The Great Hanut, RIP

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The death yesterday of the greatest armoured tactician and battlefield commander the country has ever produced, Lt Gen Hanut Singh, is a personal loss to those who served under him and the few civilians privileged to have known him. I was permitted to spend a few days with him in the last month or so of his last Command — the Armoured Warfare School and Centre, Ahmednagar in 1992 (if I remember right). Unwilling to meet civilians, he was persuaded to meet with me by his close cousin and fellow cavalry officer, Jaswant Singh (ex-Central India Horse) of the BJP and the then leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

Not sure what Jaswant told Hanut about me, but within minutes of reaching my room in the Officer’s Mess, I was summoned for a meeting by the Commandant.The very tall, very thin, almost gaunt looking General with bushy mustachios curling at the ends greeted me with the easy courtliness he was known for. Ere I had settled down in the chair, the General then on duty — it being a week day — and hence in full fig, shot me a question, which I immediately realized was a “trick question” in that my answer would decide the sort of relationship I’d have with him. “Who’s the best armoured tactical commander in history?” he asked, like a headmaster testing a student whose alleged promise was suspect. I took my time answering but when I said “Herman Balck”, suddenly the atmosphere lightened and a twinkle came to Hanut’s eyes and he responded “I think so too”. It was smooth sailing thereafter, with great deal of time spent discussing with him the future of mobile warfare with armoured forces, and the many practical problems in marshaling and overseeing actions of large armrd and mech formations on the battlefield.

Hanut had, perhaps, in mind his tenure as GOC, II Corps in the 1987 Operation Brasstacks that, as subsequently revealed, had a secret thrust (Op Trident) of transiting from a war exercise into a full-scale operation for ingress deep into Pakistan to catch the Pakistan Army by surprise, except Sundarji’s surprise also surprised Hanut. He reportedly protested not being told about this sub-surface plan and the difficulties in virtually turning his Strike Corps around and sustaining a hard push westwards. Hanut was careful to skirt around Brasstacks in our interactions. I remember, in this respect, talking when in Pakistan a decade back to Gen. Khalid Arif, the de facto Pak Army Chief in the late 1980s, who countered the Indian concentration, albeit for a war exercise, by amassing his forces as a precautionary measure — including Army Reserve South — in the chicken neck area north of Gurdaspur to cut Kashmir off from the rest of India if the massed Indian armour aggressed on the southern Rajasthan front. Arif was confident Sundarji and Rajiv Gandhi’s govt wouldn’t risk having J&K thus severed. The only slight doubts Arif hinted at by indirection was about the uncertainty attending on how Hanut would maneuver his forces once they broke through the Pak defensive line. In the larger picture, Arif calculated right; India did lose its nerve.

One can see why Hanut empathized with Balck, who like him, believed in leading from the front — Hanut’s Basantar river crossing and maneuvers in the Shakargarh salient in 1971 and Balck’s heading the lead unit of the 1st Panzer Div in Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer Corps across the Meuse River and the breakthrough to capture Sedan in 1942. Both Hanut and Balck ended their careers by being relegated to minor commands — to Ahmednagar and Panzer Group in Hungary respectively, their remarkable operational experience and competence under-valued by the armies they served.

I remember too the fierce loyalty he inspired among those who had fought under him, from the lowest to the highest. Such as the lead JCO instructor at Armrd School, who was instructed by Hanut to run me around on tanks so I could experience what it is like inside the closed, claustrophobia-inducing, mobile steel cans travelling at high spds over uneven ground — back-breaking and senses-numbing!, who recounted his hair-raising experience as Hanut’s tank driver in 17 (Poona) Horse’s lead tank as it led the armrd column across the minefield on the Basantar, and swore how every army unit would follow the “Colonel sahib” — as he called the General — anywhere w/o hesitation or doubt. Hanut’s chief of staff at the Centre, Brig Shergill, again a veteran of the Shakargarh op, recounted in greater detail Hanut’s on-battlefield tactics and instructions that awestruck juniors would w/o hesitation implement and his magical feel for the battlefield and, more notoriously, his differences with his armrd bgde comdr Arun Vaidya (later Army Chief) who advised caution, which Hanut expressly disregarded with a withering “Keep off my back!” warning to Vaidya issued over the bravo link. That Vaidya was awarded a Bar to his MVC for this action that he opposed, led to Hanut’s initially rejecting the award of MVC for himself. It was only after the Army brass all but got down on their knees and begged him to accept the gallantry award that he relented but, his fealty to the truth meant he never ever wore the MVC decoration! In fact, Hanut’s official portrait at the armrd school and Centre, if I recall, doesn’t have the MVC on his chest.

