the Indian High Commissioner there, Rajeev Shahare, to visit with Yameen and tell him to nix any draft-agreement leasing any Maldivan atoll to anybody except India, and definitely not to Saudi Arabia, the locus genesis of the Salafi-Wahabbi incubus infesting the Islamic regions, the rest of the world, and India’s Kerala. This may crimp Modi’s not fully baked strategy of cultivating Riyadh and the Gulf emirates, but Maldives in India’s backyard cannot be allowed under any circumstances to pass under Saudi and hence wahabbi-terrorist control.

Shahare should remind Yameen that just as the Indian Army’s airborne ops (Op Cactus) in 1988 summarily dealt with the mercenary coup d etat-ists headed by Abdulla Lutufi, and saved his relative the then beleaguered President Abdul Gayoom’s goose, a dose of pointed MARCOS attention may do him no good. Liberalizing the Maldives, forcibly if need be, is not a bad idea for Delhi to undertake. A government of the Maldives Democratic Party requires to be installed in Male with India’s trusted friend Mohammad Nasheed as President.

It is because India has not taken care to preserve and protect its national interest by periodic displays of  good old “gunboat diplomacy” that it has suffered so many reverses in its maritime approaches.  Time for Modi to correct this situation, for Abdulla Yameen to depart the Male shore, and to round up the salafists, including the locals, who have taken up the radical Islamist Cause. May be the Faafu Atoll can be turned into a Guantanamo -style hard prison for Islamic extremists.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, Cyber & Space, Decision-making, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Maldives, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism, Tibet | 17 Comments

Trump drives a stake through the Indian tech-settlers’ mindset and Modi’s

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Just returned from an extended session this morning on News X TV channel covering Donald Trump’s 1st State of the Union address to the US Congress. Firstly, not sure why the Indian media is stuck on covering purely internal American events with often embarrassing interest, unless, of course, they mean to cater  to the aspirational middle class in small and big Indian towns and cities who hope, somehow, to secure a ticket to the land of their dreams. That ticket, in recent times has been provided by the H1B or L-1 visa, which immigration channel; has buttressed the traditional longstanding route into the US — the I-20 student visa.

What few Indian commentators understand  and have, therefore, not noted is that the chief attraction for these would-be Indian “economic refugees” to America of once settling down there is the “family reunification” provision open to any legal migrant. This has been used by several generations of Indians to cart not just their spouses but the extended family into the US, namely,   parents, parents-in-law, siblings of either or both sides. On average, a single Indian immigrant can thus take an additional 10-12 persons with him. That door is now getting shut.

Trump has declared in his address that his immigration policy will allow persons with merit to legally come into America but not immigrants who can’t fend for themselves economically or are otherwise unable to contribute in a substantive way to the US. AS he said, he will especially bar the group of people seeking to migrate to the US who will end up being  a burden on the social and public services of that country.

Foreign Secretary Jaishankar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will try and modify that stance by emphasizing, as newspaper reports suggest, the wealth the HiB/L1 visa holders create and their contribution to the US economy and hence the advisability of retaining, if not enlarging, these entry channels. This will not cut mustard with the Trump Administration.

But let’s assume for argument’s sake that Washington stays its hand on closing down the H1B/L1 route, how motivated will potential Indian immigrants to America be once they discover they can’t import a whole bunch of their family members into the US? I suspect there will be a definite falloff of interest.

That said, this is a great opportunity for the Modi government to reverse its fairly foolish  policy of encouraging an ever bigger Indian brain drain to the US and the West in the hope of using the thus expanding Indian population in the US, in particular, as political and diplomatic leverage, and as external support base able to support the Bharat Janata Party monetarily. But Trump’s rejection of free trade and the notion of competitive advantage of countries as driver of international commerce means he will be more than happy to see still larger quantities of the sorts of things the Modi government seems keen on acquiring — old weapons (M-777 ULH) and platforms (F-16), but not let up or give even an inch to other countries. As he pointedly reminded his audience worldwide — “I have been elected to be President of America”, not president of the world.

And India can expect no real help or assistance to counter China or contain terrorism emanating from Pakistan or elsewhere beyond Trump’s interpretation of US interests, and he will expect India to pay for every little bit of security it gains therefrom! The US president had made plain that Asian partners, allies, friends will all have to ante up monies, there being no such thing as free security, any more than there’s “free lunch”.

