Russian terms

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

A Russian-speaking scientific source in touch with friends in Moscow said he was informed that the Kremlin had forwarded a note that mentioned certain things to the Modi government, chief among them are the following:

1) Russia’s readiness to have Indian Air Force fighter pilots test-fly the prototype FGFA (fifth generation fighter aircraft) was communicated to New Delhi many months back, so far eliciting no names of pilots Air HQrs want deputed for this test-flying stint (lasting from 6 months to a year). Moscow asked for the names to permit the Russians to do background checks on them and otherwise clear them for familiarization training. This is to include, besides classroom instruction, actually logging the necessary number of flying hours in two-seat trainers with Russian test pilots before they are permitted to take up the aircraft on solo flights. The Russians are afraid that allowing un-vetted “pro-Western” pilots may lead to the “secrets” of this aircraft — many new and novel technologies and aeroframe features — being leaked by them to the US and West European (French, British, German) government reps, and thence to their R&D labs, and defence industries.

2) The United Aircraft Corporation of Russia is also receptive to entertaining whatever new technologies and features they want incorporated in the “super Sukhoi” version of the Su-30. This super Sukhoi version will eventually replace the older Su-30MKIs, with the fleet size growing to some 272 + 45 or some 317 Super Sukhoi fighter-bombers in all in IAF. But these improvements need to be communicated soonest for the project to get underway. Especially, as the demand for Su-35 is revving up and some of the work force from the super Sukhoi line may have to be shifted to produce the Su-35.

3) Russia is also worried that in case the production of the US F-16/F-18 in India is approved by Modi, it will be difficult to keep the Russian technology from being accessed by Western technicians, whence the need has been voiced for a strict separation of the Russian aircraft and West-sourced combat aircraft all the way from operational location to production and servicing/maintenance. It is the sort of segregation, it may be recalled, US insisted on for its hardware since the 1990s (because they were afraid the Russioans would flick their technologies). With the F-16/F-18 level of technologies, even of the upgraded variety, these will be nowhere in the same league technologically as the super Sukhois and FGFAs. So now Russia has to be seriously concerned about thieving Western supplier states.

4) Moscow has also suggested a deadline of 4-6 months to finalize the super Sukhoi and FGFA contracts. It feels the Indian govt has tarried long enough, and the more time New Delhi is given to make up its mind, the more it will fritter away what its says are its scarce resources on Western equipment, leaving the Russian suppliers high and dry. For example, Rs 1,000 crore was found to buy an additional six Poseidon P-8Is for maritime reconnaissance, which minus the original avionics suite, amount to purchasing shells of the Boeing 737 plane but at three times the cost of the passenger aircraft, albeit with embedded wiring, etc. for plugging in various DRDO and private sector developed indigenous sensors, etc. [For some serious details in extenso on this subject, see a whole section on the P-8I as the flagship Indo-US project in my book ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’.] But, the Modi govt says it has no money to fund, in the same amount, the upgrading of Su-30MKIs to the super-Sukhoi configuration. This, according to the source, has left Moscow perplexed and angry.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 50 Comments

Limits of Modi’s personalised diplomacy

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC of Narendra Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister are the foreign trips he has racked up—16 in his first year, followed by another 10 in his second year in office. It seems he likes nothing better than jaw-jawing in foreign climes.

For all the media hoo-ha, Modi’s tours are fetching diminishing returns, with each new foreign tour appearing less fresh, less substantive, but more wearisome. Consider Modi’s interactions with the US President: He has met Barack Obama seven times in all, four times in America, and twice on visits to Washington. But a few days before the supposed honour done Modi with the invitation to address the US Congress, the US Senate rejected recognising India as America’s ‘global strategic and defence partner’ and the White House did not pitch India’s case to Ireland, New Zealand, Austria, Brazil and Turkey, for admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), unlike in 2008 when the then President George W Bush burned the wires—including with China—to get India its NSG waiver. And, notwithstanding Modi’s charm offensive and personal pleading on state visits to Mexico and Switzerland, neither Mexico City nor Berne relented in opposing India’s NSG membership.

So, what’s going wrong with Modi’s forays in the external realm, which made such a splash early on, transfixing the country and at least the expat part of the Western world, replete with crazed crowds in Madison Garden, New York, Wembley Stadium, London, and the Allphones Arena, Sydney? Well, they hit the limits of personalised diplomacy.

What makes personalised diplomacy tick? Mainly, its rarity and the manner in which it is conducted and for what purpose. It is a double-edged sword, though. A helmsman putting his prestige and status on the line, and doing the slog-work—the domain of professional diplomats—of stumping for support from foreign countries, endows the venture he is involved in with significance beyond anything the foreign country may accord it. But there have been more failures than payoffs. This is due to the hyperbolic media build-up and raising of expectations that have provided clever adversary states the opportunity to show India in bad light, pull Modi down a peg or two, and magnify his failure. Thus, Chinese President Xi Jinping ignored Modi’s entreaties for “a fair and objective assessment” of India’s case for NSG membership in their meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tashkent on 23 June, resulting in egg on the latter’s face and a hit to India’s reputation.