But great commanders are rarely appreciated by their peers. Hanut was scorned and reviled by lesser, even near incompetent, cohort of big-talking cavalry generals, as the “chaplain General” — because of the religious rituals he followed by going into his “meditation bunker” even during mil ops, venerating “Mataji”– an avatar he believed of the Goddess Durga. But these rituals never hampered his work or his duties, but nonetheless were something he was pilloried for. The General explained his devotion simply as seeking divine guidance.

It was a pity Rajiv’s defence minister K.C. Pant, whom I was close to,
didn’t have the gumption to over-rule the army brass arrayed against Hanut’s deserved elevation to army command and later, perhaps, even COAS, fearful that his cleaning of the Service’s Augean stables that would inevitably have followed, would have shown up the rot that had set in in the Indian Army, and would otherwise set a bad precedent!

The last time I met Hanut was in 1994 when, as adviser, defence expenditure, (10th) Finance Commission, India,chaired by Pant, I visited IAF’s South-Western Air Cmd HQrs then at Jodhpur, and took the time one evening to visit the General at his ashram he had built some ways outside the city. We talked about the state of the army and, even more animatedly, again about armrd warfare history. I recalled for him the haunting statement he had left me with from the Ahmednagar episode: “There’s no armrd commander in the army”, he had declared, “who can visualize a battlefield beyond the regimental level” [which statement I used in my 2002 (revised edition in 2005) tome — Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, to argue, among other things, that the impressive wherewithal notwithstanding, the three Indian Strike Corps and pivot corps couldn’t successfully prosecute Cold Start]. He gently guided me away from that topic but his assessment has left me wondering about what will happen in a straight-out armrd war on the western front.

The General attained samadhi in Haridwar, going the way he wanted to. His missed army command and perhaps subsequent COAS-ship, will however remain the great what ifs in the army’s and the Indian military’s history.

Great having known you, General Sahib, and a final, most respectful, salaam. RIP.

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Unexpected windfall for France with Rafale?

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

It was surprising news from Paris about the Indian govt finally settling on the purchase of some 60-odd aircraft as a via media between ditching the entire deal and continue struggling with Dassault for a compromise solution for the lot of 126 MMRCA. As of last night, HAL at least was sure that while their differences with Dassault had been sorted out, the glitch at the PNC (price negotiation committee) level was holding up the deal, and because the problem was with escalated cost of both the France-sourced and HAL license-manufactured aircraft, there was a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable, meaning HAL wouldn’t get to produce any Rafales.

This new turn of events, it may be deduced, was apparently something derived by the PMO that Narendra Modi, perhaps, assented to in line with MEA’s view that Paris needed to be mollified with bulk purchase of the Rafale to maintain goodwill with the French govt. Besides, it is a add-on to the initially floated proposal for some 24 Rafales bought off the shelf to stop the squawking about fast-depleting fighter squadrons by the IAF brass.This deduction because Parrikar’s MOD could not have turned around a full 180 degrees after the minister had shown his partiality for the Su-30MKI option, with the HAL Nasik produced aircraft available at around $80-$100 million per fully loaded plane. Now compare that with the $4bn India will be dishing out for 60 Rafales, i.e., at almost $50 million unit cost. Except this figure is just for the platform with no bells and whistles and no onboard armaments, and certainly no AESA radar. Once you begin totting up the costs for each of these items, the final bill for each of these Rafales would be nearer $200mn. For Dassault and France this is surely an unexpected windfall, something they could’t have possibly even imagined coming to pass, because Dassault gets to produce all these aircraft and no nonsense about TOT, etc involved by bringing HAL into the picture. The French combat aircraft industry pivoting on the Rafale, which was down to producing just 11 of these planes annually, will now be able to ramp up production and keep itself in the clover for another 8-10 years thanks to the infernally stupid decision by the GOI.