If Modi and his PMO, and  Jaishankar and Co. at MEA haven’t grasped this essential, fundamentally changed, reality, then there’s lots more New Delhi is going to keep getting wrong to the nation’s detriment. To repeat what I have said in previous posts, PM Modi, adapting himself to the new conditions, should prepare for hard, and possibly futile, negotiation in which because Trump will not concede even a sliver of advantage. The question is will, can, Modi rein in his fascination with America, and his apparently natural inclination to please Westerners, long enough to prevent Trump having his way with India?

Trump’s “Make in America, Buy American” call is clear indication of his intent. The trouble is Modi’s “Make in India”, whatever its intent, for all practical purposes, translates into “Buy American” and assemble the product in India! GOI better get into its head that hereafter the only way the national interest will be served is to match the Trump Administration and be severely transactional which, realistically, may be beyond Modi to manage.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China military, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, NRIs, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 22 Comments

State Elections – Tidbits

Posted on February 28, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Just some state elections tidbits I picked after interacting with some MPs. Conversing with knowledgeable politicians is always a treat and the ongoing elections in various states was one of the issues I informally plumbed in discussions on the topic of the underway  popularity contests. Two in particular may be of interest.

The Badals and the SAD/BJP combine are unlikely to be returned to power in Punjab, I was told, because of the scale of corruption the ruling Family indulged in in their ten years in the saddle. Consider one metric and a comparison with Tamil Nadu at the other end of the country. Punjab and Tamil Nadu have about equal number of liqour vends, around 1,600 in each state. However, the liqour consumption in Punjab is several multiples of the level of the hard stuff imbibed by the people of Tamil Nadu. But, and here’s the clincher,  the Punjab exchequer last year reported only some Rs. 6,000 crores as revenue from liqour sales while the Tamil Nadu government in its budget showed liqour sales revenue in excess of Rs 28,000 crores!

Uttar Pradesh:  BJP, I was informed,  was  in even play in the first three rounds of the ongoing elections in that state meaning, perhaps, a sub-par performance. But its game apparently picked up in subsequent rounds, and it expects much from eastern UP  in the next few days. An awful lot of money has been spent by BJP to ensure there are adequate returns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s extensive touring of the state combined with some very intensive canvassing.  Nothing less could have been expected with Modi’s reputation on the line, and his chief lieutenant, Amit Shah, pulling out all the stops.

The country awaits, no doubt with bated breath, the results on March 11. Of equal interest , to me at least, are the above two professional polictical assessments. If Badals somehow  pull it off and Modi’s remorseless, often heated, campaigning pays dividend then the PM will get the majority he needs in the Rajya Sabha to ram through his pet programmes in the nick of time and will, almost certainly, be assured another 5 years at 7, Race Course Road, come 2019.

 

 

Posted in civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, society, South Asia | 12 Comments

Missing pitchmen in Moscow, and price India will pay

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The foreign and military establishments in major countries are vast bureaucracies where policies get made by the outcome of clashing interpretations of the national interest, of course, but also by the influentials with access to the powers that be who shape and tilt policies one way or the other. Until some time back India had a very strong lobby in Moscow. As a small number of the well informed in New Delhi who are Russian-speaking and try to keep up with developments in Moscow attest, the one time large crew of well-placed officials — old India hands — who understood and empathized with India, and backed its initiatives, is fast disappearing as much because of natural attrition as the Indian government’s approach that is increasingly tilting US-wards and alienating well-wishers in the Kremlin. Soon New Delhi will find there is no one to pitch India’s case there.

Perhaps, this doesn’t matter much to the bulk of the MEA and GOI establishment who feel little need to have a close relationship with Russia to counterbalance the United States and cultivate leverage in both Washington and Moscow as a means of enlarging India’s policy choices and options, and the freedom to maneuver for best results. This was, until not too long ago, one of the drivers of Indian foreign and defence policies, and made for certain stability and equipoise.

With the death of the Hindustani-speaking Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin, ironically, on 26th January, India has lost the most powerful voice on its behalf, a man who was carefully listened to in Moscow and who, for years, sculpted the Russian government’s attitude toward this country. This is a big void that will be hard to fill.

As important, two other influentials who pleaded India’s case are turning away. Consider the other regional specialist Zumair Kabulov, an Uzbek, who until 2009 was the Russian Ambassador in Afghanistan and since has been President Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan. While earlier he was understood to have wanted an Indian role in that country, now doesn’t even mention India when Afghanistan comes up. (Refer his December 2016 interview at http://aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/exclusive-interview-with-russian-diplomat-zamir-kabulov/717573) Why is this important? Because this means Moscow has written off India as an independent actor even within the region with the standing and  ability to play a larger role in Asia, seeing it, rather, as essentially an American hanger-on. This was reflected in the original Russia-China-Pakistan conclave called to discuss Afghanistan that did not envisage Indian participation. New Delhi was finally accommodated but found itself isolated on this forum.