Modi’s calling card—his tight embraces, bear hugs and hand- holding—unique to his personalised diplomacy, which he believes makes for instant warmth and cordiality, hasn’t worked either. Nawaz Sharif responded happily to such gestures, and Obama, who roomed with a Pakistani during his days at Columbia University, reciprocated. But it has left most other leaders, such as French President François Hollande, in a state of embarrassed discomfort.

At its core, the trouble is that the Prime Minister has made too many foreign trips and converted too many foreign policy issues into occasions for grandstanding, and his interventions have now palled, eroding his credibility and raising doubts about his ability to distinguish between the truly significant national interest that needs pursuing with his direct involvement and relatively less important concerns that can be productively handled by diplomats.

It underlines just how precious a head of government’s personal political capital is in international relations and why it should be carefully husbanded, doled out in very small doses, and his presence deployed only in rare situations to obtain decisive results on large issues of war and peace, or to garner huge economic gains. In the field of foreign policy, ‘out of the box’ thinking and actions that Modi extols do not require that he always lead the charge. Since squandered personal capital cannot easily be restocked, the Indian Prime Minister may soon discover he has exhausted this resource when he most needs it in the future, rendering him less effective as a statesman.

There is also the danger that every passing failure will lead him to engage his ego more deeply in failing causes and to ‘lose face’. The great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu had warned that losing face has costs. But Modi indicated in his interview to Times TV that his Government will bull ahead regardless on the NSG front. Or as MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup put it: “Today, Indian diplomacy doesn’t fear failure. If we don’t get desired results, we [will] redouble our efforts.” But doggedness is not always a diplomatic virtue; it can result in the country digging itself into a bigger hole, nor is backing off to mount an offensive on another axis a show of weakness.

Modi’s personalised diplomacy is affected by other factors as well. It is clear the Prime Minister has his own foreign policy agenda and plan of action, has strong views on everything, and welcomes only policy ideas conforming to his own notions, summarily rejecting contrary advice from any quarter. Convinced of his power to persuade Xi, Modi, for example, shrugged off the MEA’s apprehensions about China’s unwavering opposition to India’s NSG entry. Modi’s style of working reveals tremendous confidence, and massive ego, pride, and vanity to match—natural for a person who has traversed the distance from the lowest rungs of society to the highest position in the country.

In this set-up, his National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar are mere functionaries doing Modi’s bidding. It has simplified the policymaking process. Jaishankar, for instance, has dispensed with the ‘collegium’ system followed by his predecessors of consulting other secretaries in the Ministry because such collective counsel is deemed extraneous to his brief and the Prime Minister’s needs. The MEA, including its Minister Sushma Swaraj, are thus marginalised.

Doval and Jaishankar have only to take care not to question Modi’s outlook and approach, or to contradict his views, and to deliver on cue. Then again, they have the same orientation the Prime Minister does of seeing the West as the source of solutions for India’s problems. Apparently, they have had a harder time adjusting to Modi’s peculiarly Gujarati conceit (representative of the trader community of that province) central to his diplomacy that because his negotiating wiles cannot easily be countered, he can cut beneficial deals all by himself with anybody. With Modi, in effect, both writing the diplomatic music and directing the orchestra, the PMO and MEA are reduced to keeping the musicians and their instruments in order.

With long experience of dealing with egotistical Third World leaders, Western governments long ago finessed the ministering to their vanity as means of advancing national interests into a fine art. Western capitals quickly learned, for instance, that gargantuan returns can be raked in by making the right noises, seconding Modi’s perspective, and waxing emphatic about his ‘Make in India’ programme. Fawned on and feted by Hollande in Paris, Modi suddenly announced the buy of 36 Rafale fighter planes that torpedoed the underway medium multi-role combat aircraft procurement process and undermined Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s more economical and effective option of buying twice as many Indian-assembled Su-30MKIs for the same amount as the Rafale, that would have left money over for producing the locally-designed Tejas light combat aircraft.

Likewise, in tilting towards the US, Modi has been unmindful of the huge economic and geopolitical costs involved in terms of loss of strategic autonomy and alienating Russia, an indispensable strategic partner. Unlike the US, Moscow has been relaxed about transferring frontline military equipment (such as the Akula-II nuclear attack submarine) in contrast to Washington flogging 1970s vintage F-16 and F-18 aircraft, and in assisting in the design and production of the Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile-firing submarines. Compare this technology level to the US promise of help in producing short-range tactical drones and battery packs.

Modi has seemingly bought into Washington’s transactional policy requiring New Delhi to make endless buys of inordinately expensive technology and military hardware just so the US grows to trust India. Except, US punitive policies created the trust deficit in the first place, which Modi doesn’t think matters.