This is ultimately a regression which pretty much torpedoes the “Make in India” thrust of the BJP govt, which by resuscitating the “meeting the immediate need”-principle for acquisitions takes the country back to ad hoc procurement policies that ended up making India the largest arms importer in the world. The IAF brass may be happy. But consider the deleterious effects of yet another type of weapons platform added to the fleet. At last count IAF had 27 different types of aircraft in its inventory. Now add another one, and compound the logistics problem of handling a completely new aircraft and maintenance setup, requiring the retraining a whole bunch of people (other than pilots) in France, and then total up the costs. For God’s sake, is there no one with any sense of the tens of billions of euros involved? And has the Modi regime given up on responsible expenditure and been herded into buying the IAF line that all will be lost without the Rafale? The truth is much will be lost with Rafale in the IAF because now we’ll have to contend with an upset Moscow, which has been liberal in onpassing its frontline armaments and technology that Western suppliers will not part with for love or money.The manner in which the seller France stuck to its guns in the price negotiation, compelling the buyer New Delhi to backpedal is evidence enough of that.

Let’s hope that this story is only a kite being flown in the media by interested parties. But should it prove to be true then, boy, are we flying blind into a squall!

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‘India Conference’ at Harvard University — Panel discussion on Sino-Indian relations

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

On the first day of the 2015 ‘India Conference’ at Harvard University, Boston, May 7, was scheduled the keynote panel discussion on Sino-Indian relations featuring the former NSA, Shivshankar Menon, and myself and moderated by Gary Samore, Executive Director, Belfer Center, Kennedy School and, until recently, President Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction. It was a lively affair, a generally courteous slanging match between Shankar Menon and I. Listen to Menon’s defence of Indian foreign policy. It reveals just why India doesn’t get things right in the foreign-military policy field and especially vis a vis China! A video record of this event may be accessed on Youtube.com at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niQvz93SloM.

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Summiting with Purpose

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

After the fiasco of the “Savile Row” suit at his “chai pe charcha” with president Barack Obama, prime minister Narendra Modi learned, at some cost to his personal reputation, the need to dress austerely. As regards the more serious side of summiting, his attempt to explain frequent travels abroad as pro forma, necessitated by foreign policy imperatives, however, suggests that in accepting a “continuity” agenda set by the vested interests in government led by leading sections within the ministry of external affairs (MEA), he has yet to fully grasp the fact that the value of high-level meets lies in the substantive benefits extracted from host countries, not in lavish Indian giveaways to win short-term goodwill, which is the Dummy’s way to make a personal splash at the nation’s expense, and has been the norm since the turn of the century.

Too often in the last decade, nationalist-minded Indians have had their fingers crossed and hearts in their mouths every time Indian prime ministers sallied forth to foreign lands, or entertained their counterparts in Delhi, because the outcomes invariably involved the commitment of scarce national resources to securing wrong things, and/or the compromising of national interest by surrendering foreign, economic, and military policy options. Hopefully, Modi will not, in his upcoming trips starting April 9 to France, Germany, and Canada, deepen the mistakes already made.

A contract for the unaffordable French Rafale, entirely superfluous to the Indian Air Force’s requirements, for instance, will stifle the Indian Tejas and advanced combat aircraft projects, and an agreement for Areva nuclear reactors, facilitated by the 2008 nuclear deal with the US, as with other such purchases, by confirming the nuclear testing moratorium freeze Indian thermonuclear weapons at the failed-design stage, and create an energy dependency by denying funds for the Indian breeder and thorium reactor development promising energy self-sufficiency just so exorbitantly-priced imported reactors run on imported fuel, the supply of which can be terminated at any time, can be bought.

Modi had the opportunity to seriously rethink the issues involved and chart a new course. Instead, if the nuclear “breakthrough” with Obama is any guide, he chose to follow the MEA line hewing to the supplier country dictates. Thus relations with France, for instance, is thought of as depending on the Rafale contract being signed and on the approval of the sale of Areva reactors, which are plagued by problems of enormous cost and time over-runs wherever these are being erected (such as in Olkiluoto in Finland). Besides, astonishingly, inverting the traditional buyer-seller relationship where the buyer has the upper hand, it puts the onus of failure on India for not meeting relationship benchmarks set by Paris that is desperate to sell!

It makes one wonder how India got to this pass. Why it is that New Delhi seems determined to expend scarce monies on high-value foreign products of doubtful utility amounting to a criminal waste of national resources? And, more importantly, whether the Indian government even knows what’s good for the country?