But when troubles come, as Shakespeare ventured, they come in battalions, another high Russian official, retired Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, possibly the most experienced of the strategic forces adviser to Putin, too has become less sympathetic to India’s fairly precarious position where its nuclear forces are concerned. Dvorkin, who in times past, argued for Russian support for a credible Indian thermonuclear arsenal and, by inference, for resumed testing if an Indian government got up the guts to initiate this time open-ended series of underground fusion weapons test explosions, too has cooled. With Kadakin gone, Kabulov and Dvorkin caring less, Kremlin will be left to make its decisions without the benefit of advice from the once India-friendlies.  This will mean that that little bit of extra consideration and warmth Moscow traditionally showed New Delhi will be missing.

In fact, there is evidence already of the hardening of the Russian position. The Indian government, one is given to understand, has already been told that Moscow will feel free to craft its Pakistan policy as it sees fit, including the sale to Pakistan Air Force of the MiG-35. The transfer of a few Mi-35 attack helicopters was to only whet the appetite. Russia’s pulling away will begin affecting strategically sensitive programs as well, starting with the Aridhaman — the second Arihant-class SSBN in the final stages of production in Vizag. Especially because Russia’s technologically far-reaching offers in the military technology sphere have met with tepid response. (More on this in a future post.)

Given the Indian government’s fairly pronounced West-ward slant, Russia has few takers in New Delhi, even fewer in the MEA which, top to bottom, functions like all but an arm of the US government. Indeed, President Donald Trump and America will lose nothing from closing down the US Embassy in New Delhi, and saving lots of money. Between Carnegie’s and Brookings’ active presence in Delhi, their ranks filled with former NSA and the like, and pliant media, commentariat, and MEA-MOD officialdom, it is virtually Washington on the Jamuna anyway.

What this means for India’s prospects is becoming clearer. With Delhi formally sliding over to America’s side in global power politics, it was only a matter of time before the effects became evident. One of Washington’s India policy weather vanes, Ashley Tellis, of Carnegie Washington, for example, has downgraded India from  an “indispensable” power to the US in Asia, to now, a merely “leading power” in the region. India will soon become, and be treated as, a client state — a lowly and contemptible status, sourcing for the US an endless stream of low-cost IT and other tech coolies. A client state is what Pakistan was. Except with some characteristically deft diplomacy, Islamabad has become fairly central to Chinese and Russian calculations in extended Central and southern Asia, even as it has held on to its prime slot as a”front line” state in US’s reckoning. Meanwhile, Indian emissaries, beginning with Foreign Secretary K Jaishankar in  the next week, followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his Washington visit scheduled for May, will beg for more H1B visas to “drain” India’s “brain” bank. Great going.

Posted in Afghanistan, Central Asia, China, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 19 Comments

Mystery behind repeated C-130 mishaps cleared

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

February 21st saw a C-130J Super Hercules while taxi-ing for a night sortie at the Thoisie ALG in Ladakh instead of taking-off, run smack into a solid structure, nearly shearing off part of a wing and an outer turboprop engine requiring major expenditure to make the plane fit again. That this plane had the CO of the Hindon-based 77 Squadron, a presumably experienced transport pilot, one Grp Cpt Jasveen Singh Chathrath, at the controls only makes it worse. Three years back on March 28, 2014, another of this type of airlifter on a low level Special Forces’ drop training sortie proved that in IAF hands, it is neither super nor Hercules, leave alone ‘super Hercules’, when it dove into the ground killing the entire crew. [Originally in this post written last night, I said that a C-17 had gone down. Not so, My wrong!]

After the 2014 C-130 accident,  the statement by the air chief at the time Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said the service had picked the best pilots to take charge of these American planes. If this is the level of aircraft handling ability of the best IAF transport pilots, then speculating about the averagely competent pilot’s ability (or lack of it) beggars the imagination.

But let’s tally the cost of the mishaps. The first lot of six C-130s were bought from Lockheed for Rs 6,000 crores, or a cool Rs 1,000 crore per plane. With one of these aircraft already lost, IAF has already had to write off Rs 1,000 crores. Not to be deterred, IAF means to buy a second lot of eight Super Hercules and, after a decent interval to give the Exchequer time to recover, a third lot of 6 aircraft for a fleet strength, minus the lost C-130, of 19 aircraft in all.