He has thus agreed to purchase six Westinghouse AP 1000 light water reactors that will divert scarce funds from Indian projects to develop breeder reactors and follow-on thorium reactors. The US offer of the electro-magnetic aircraft launch system will make the Indian-built carriers cost-prohibitive, at $10 billion per vessel. And importing the 155 mm M-777 howitzer from the US instead of procuring the Bharat Forge-designed and produced lightweight, air transportable utility gun, will dampen private sector initiatives and mock Modi’s defence indigenisation policy. The total bill will be in tens of billions of dollars.

There’s no one to tell Modi he is on the wrong track. A liability in diplomacy, vanity won’t permit him to acknowledge his mistakes. Worse, it has made him susceptible ‘to be turned’, as a senior diplomat put it, ‘for small cash’.
——–
Published as ‘Open Essay’ under the title “As Modi Embraces the World: Limits of personalised diplomacy” in Open magazine, July 15, 2016 at http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/essays/as-modi-embraces-the-world

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, Latin America, Military Acquisitions, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 27 Comments

Turkey do, Pakistan follow?

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The US pledged “absolute support for Turkey’s democratically elected, civilian government and democratic institutions” and immediately ended the attempted coup in Turkey. This attitude of Washington must have come as a nasty surprise to the coup planners — the leaders are not yet identified, because that country under Tayyip Erdogan’s first prime ministership and then presidency has become more receptive towards Islamization, a movement seeking a return of the Turkish society to the faith. This was, as always, counter-balanced, if not resisted, by the Turkish Army the upholder of the modern secular state and Constitution that Kemal Attaturk established in the ruins of the Ottoman rule in the wake of the First World War.

But Attaturk’s secular revolution was from the beginning opposed by the Muslim clergy and the old order where the mosque had great say. Visiting Istanbul, one could clearly see, feel, and sense that deep divide. The bridge across the Bosphorus, linking “European” Istanbul and Turkey (wide avenues, glittering shops, clean lines of buildings in big compounds) to a manifestly “Asiatic” Turkey (a crowded, rising jumble of settlements) is the very symbol of the uneasy but persistent internal tensions. No wonder the units involved in the coup positioned their armoured vehicles on this bridge to prevent the more Islamist people from streaming into the European quarter. In any case, one spotted Islamists in black turbans and kaftans even in the “Western” sections of the city, sporting a sullen attitude, plainly disapproving of the westernized Turkish society they abhorred.

Why does what happen in Ankara and Istanbul matter for developments in Islamabad and Pakistan? Pakistan army chiefs, especially the more adventurous among them who launched coups (Pervez Musharraf, for one, who spent his early years in Turkey as his Dad was posted in the Ankara embassy) have always seen themselves as Pakistani Attaturks, rescuing their country from poor civilian governance, corruption and squalor of a country set too soon and prematurely on the democratic path. Their self-image is that of state modernizers. (Th exception being Zia “the mullah” ul-Haq, who dragged the country back several hundred years with his nizam-e-mustafa.) Whatever his other faults, Musharraf, for example, did something quite unique — actually facilitated a free and lively press and media to proliferate, grow and flourish until now when Pakistan, in my view, has a far freer, more vocal, media, more critical of its government than in India. Just youtube Pakistani news and panel discussion programmes for evidence. Or scan the online versions of Pakistani newspapers featuring, perhaps, the most vociferous bunch of columnists in South Asia (such as the extraordinarily literate Ayaz Amir writing in ‘The News’).

The problem is the relentless 24/7 criticism of the Muslim League (N) government has prepared the ground for possible army takeover by the current Pak COAS, General Raheel Sharif ere his term ends in four months time (November). The apparently no-nonsense Raheel is the new Saladin on the Pak scene — the man who can do no wrong, who deployed his forces to all but wipe out the Pakistani Taliban in FATA and North Wazirstan, cleanse to a considerable extent the Karachi metro region of its tribal crime syndicates, and cut the MQM supremo Altaf Hussain and his Movement to size. And, he is liked by the Pentagon as a “straight shooter”. The situation has all the ingredients for a Raheel coup.

But here’s the difference with Turkey. There Erdogan over the years had weeded out “undesirable” — read too secular — generals from the command structure, leaving the coup to be attempted by mid-level officers that guaranteed its failure. In Pakistan, it is the “secular” army that could reassert its role as the guardian of the state. Fed up with a non-performing govt and a Nawaz Sharif who avoids hard decisions and whose family is allegedly into self-aggrandizement, people have put up posters on lamp posts lining Islamabad avenues pleading for Raheel to rescue the country.

Here’s where the unpredictability is. The Obama Admin’s nyet pretty much let the air out of the coup in Ankara. After all, Erdogan has played ball with the US in its military ventures against the Bashar al-Assad clique in Syria, and is deemed useful. Washington may well disapprove should 111 (“Coup”) Brigade gets its orders from GHQ, Rawalpindi, to take over Radio Pakistan and Pakistan TV studios — the usual events that mark the onset of a coup in Islamabad. However, Raheel (like his predecessors, Ayub Khan, Zia, and Musharraf) is unlikely to be as deterred because he knows the US govt will come round to accepting the imposition of martial law as Afghanistan and other geostrategic concerns will undercut any American interest in strengthening Pakistani democracy.

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Iran and West Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, United States, US., West Asia, Western militaries | 17 Comments

F-16 or F-18 — making an end-run to nowhere

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

This is passing strange, but why did the Lockheed Martin chief Marillyn Hewson meet Finance Minister Arun Jaitley July 8 and why did she come away sounding optimistic? Because all important decisions by the BJP govt are taken by Modi personally, Jaitley could have been instructed by the PM to not disappoint Hewson and otherwise string Washington along. Or, a more radical conclusion, Modi lost confidence in his defence minister Manohar Parrikar enough to now designate Jaitley the interface with the US defence industry reps re: the purchase of either of the US combat aircraft, should PMO eventually approve it. So, at a pinch is Jaitley still Modi’s Raksha Mantri of choice?

The intervention by the Americans at this late stage in the MMRCA procurement game with a couple of aircraft that were first to be discarded by the MMRCA acquisition committee, followed by the Russian MiG-35 and Swedish Gripen in that order, leaving the ultimate choice to be made between the EADS Typhoon Eurofighter and the French Rafale, doesn’t make sense for another reason. HAL chairman Suvarna Raju has stated that if the F-16/F-18 buy is to fill the void in 2021 when all the MiG-21s would have been phased out, as Parrikar has declared, then the answer, Raju said, lies in increasing the production capacity of the very fine and indigenous Tejas LCA in his DPSU.

While Raju’s loyalty to the public sector company he runs is laudable, HAL’s work culture is such that even if the jigs and tools are installed, HAL will not be able to produce Tejas in great numbers to meet the timeline. Which is why I have advocated that ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency) transfer the complete LCA ‘know why’ info, data and technology to L&T and Tata so a production competition is initiated between them, with HAL left — if it is to be given some work at all for old times’ sake — to potter around and produce 3/4 aircraft a year if that. But given the absence of quality control, it will mean the instant junking of the HAL-manufactured planes. (This is what comes from the govt first appointing a has-been DRDO head, Atre, to recommend ways of firing up Modi’s ‘Make in India’ programme, and then taking his report, which suggests sticking with DPSUs as the the country’s defence industrial cutting edge, and leaving these useless, sarkari-owned outfits to choose their pvt sector partners, seriously. But then Atre methinks knew that his preferences were right up Modi’s street — after all no recent PM has been so enamoured of bureaucrats running govt businesses, usually into the ground. There’s a 65 year track record of this.)

The question is how come the US companies — Lockheed and Boeing are so confident? Because between the US Defence Secretary Ash Carter and “buy American” promoters, especially Ashley Tellis of Carnegie Washington who, it is said, can get an appointment with Modi with just 24 hours notice — no matter how busy Modi is or how full his schedule, the PM is in an influence trap. Carter, of course has the weight of the US govt behind him. But it is Tellis, who has Modi’s ears, and can get the PM to even launch his book in Delhi w/o too much advance notice, who may turn out to be decisive. He is said to have persuaded the PM that by going in for the manufacture in the country of the advanced F/A-18E/F Super Hornet or F-16IN Block 60 version, India will be doing itself a great favour! He reportedly pointed out to Modi that, far from obsolete, a souped up variant of the F-18 that the US Navy has plonked for because it is unhappy with the navalised F-35 Lightning-II, is what will be made available to India. Whoopee!! It is another matter — and this bit neither Carter nor Tellis is likely to have communicated to Modi — that for the US Navy this fallback option is a very short-term bridging solution until the carrier-bound F-35 is cleared for Initial Operational Capability; for the IAF, however, it will be stuck with an already nearly 50-year old aircraft for the next four decades by the end of which it will have an almost 100 year old aircraft in its order of battle! Except, by 2025 no matter how advanced the F-18 platform, it will be a sitting duck for almost any agile fifth generation aircraft and new generation SAMs. If Modi is happy to make anything in India, even a creaky old fighter plane, in support of his policy then one can expect more outmoded technology to find its way to the Indian factory floor, producing stuff you can’t get rid off for love or money. May be IAF chief Raha should be asked how he feels about risking the lives of his pilots in such antique planes in the robotic wars of tomorrow. So the prospects of a US aircraft in IAF livery are, by any correct metric, not bright. Or, at least one hopes that’s the case!!

In all this, Parrikar is left up a creek. He was wisely for the combo of the Su-30MKI and the Tejas as the bulk force, but has had to leave the door ajar for the French item should PMO throw all financial prudence to the winds and insist on having a small complement of the Rafale in IAF to conform to Modi’s thoughtless promise made in Paris in April 2015 to buy 36 of this aircraft off the shelf. In that case, India’s treasury goose is truly cooked. With the Lockheed/Boeing also elbowing in to swill at the Indian trough, the cause of India’s national security seems to be the last thing on the BJP govt’s mind. Then again, who in South and North Blocks thinks about the national interest?