Ten C-17s were purchased for Rs 18,645 crores from Boeing, the unit price of some Rs. 1,865 crores. Fortunately, Boeing has closed down the C-17 production line. So IAF-cum-Govt of India’s apparent default option of buying C-17s and C-130Js more to keep Washington pleased  and the two US aviation  majors in a happy state of anticipating richer deals in the offing, than because acquiring more and more of such aircraft makes any military, economic, or even political sense — is a line I have taken in previous writings. Especially, as the IAF chiefs have time and again disavowed any expeditionary role for the Indian military, which is what these planes do best. In the event, if all that was required of these aircraft was to lift troops from one sector to another, the IAF could, surely, have made do with the more economical workhorses to-date, the An-12s and An-32s.

The CAG in its 2014 Report was harsh on the parties involved, slamming Boeing for not fulfilling its offsets commitments — no simulators and ground equipment, such as fork lifts, were set up on Indian air bases, the IAF for not preparing the Hindon tarmac and the potential landing grounds elsewhere to the level of the required Pavement Classification Number, and implicitly both the GOI and IAF for not making any fuss whatsoever about the US Company not delivering on its contract obligations. The CAG also pointed out that owing to the absence of special forklifts on all the potential bases and LGs, the Super Hercules was compelled to carry one in its belly wherever it landed or took off from, but it took so much internal aircraft space — fully 35% of the cargo hold, that instead of just one sortie to carry a full load, two sorties were needed to do the job. And that cost money. The CAG calculated that it costs India Rs 43.19 lakh for every hour a C-130 is in the air.  Post-CAG Report, whatever else was done or not done, Lockheed hurriedly setup a C-130 simulator near Delhi. It is not known if just one simulator is all that has been paid for, and whether the C-17 buy too mandated a Globemaster simulator in India which, perhaps, is not considering there are only 10 C-17s, a number that does not justify a simulator.

Like in the adventure — “Silver Blaze”, where Sherlock Holmes solved the mystery of the missing horse by referring to the fact of the non-barking dog in the stable (who recognized the miscreant as his master and didn’t raise hell), the mystery about why the Indian government did not cry foul and penalize Lockheed, is also easily solved. New Delhi (previously run by Manmohan Singh and now by Narendra Modi) as mentioned  wants to be on the right side  of the US because America is viewed as the vehicle for India to ride to economic prosperity and technological Valhalla! Remember too that the Lockheed F-16 and Boeing F-18 are on the short list of the proposed buy of 200 single-engined combat aircraft.

But the matter of the unfulfilled offsets is of the gravest concern particularly because foreign suppliers, while ready to pocket the money,  are aware that GOI will do nothing if they fail to follow-through on their obligations. In previous posts the fact of all kinds of extraneous expenditures being counted as offsets has been mentioned, such as seminars and conferences hosted by the supplier Companies, etc. And it is very likely that Boeing and Lockheed charged the offsets account for the use of their simulators in the US to train IAF’s C-17 and C-130 pilots, even though the main purpose of the offsets is to help build up an industrial-technological base in India. Then again, why should foreign companies deliver when there’s not a squeal out of the govt if they don’t?

The IAF, on its part, would have been pleased to carry on doing what it had done prior to the installation of the simulator here post-CAG Report : Send pilot crews in relays to train on Boeing simulators in Seattle an Lockheed simulators some place else in the US at additional expense (if nothing else in terms of extra pilot hard currency allowances and stipends for stays abroad). Why is lacing the selected transport pilots’ careers with nice little holidays in the American Northwest to uplift their spirits, not a good thing, is IAF’s thinking, given that the poor chaps cannot strut around back home like the fighter-jocks, who also hog all the plum posts in the service.

Posted in Afghanistan, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 36 Comments

The Tragedy of Tejas

Posted on February 17, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The Government doesn’t see that the commercial bonanza for foreign countries is choking off funds for home-grown aircraft

——-DEPENDING ON WHAT’S involved, legacy can be a good thing or a bad thing. In the case of the Indian state, bureaucracy, and especially the military, legacy has proved a liability. The colonial system and approach were retained in every aspect of government for want of ready alternatives and the fear of disruption. It has particularly hurt the armed services because they have stayed stuck in time. Thus, the Army’s main force is arrayed northwestward, the Air Force thinks as a tactical regional adjunct of another out-of-area air force (with the Royal Air Force missing), and the Navy imitates the attitude and outlook of the US Navy, which replaced its British counterpart, replete with a tilt towards big ships at a time when supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles and remote-controlled mini-submarines and attack boats are making them obsolete.