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Military Acquisitions, russian military, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 41 Comments

Clever Chinese will sidestep the Hague verdict

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

All indications are the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the International Court at the Hague will tomorrow rule for the Philippines with respect to its sea territory encompassed by the Scarborough Shoal forcibly occupied by China. The court is expected to reaffirm the UNCLOS standards and hence the Philippine claims (and logically, also Vietnamese, Malayasian, Brunei-ian claims in that expanse of water) rather than supporting China’s case based on vague historically infirm assertions sourced to the tumultuous civil war period in China. The Arbitration Court will parri passu also rule on the legality of the artificial islands China created literally overnight to buttress its expansive claims and now already put to military use with the installation of radars and other sensor posts.

It is equally certain Beijing will disdainfully dismiss the Court ruling as irrelevant and violative of the understanding it says it has with Manila requiring the resolution of maritime territorial disputes on a strictly bilateral basis. (Shades of the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir here!) What will be significant to see is what the US will do to back the Hague verdict beyond what it is already doing in the South China Sea and, more importantly, how Beijing will react to the US acting as a self-appointed sheriff.

Leading up to the Hague verdict, Washington had sometime back rejected imposition of an ADZ (Air Identification Zone) by China and had warned it’d routinely ignore it. This was followed up by the mounting of freedom of navigation patrols. These were challenges China did not contest. The US Navy then followed up by the US Pacific Command sending three missile destroyers (Sruance, Stethem, Momsen) to aggressively patrol around the Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Island chain (some reefs and other above-water features of which have been expropriated by China). This destroyer flotilla is backed by the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group. The Chinese Navy has responded by conducting some sea drills in the vicinity.

But otherwise China has so far only huffed and it has puffed. The People’s Daily of July 6 questioned the locus standi of the US as an “outsider” interested in using this dispute “as a lever to realize its own strategic objectives” and warned that America’s “pressuring and intimidating ‘brinkmanship’ policy” will lead to an “outcome” it will have to “assume full responsibility for”. China’s intent to safeguard “its national sovereignty and territorial integrity” may be “unshakable” as the Daily put it. The question however is whether Beijing will risk endangering the G-20 Summit it will host in September. It will not.

But, the far-sighted Beijing had apparently already planned for such contingency and a political way out of it. It financed the campaign of Rodrigo Duterte in the general elections in May this year in the Philippines. Duterte is regarded by many as a maverick. The returns for China from this investment are coming in. Manila has already announced it is willing to sit down with Beijing, discuss the Hague judgement in its favour, and arrive at an amicable solution. It will save President Xi, who has engaged his ego in the South China Sea dispute, from actually delivering on China’s threats. Clever, clever, Chinese.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, United States, US., Vietnam, Western militaries | 12 Comments

The old French tactic

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Defense News (US) recently carried a story that the French negotiators had upped their stance on the Rafale combat aircraft, now insisting that the $8.9 billion govt-to-govt contract be first signed for 36 planes before the supplier company, Dassault Avions, even considers signing a 50% offset deal, with 30% of the offsets allocated for “futuristic military aerospace programs” — whatever this phrase means, and 20% for producing Rafale components to satisfy its ‘Make in India’ obligation. The French firms Safran, Thales and MBDA along with Dassault are reportedly committing to transferring stealth tech, radar, thrust vectoring for missiles, and materials to DRDO units.

A few days earlier, an Indian pink paper carried another related story sourced from the French Embassy about Safran helping revive the waylaid Kaveri engine project, completing the 30% remaining work to bring it up to 90 kN power level at a cost to France of 1 billion euros and requiring no additional investment whatsoever by India.(Kaveri, incidentally, had reached the 81 KN mark in bench test with no help from anyone before the programme was stalled.) So a revived Kaveri engine is another inducement to GOI/MOD to hurry up and sign the Rafale deal that will easily cross the $30 billion for lifetime upkeep, retroactive AESA radar and ongoing weapons fitments.

If all this incentive-making sounds fishy, well, it is. Especially in the context of how the French made monkeys of India not too long ago. Recall that in the years preceding the announcement in 2014 of the Rafale winning the IAF’s MMRCA sweepstakes, the French company SNECMA was in talks with DRDO for assistance for the Kaveri project. The idea was to reconfigure the Kaveri around the SNECMA M-88-2 hot core. The French kept on stretching the negotiations months on end, year after year, according to those in the know, raising objections or some piffling issues to deliberately cause delays and prevent a successful closure. The French negotiating strategy is plain enough in retrospect. Because soon after Rafale’s selection, SNECMA called off the negotiations, begged off the deal! Now to get the Rafale over the finish line, they are falling back on the same old tactics — this time another French firm promising to get the Kaveri off and running just so long as Delhi signs on the dotted line! Obviously, the day the Rafale ag is initialed is when Safran will withdraw its offer. What’s the sacrifice of $1.4 billion — assuming a penalty is imposed should Safran fail to deliver as inevitably it will — if it fetches $30+ billion in return?