The three services also have in common the acute institutional hankering for Western military hardware, which was thwarted for 30 odd years (the mid-60s to mid-90s) by Cold War politics and the availability of Russian equipment in the Soviet era at ‘friendship prices’. Now that that constraint is lifted, they are reverting wherever possible to buying cost-prohibitive Western armaments with a vengeance, often at the expense of indigenously designed and developed weapon systems, such as the Arjun Main Battle Tank and Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), that have proved as good, when not better, than foreign items.

No, a kill order by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the LCA programme is not in the offing because it is advisable for the politician and the military brass to talk desi and not openly prefer firang (refer the glossy AeroIndia pullouts in newspapers). A high technology ‘prestige’ project capable of seeding a burgeoning aerospace sector in the country and imperilling imports will, however, be undermined on the sly, by restricting funds and the offtake of the indigenous on the plea that the monies are needed to finance imports of combat aircraft to meet immediate requirements, and by simultaneously diverting the attention, effort and resources of the LCA programme into the Mk-II version and the more ‘futuristic’, ‘super-stealthy’, Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft project. By insisting on stiff specifications and delivery deadlines, these programmes will be set up for eventual rejection. Meanwhile, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA)— the progenitors of the Tejas—will be thus kept occupied and out of the IAF’s hair, which will shield the service from unwanted political pressure to ‘buy Indian’ or to invest in the LCA. But we are getting ahead of the story.

The AeroIndia 2017 Air Show, that opened in Bengaluru on Valentine’s Day and ends on February 18th, features the foreign accomplices—the Swedish Saab Gripen E, the Super Hawk optimised for short-range air defence and touted in some quarters as the UK’s answer to the LCA, the French Rafale, and the American fighter planes, the Lockheed Martin ‘Block 70’ F-16 and the Boeing F-18E/F with the prospective payoffs overcoming the initial resistance from President Donald Trump. Except for the Super Hawk, these are all aircraft that had been entered in IAF’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft competition, won in 2012 by the Rafale. Except, new-generation warfare featuring drone-swarms and advanced air defence systems are expected to make manned fighter planes extinct.

But why the immense foreign interest? Firstly, because India is expected to buy 200-250 of the chosen plane with a full weapons suite and costing $250-$300 million each, for a total contract with only limited holdings of spares and service support of around $7.5 billion to $9 billion. Every supplier also promises to set up a modern global manufacturing and servicing hub for his aircraft and a technology innovation and industrial eco-system of small and medium scale enterprises (SMSEs) to generate employment, and, with full transfer of technology, a capacity locally to design and develop follow-on fighter aircraft. This will take many years to realise. So add another $3-4 billion to the bill for hub-development. After factoring in inflation and currency fluctuations, over the 30-40 year lifetime of the aircraft, the total take from this deal for a single-engined fighter for the winning foreign firm could be as much as $50 billion. To get perspective, this sum equals the cost of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor with networks of roads and power plants stretching from Baltistan to Gwadar, which will be that state’s infrastructure and economic backbone.

Secondly, India’s track record of squandering high-cost transferred technology by the Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs) and ordnance factories, and their never venturing beyond licence manufacture (LM) entailing Meccano-level screwdriver technology, is well known. Thus, no technologies were ingested from the MiG-21, Jaguar, and Su-30MKI LM contracts nor any design bureaus for technology innovation created. The international arms peddlers are only too aware of this situation and of the likelihood that LM agreements will inevitably lead to cascading sales of tech upgrade packages and CKD (completely knocked down) and SKD (semi-knocked down) kits to assemble the aircraft with. For the foreign supplier, it is an endlessly profitable cycle ensuring that, in real terms, at least 80 per cent of the monetary value of the contract is returned to the home country, and the remaining treated as ‘offsets’ mandated by the Indian Government that have so far produced few real benefits.

Thirdly, just as India’s buy of the Hawk trainer rescued British Aerospace, and that of 36 Rafales—with possibly another 80-100 of these planes in the pipeline—has put the French Company Dassault in the clover, New Delhi’s purchase of the Gripen will throw a lifeline to the combat aviation industry in Sweden, and Lockheed’s worn-out F-16 assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas, instead of being discarded, will be sold to India to earn revenue. Too much is at stake for the foreign companies in the race not to over-promise and under-bid. The extent of under-bidding is evidenced in Dassault’s original price for 126 Rafales of around $12 billion that actually ended up fetching the IAF a mere 36 planes. The larger pattern that has emerged over the past many decades is for an apparently ‘very rich’ India to subsidise and sustain defence industries in seemingly ‘poor’ states—namely, the United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom, France, and Israel.

The Indian defence industry has ‘largely failed to produce competitive indigenously-designed weapons’, a view the Indian military endorses. But why is this so? Principally because the armed services obstruct indigenous arms projects from succeeding

US defence sources estimate India’s military procurement outlays in the next few decades to be of the order of $250 billion. If roughly 10 per cent of any contracted deal is the usual down payment—in the Rafale case, for instance, it amounts to Rs 9,700 crore—a staggering $25 billion will have to be shelled out before a single item turns up on Indian shores. One can see why India is the consumer of choice in the international arms market.

IT IS WORRISOME that the Government, trapped in its ‘Make in India’ rhetoric, doesn’t see that the commercial bonanza for foreign countries will choke off the funds necessary for the home-grown, and for investment to build a comprehensively capable defence industry in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar appear not to have caught on to the fact that foreign arms suppliers are not in the business of making customers independent of them, but of bolting them down as dependents. Making the country a minor partner in the global supply chains of major transnational defence industrial corporations—the best that the present tilt of ‘Make in India’ policy can achieve—begs the question if this is all India should aspire to. And more, importantly, whether India will ever have the kind of financial cushion needed for $250 billion worth of military wherewithal, even as the tradeoffs between social welfare and developmental needs on the one hand and nation security demands on the other hand get starker. If such massive defence capital expenditure is somehow managed, whether frittering away the country’s wealth when it perpetuates only a hollow national security, is politically prudent. But there’s no gainsaying that it will firm up the country’s reputation as the largest arms importer in the world. India accounts for 14 per cent of the world’s arms imports, followed by China at 4.7 per cent (except China has compensated by increasing its arms exports 143 per cent in 2010-2015 to reach $1.6 billion). Put another way, over 2000-2015, India bought weapons valued at $120 billion: money that could have obtained for the country sizeable defence industrial infrastructure and skilled manpower instead of military hardware that can be ground to a stop anytime any of a host of suppliers decide for whatever reasons to withhold spares. So, not only is India’s security hostage to the interests of external players, but the country is paying exorbitantly for it too.

The reason adduced for this sorry state of affairs by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is that the Indian defence industry has ‘largely failed to produce competitive indigenously- designed weapons’—a view the Indian military heartily endorses. But why is this so? Principally because the armed services obstruct indigenous arms projects from succeeding. The Tejas programme has progressed in fits and starts, and been delayed interminably, in the main, for two reasons. One, the Air Staff Requirements were changed numerous times on the plea of the IAF wanting an up-to-date plane. Thus, re-design and structural alterations became necessary, for example, when the IAF demanded installation of a refuelling probe after prototypes had already been built. It imposed significant time and cost penalties and hurt the delivery deadline. Two, the IAF insisted on a ‘finished product’ with all weapons trials and fitments completed and Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) and Final Operational Clearance (FOC) secured, before accepting it.

This is contrary to the procedure followed by all other major air forces. In the US, its newest joint strike fighter, the F-35, first entered squadron service with the US Air Force and the US Marines with technical refinements, structural modifications, and proper weapons and avionics integration being carried out on the basis of continuous feedback from frontline pilots after the plane’s induction. Some serious problems with the F-35, such as with the zero- zero ejection seat system, helmet-mounted sensors, avionics, and the F-135 power plant, are all being corrected even as the aircraft is flying around. This rigmarole is called ‘concurrency’, meaning induction and capability improvements happening simultaneously after the user-service has taken charge of the combat plane. In the case of the Tejas though, the onus is entirely on the development/ production unit to put in IAF’s hands a battle-ready fighter aircraft, inclusive of the promised weapons load. It reflects IAF’s reluctance to take ownership of the Tejas even after it has proved its druthers. The truly dastardly aspect is that the standard applied by the IAF to the LCA does not apply to imported aircraft. Thus, the Mirage 2000 inducted in 1985 flew unarmed for the next three years because the contracted weapons had not been delivered. It was political prompting alone that hastened the formation of the so-far-only-Tejas unit in the Air Force, the 45 Squadron with only a handful of LCAs, based in Sulur, Andhra Pradesh.