India’s traditional military suppliers have absolutely no interest in helping make India self-sufficient in critical aviation technologies, such as combat jet engines. That not doing so is a perpetually paying proposition became clear to them in the wake of the decision by the extremely shortsighted defence minister VK Krishna Menon in the Sixties who declined to pay the English firm, Bristol Siddeley, Rs 5 crores to make adjustments in its BOR 12 jet engine — which had just lost the NATO fighter engine race to an American company — to outfit the multi-role HF-24 Marut, which proposal included complete transfer of technology. Those were simpler times, and the full tech suite would have been transferred, setting India on the course of jet engine independence. It began the steep slide of the indigenous defence industry established with such imaginative verve by Nehru importing, not combat aircraft, but the premier fighter designer of that time, Dr Kurt Tank. It provided the IAF the justification for ditching not just the Marut as under-powered but its Mk-II designed by Tank-trained HAL designer Dr Raj Mahindra, and to start the shameful period lasting to this day of purchasing combat planes abroad. Tejas is still just a blip — which, even with its induction, could be sidelined as the Marut was, if IAF is offered half a chance to do so.

But the BOR 12 on Marut-episode also was the sudden dawning of wisdom among Western suppliers. It alerted them to the benefits of keeping India on the supplier string. After all, why sell India the capability to design and produce jet engines and, per chance, even eventually set it up as a competitor when, with a collaborationist IAF and Indian government in tow, they could sell an unending series of whole, inordinately expensive aircraft, continue making ooddles of money, and thanks to spendthrift nations such as India, keep themselves commercially in the clover for ever?

If we still haven’t learned from the French, whose perfidy is replicated by every other military hardware supplier in one guise or another, then it isn’t Paris’ fault, surely. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Keep getting fooled interminably, what’s left other than to hang a shingle out on the MOD gates in South Block: SUCKERS at work. Come LOOT!

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Military Acquisitions, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Weapons | 29 Comments

Strategic neglect of (East) Africa

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting South Africa and countries on the East African littoral starting July 7. He will specifically be in South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania — three states of immense strategic interest to India, whose neglect by MEA has cost India plenty, and which I have analyzed in my recent book — ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’.
Because what I have written remains relevant, I am reproducing below with small modifications a small extract from the third chapter on ‘Pivotal Relations’ (pp. 175-178) in this book.

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Not many are convinced that the Indian government has done enough to cash in on opportunities and to capitalize on the half-chances to establish India’s credentials as a coming power. It hasn’t taken up invitations, for example, to Indian farmers from Punjab by countries with surplus land and small populations, such as Mozambique and Angola in Africa. Further, smaller alliance or partnership systems, such as the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) combine, have been neglected with New Delhi sticking, as Yashwant Sinha, External Affairs Minister in the Vajpayee government, said with ‘large and unwieldy’ groupings like the Non-aligned Movement, G-77, and G-15 or leaving ‘things to one super power, which will call all the shots.’

The fact, however, is that despite playing to its traditional strengths, fielding some imaginative programs, and racking up considerable foreign policy successes in Africa and Central Asia, where Indian assistance programs focused on capacity building in the countries, cemented an Indian presence in the local economies, and in the extractive industrial sector, India has failed to convert the enormous goodwill, even by official accounts, into a tangible economic and strategic advantage.

The absence of a comprehensive national vision compounds the problem of weaving the various successful regional policy strands into a single fabric of grand strategy to serve the country’s great power interests and ambition.
The failure is also because of the extreme compartmentalization or silo-based thinking and policy-making within and between the Ministries in the Indian government [which Modi, in interviews published in several of today’s newspapers, insists is a thing of the past, but in reality continues]. It leads to foreign policies in discrete streams that do not spring from the same fount and run separately, usually ending in uncoordinated, stand-alone, policies.

The over-arching reason though for the less than expected returns from a potentially promising position in Africa, for instance, is the seeming disinterest of MEA to utilize India’s hard power to win diplomatic points and capitalize on the enormous goodwill for India, which can be easily translated into concessions for extracting mineral riches and, in the security sector, for help to train their militaries. Locked into big power-centered foreign policy relating to the United States, Western Europe, and China, MEA has not found the time for African countries and the opportunities they provide.

Thus, the longstanding request by Mozambique to establish a navy and to equip it, initially with coastal policing vessels and surveillance gear has been ignored.Some years back both Mozambique and Tanzania offered India concessions to mine one of the richest veins of coal in East Africa on the condition that a 600 km railway line be constructed from that site to the coast. The problem was the senior MEA official responsible for the decision spurned the invitation conveyed to him by the Indian ambassador saying that that region was ‘not on our radar’.