The other means adopted by IAF to undercut the Tejas programme is to order only a few aircraft at a time to deny the production units economies of scale. Thus, the official indent is just for 20 LCAs after IOC, and another 20 for post-FOC, with the possibility held out for 43 planes for a total strength of only 83 Tejas, when the actual requirement is for 200-250 single-engined combat aircraft of this type, which IAF proposes to meet by buying one of the foreign aircraft displayed at AeroIndia. This is because IAF doesn’t take pride in the LCA, or care to have it in its fleet, and also perhaps, because the Tejas programme offers no material inducements for persons in the procurement loop, such as endless trips to Paris, Stockholm, etcetera, what is risibly called ‘pocket money’, and so on. With the IAF variant of Tejas so stymied, its navalised version too will be emasculated, with the Indian Navy now joining the Air Force in opting for imported aircraft for its carriers—the navalised Rafale, Gripen, F-18, and the MiG-29K all seen at the Air Show.

Settling on licence manufacture of foreign planes serves yet another purpose. It preserves the monopoly of aircraft production for the highly inefficient DPSUs, like Hindustan Aerospace Ltd. DPSUs are controlled by the Department of Defence Production (DPP) in the MoD and is valuable turf that its bureaucrats are loath to lose, which can happen if, despite every obstacle, a project reaches the cusp of commercial success.

Tejas is a success if only it is given a chance. A 4.5-generation aircraft, like the Rafale, the LCA is far stealthier, more agile, and with a far bigger potential for growth as a versatile fighting platform. Significantly, it has clocked in excess of 3,000 flying hours without a single incident—a record unsurpassed by any combat aircraft under development anywhere, at any time. Its sleek looks and ease of handling, evident in the demonstration flights at the Bahrain Air Show last year, evinced praise from experts and enormous interest world-wide, with many countries inquiring about its availability. Naturally, fear has arisen in HAL and DPP/MoD circles that the Tejas may elicit commercial interest in the private sector, and private sector proposals for producing this aircraft for the IAF and for profit from exports, may follow. This would set a precedent of a DPSU being bypassed, of the technologies required to be transferred to a private sector consortium by the Aeronautical Development Agency and DRDO, and the diminishing of the stake and role of the public sector and DPP/MoD in the budding Indian defence industry of the future.

It is an end-state the IAF-DPP/MoD-DPSU complex will not abide, and what it doesn’t want, it will do away with. It has a stellar record of success in eliminating inconvenient indigenous conventional armaments projects that threaten its vested interests, usually by ‘throttling them in the cradle’. In the late-70s, the Mk-II version of the Marut HF-24 multi-role fighter was terminated by the Indira Gandhi regime siding with the IAF to buy the Jaguar low level strike aircraft. The original Marut was designed by one of the greatest designers of the World War II-era, Dr Kurt Tank of Focke-Wulfe fame, who was imaginatively brought in by Jawaharlal Nehru to design and produce the first supersonic fighter outside of the US and Europe. Tank had a prototype flying by 1961, inside of six years of his getting the commission.

Tank’s most gifted Indian protégé, Raj Mahindra, designed the Mk-II, which was eliminated by the Jaguar buy, whence began India’s rapid slide towards an all imported Air Force. If Mahindra’s Marut successor aircraft was killed by jhatka, the Tejas will be bled slowly, killed by the halaal method.

 

Published in Open Magazine, dated Feb 17, 2017, at   http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/national-security/the-tragedy-of-tejas

 

 

 

 

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Israel, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons, West Asia, Western militaries | 27 Comments

Defence budget: The central government has talked smart, not acted smart

Posted on February 14, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The unambitious and low-key budget is emblematic of the Narendra Modi government’s approach of trusting in only small, cautious, steps. So nobody expected that the defence allocations would be used to reorient an Indian military that’s been long in the rut. This would have been a disruptive thing to do to shake up the armed services which, owing to weak political direction and oversight have compelled governments to rubber-stamp whatever they decide is in the national interest.

Predictably, defence allocations of Rs 2.74 trillion falling to 1.63% of GDP has sparked concern, while ignoring the fact that an enlarged budget would have led to the squandering of the taxpayer’s money anyway. The problem at heart is this: The Indian military weighs its self-worth purely in terms of in-date weapons. Absent contrary political instructions as corrective, the preoccupation is with importing hardware, whether or not this is cost-effective, or even appropriate. The result is a mangled decision matrix in which instead of threats and grand strategy defining strategy, force structure, and weapons requirements, in that order, the existing force composition dictates the threat and the choice of armaments and strategy. Whence, the army’s money-guzzling three strike corps, that are way in excess of need, have monopolised the army’s modernisation and maintenance budgets, even though this capability is usable only in the desert and the plains, justified only by the “Pakistan threat”, and driven by a largely unimplementable ‘Cold Start’ strategy.

The Modi government has talked smart, not acted smart. It has failed to channel efforts and resources to secure military capabilities principally to deter China, which would, naturally, also take care of any contingency involving Pakistan, and fetch a larger strategic and international political dividend besides. Indeed, the raising of the only mountain strike corps (17 Corps) is languishing for want of funds. A desperately needed reorientation of the armed services will have to be rammed down resisting throats. Left to itself, the Indian military, which seems incapable of transformative change, will stick to its outdated outlook, operational bearing and plans.

The Modi regime can use the fact of scarce financial resources as lever to change the military mindset as is routinely done in the more mature democracies. Selective approval of expenditure schemes can re-shape and redirect the armed services. A start along these lines can, perhaps, be made to prepare for next year’s budget. The defence capital (or procurement) budget — the nub of the issue — is, in any case, declining. It was Rs 945.88 billion in 2015-16, decreased by 8.7% to Rs 863.4 billion last year, plateauing at Rs 864.88 billion in this fiscal, except only two-thirds of this sum will be actually available for purchases. It is a trend that’s likely to continue.

Considering that in excess of Rs. 3.71 lakh crore (or, roughly $55 billion) are already committed to purchasing weapons systems from abroad, and 10% as first payments in hard currency amounting to some $5 billion on the numerous contracts already made, the only option is to shrink the numbers of units contracted for, and to adjust the payments already made against the reduced outgo.

If the idea is to channel monies to realise more rational forces and capabilities, the signal has to be sent to the armed services that the government will not tolerate business-as-usual. Certain programmes are ripe for down-scaling and would set a precedent. Thus, the Field Artillery Rationalization Plan estimated to cost $12 billion can be shaved to $4 billion by reducing the demand for 1,580 towed 155mm/52mm caliber howitzers, 100 tracked self-propelled (SP) guns, 180 wheeled SP artillery, and 814 mounted gun systems by two-thirds, leaving enough hardware to meet the requirements of a single, compact, consolidated, corps-strength mobile warfare capability on the western border.

The deal for 464 Russian T-90MS tanks costing $4.3 million each in a contract worth nearly $10 billion, requires termination, not least because it is a buy at the expense of the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank that comprehensively out-performed the T-90 in test trials in all aspects in all terrains but was rejected as “over-weight”. This is an outrage requiring speedy rethink, if defence minister Manohar Parrikar is serious about not cutting the “indigenous” out of the government’s ‘Make in India’ policy. The plan for new generation infantry combat vehicle numbers too will require pruning to around 730 units costing Rs 52.5 billion, instead of 2,200 new ICVs for Rs 157.5 billion.

 

A similarly ruthless attitude should lead to the nixing of the 36 Rafale aircraft deal for $12 billion — engagement of Modi’s ego to this transaction notwithstanding, especially as the air force sees it as a means of pushing the government into buying 90 more of this supposedly “medium” multi-role fighter — a category of aircraft known to no other major air force. It will save India the down payment of Rs 97 billion. The navy, likewise, should be strongly dissuaded from accepting the American EMALS (electro-magnetic aircraft launch system) costing $533 million each for the second and third Kochi-built aircraft carriers.

Savings from such hard-headed procurement decisions will make available funds for appropriate capabilities, and indigenous design and technology projects, such as the Tejas 1A and Mk-II, and the navalised LCA, ordered to proceed on the concurrency principle of induction along with capability refinement, with senior air force and navy brass made accountable for their success, a procedure followed by all major militaries.

As this can happen within the time-frames for induction of imported aircraft, imports are pre-empted. The freed-up funds should also be invested in designing, developing, and producing a small 25 ton tank with an engine optimised for high-altitude operations to equip three mountain strike corps.

Published in the Hindustan Times Feb 14, 2017 at http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/defence-budget-the-central-government-has-talked-smart-not-acted-smart/story-mveFLDo9SYdPKAs5cH6XLO.html;  and in the print (Delhi) edition under the title “Reorient focus, cut the flab”.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, russian assistance, SAARC, society, South Asia, United States, US., Weapons | 38 Comments