Worse, Indian diplomats affect superciliousness with regard to African governments, notwithstanding some $10 billion in Indian government-to-government aid for infrastructure and development projects since 2008. The private sector has been more successful in its forays in Africa. Relative to the 14 percent decline in European trade with Africa, the India-Africa trade has doubled to 6 percent in 2000-2013, with the two way trade standing at $93 billion behind only China ($211 billion) and North America ($117 billion). Major investments by Indian companies are expected to soon capture 7 percent of the IT, 5 percent of the fast-moving consumer goods, 10 percent of the power, and 2-5 percent of the agricultural services sectors.

A McKinsey Report lists various reasons for this success, among them, investing in local talent, partnering local governments, involving local insiders as partners, and going ‘granular – Understand[ing] local nuances and adapt[ing] business models accordingly, with 55 different countries, each with its own culture, customs and behaviours.’ It has helped the Indian commercial presence become part of every-day African scene. In contrast, Chinese companies have not been inclined to accommodate African complexities, have remained insular, and not earned goodwill.

Modi has expressed the view that Indian diplomats should primarily be promoting India’s economic interests abroad, which will also be his policy thrust during his African tour. Except, neither he nor his government has ever talked, leave alone emphasized, the strategic importance of cultivating South Africa and the states in the East African littoral with arms exports and military infrastructure assistance, and with the placement of army, naval and air force training missions, such as in Bhutan, in these friendly countries. It will bind their national interests to that of India as little else can to the same degree. Indian defence presence and security cooperation programmes in South Africa and East Africa should be the show-piece of India’s military diplomacy in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean. It is a means of freezing not just China but also the US and other big powers out of these contested strategic-military spaces in Africa.

The problem is GOI/PMO/MEA, on the eve of the PM’s visit, remain unappreciative of the benefits and strategic advantages from making military-to-military links and security cooperation projects the cutting edge of Indian foreign policy in Africa. [To wit MEA Joint Secretary (Africa)’s views carried in today’s Hindustan Times but not featured anywhere in its online version]

Posted in Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bhutan, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, South Asia, United States, US., Weapons | 7 Comments

Get on with testing A-5 and the on-shelf MIRV tech: No lame excuses please!

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Yesterday I was asked by the New Indian Express for my reaction to DRDO Chief Dr S Christopher’s reasons for the repeated postponement of the Agni-5 launch originally slated for 2015 Fall as not political but technical, specifically a “snag” in the battery! The report is accessible at:
http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/DRDOs-cause-for-Agni-test-delay-under-cloud/2016/07/04/article3512648.ece.

The news story did not, however carry my quote in full, cutting out some pertinent facts. So here it is:
“This seems a lame excuse by the DRDO Chief. The Agni-5 test was
originally slated for sometime in Autumn 2015,which has been postponed
a couple of times already. Is it Dr Christopher’s contention that the
supposed battery “snag” — a relatively trivial problem compared to
what can go wrong in a complex IRBM system — is of so grievous a
nature that ASL, Hyderabad, has been unable to fix it over the past
nine months? Actually, it confirms the suspicion that the A-5
testing has been stalled for political reasons, to avoid friction with
the US. But now that membership in MTCR has been secured, perhaps,
time is now to remind the US, China, and the world what India has in
its missile quiver with a series of A-5 tests, including to extreme
range of 8,500 kms.”

Trouble is the Modi government continues in the policy pattern set by the predecessor Manmohan Singh regime of being over-sensitive to Washington, always worried about what the US would do if New Delhi did this or that, until now when policy is into doing nothing, hamstrung between the uncertainties at the MEA and MOD ends buttressed by the PMO.

The reason why GOI held off on testing the Agni-5 was the Missile Technology Control Regime, fearful that it would rub the Obama Administration the wrong way, and lead to the US scuppering India’s chances of gaining entry into this technology-denial regime. So much can be deduced from the events leading up to the formal membership in MTCR and since.

However, have consistently opposed India’s seeking entry into MTCR because the country has now lost an extraordinarily disruptive leverage of upsetting the whole missile tech denial apple cart, to impose its will on other matters of import in international forums. India as member of MTCR cannot hereafter export ballistic missiles — India’s strongest strategic suite, of 300km+ range. China has been denied MTCR entry, which it first applied for 12 years ago, because of its proliferation record. But do you think Beijing will do other than force an entry soon by threatening (and carrying out the threat) the transfer of ever more potent MRBM/IRBM technologies to Pakistan via North Korea? Wait and watch.

Of course, New Delhi has always been too lack-lustre and apprehensive, chicken-hearted really, to ever do anything similar — elbowing aside resistance by promising to do worse against the West-dominated global order. Modi, like the other recent PMs, wants to get along to go along with mainly the US and the West, w/o any independent vision for the country as driver of policy, plans, and strategy.

Even so, there’s something the Modi govt will have to gird up its loins to do. With India in MTCR, and assuming the PM is serious about showing Beijing what is what, he should remove all testing constraints on the Agni-5 so a rapid series of test-firings can happen, some to its max range of 8,500 kms. Modi should also immediately sanction the testing of the MIRV technology that’s been withering away on the shelves of the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad — the progenitors of the Agni missiles, since the early 2000s (detailed in my 2008 book — ‘India’s Nuclear Policy’). With MIRVed warheads, the A-5 can actually extend its reach to ICBM range, something the Chinese have feared, whence their dubbing the A-5 an ICBM!

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Technology transfer, United States, Weapons | 13 Comments

Finally Tejas in IAF service!

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Congratulations, Team Tejas! This is a historic day for the Indian Air Force with the first two Tejas Mk-1 light combat aircraft inducted into service in the ‘Flying Daggers’ No. 45 Squadron were handed over to the IAF in Bangalore. The 45 Sqdn will be home-based at the Sulur AFB in Tamil Nadu. This is the first time that indigenous aircraft will be featuring the IAF roundels. The last time this happened was when the HF-24 Maruts were in the air order of battle; these were retired in the late Seventies. The Tejas formation will be headed by the experienced Group Captain Rangachari, who had put the plane through its paces at the Bahrain Air Show earlier this year. The two aircraft will grow to four and soon 20. This is how particular aircraft fleet grow in air forces. Considering the stepmotherly treatment meted out to the Tejas by the air force, it is a surprise to many that this Indian aircraft survived at all. It will now thrive.

Many recall that the MiG-21 fleet started with just two aircraft flown in from Russia in late 1963 or thereabouts, grew to squadron strength around the time the hostilities broke out with Pakistan in 1965, eventually peaking to some 750-odd MiG-21 fighters in the IAF. For those hyperventilating about the initial small numbers of Tejas, they need to be reassured that this is normal. The US Air Force, which is considered gold standard by some, had just two JSF-35 Lightnings-IIs to begin with.

It is unfortunate though that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar restricted the production of the Tejas to the DPSU — HAL, instead of also farming its manufacture, as advocated by me in this blog, out to private sector companies, such as Mahindra Aerospace and Reliance Aerospace which, once they get rolling, will be far more efficient in outputting the aircraft than HAL. It would, in the process, have established a competitive production scheme, helped in getting a larger number of Tejas in the air fast and speedily enlarged the Tejas’ force fraction in IAF, and gotten the best out of both the public and private defence industries. That’s the way to integrate public and private sector production.

Parrikar should also instruct the IAF to get the growing numbers of this aircraft to not just train in-squadron under forming at Sulur, but for the Tejas to fly out in pairs to various bases all over the country, including forward bases, to exercise as the air defence component against Mirage 2000s, Su-50 MKIs, and Jaguar aircraft in the aggressor role. It will speedily familiarize the rest of the IAF to the high-performing indigenous Tejas fighter, and sharpen the skills of the Tejas pilots by helping them to test, extend, and push its operational/fighting envelope.

And to ramp up its export potential, MOD and IAF should right away begin carting air attaches especially from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, and from the embassies of other countries of Asia such as Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Malayasia, and from Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from Delhi to Sulur to begin with, and later to other air bases where the Tejas will be exercising with other combat aircraft, to see this Indian designed, developed, and built aircraft in action, and to naval air stations to watch the navalized Tejas in operations.

However the IAF naysayers are already cribbing. (See retired Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak’s lament at http://www.thequint.com/opinion/2016/07/01/celebration-over-lca-tejas-calls-for-reforming-defence-sector-too-mig-21-indian-air-force-hindustan-aeronautics-ltd.) They say the Tejas took 33 years to get into fullscale production. OK, but that is starting from a zero baseline. But consider that it has taken the Lockheed Martin JSF-35 over 25 years and it has problems galore, and is in fact rated a “lemon” by aviation experts. It is also said the Tejas will take another 15 years to be “combat worthy”! This is the kind of utter nonsense IAF often voices to dishearten the Indian citizenry and government in order to strengthen its case for continued import of combat aircraft. Parrikar better throttle this sort of bad mouthing in the crib, as it were, and tell the IAF brass in clear terms — no more imports after the Super Sukhois and FGFA! — and to get flying with the Tejas.

Posted in Afghanistan, Africa, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, Central Asia, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Latin America, Maldives, Military Acquisitions, SAARC, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Vietnam, Weapons, West Asia | 31 Comments

NSG and MTCR: Where does India stand?

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Rajya Sabha TV in its program — ‘The Big Picture’ broadcast June 27, 2016 evening featuring a discussion on “NSG and MTCR: Where does India stand?” is
accessuble at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRQUNYl7egI. The panel features former ambassador to the US Meera Shankar, Ajay Lele of IDSA, Sid Varadarajan of Wire.in, Uday Bhaskar, and myself.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, disarmament, 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 Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, nonproliferation, Northeast Asia, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, United States, US., Vietnam, Weapons | 5 Comments