If, as Modi has tweeted, this trip is centred on boosting the Indian economy and “creating jobs” for the youth, he cannot do better than ask especially the Angela Merkel dispensation in Germany, and secondarily France, to materially assist in establishing the “mittelstand” here. Mittelstand is the network of small and medium-sized, often family-owned, engineering enterprises and workshops that prosper by continually producing specialised, high-quality engineering goods, and are the bedrock of the high-technology sectors (aerospace, automobile, etc.) in these countries. New technologies thus produced are incorporated by big corporations into their designs for major hardware. Mittelstand also has been the engine of the German economy 1900 onwards, employing over 70 per cent of the workforce, responsible for over 82 per cent of the country’s vaunted apprenticeship programme for skill-building, and accounting for over 60 per cent of its economic output. It has proved so successful France copied it. If mittelstand is not on his list of “talking points” provided him by MEA, the prime minister should put it there.

He should explore in Berlin how the mittelstand concept can be replicated in this country and what programmes and projects Germany can get underway to achieve this aim. And, rather than sign fly-blown contracts for the Rafale aircraft of dubious merit and for the equally suspect nuclear reactors that will deprive the indigenous aerospace and nuclear programmes of much needed funding, Modi must ask Paris for pointers on how it converted the German mittelstand to fit French conditions, and what lessons India can draw from that experience. Modi ought to make support for rooting this economic-industrial set-up in India the metric for judging future relations with these two countries.

Indians, man for skilled man, are as inventive and productive as their US and European counterparts, as the record of Western companies in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and elsewhere using Indian talent to produce exceptional technological innovations, patents, and profit for these companies, shows. The trouble is the traditionally statist-oriented Indian government has shied away from providing its own people and industry the enabling environment that puts a premium on growing technology. The same results can be obtained here by trusting in and incentivising Indian engineering and entrepreneurial talent. But first, it will require the BJP government to renounce the easy import option. As the Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’álon said in Delhi recently apropos of his country’s success in the military technology sphere, “Having no choice is the best incentive.”

Modi should focus on the ways and means by which small and medium enterprises can be technology germinators and innovators, and generate wealth and employment with or without direct German and French inputs. And, whilst in Canada, rather than get hung up on a “nuclear deal”, he should prod the Bombardier Company, say, into setting up production line and R&D unit here to produce technologically advanced rolling stock for export and to meet the elevated/underground metrorail needs of prodigiously growing Indian cities.

Modi can talk up India alright. Time is nigh he ensured his jaunts abroad helped root an Indian mittelstand as the cutting edge of an “innovation economy” at home.
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Published in New Indian Express April 3, 2015 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Summiting-with-Purpose/2015/04/03/article2743879.ece

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Holdover Foreign Policy

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Earlier in the year, the Pakistani columnist Ayaz Amir voiced the futility, apropos prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to get imaginative policies out of the advisers around him, of churning butter from water. A similar problem may be affecting prime minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy. Certainly, there is new direction to policy, such as in pacifying neighbours (Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and, importantly, in departing from the calcified thinking of the ministry of external affairs (MEA) that divorces diplomacy from military power. An example of the latter is the move to establish a forward Indian presence in the surrounding ocean, to begin with in the Agaléga Islands of Mauritius and in Seychelles, something long advocated by this analyst.

These innovations happened because Modi has relied mainly on his instincts. The PM’s setting himself up as the fount of all policy ideas explains the wariness of his cowed cabinet colleagues who refuse to take initiative for fear of falling afoul of his views. The PM thus saddled with too many policy areas to manage is unable to do justice to any of them, whence the many missteps by the BJP government.But such a system depends principally on the quality of the PM’s advisers and, even more, on the quality of advice rendered. So far there’s no evidence of any “brain trust” of realpolitik-minded outside specialists in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) ideologically in sync with the BJP. Indeed, there isn’t even a hint of existing structures being utilised in a meaningful way with many statutory bodies, such as the National Security Advisory Board manned by Manmohan Singh’s nominees, for instance, remaining un-reconstituted and high-flying economic advisers appointed with much fanfare feeling ignored.

The trouble is this is not a self-sustaining system of policymaking. The last time such a system prevailed was in Jawaharlal Nehru’s halcyon decade of the Fifties when the MEA acted on the premise, candidly recalled by former foreign secretary Jagat Mehta, that “Panditji knows best”. That episode ended in the Chinese Premier Zhouenlai politically eclipsing Nehru at the First Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955 and, seven years later, in China militarily humiliating India.

The era of one-man bands in the policy arena is long since gone. Except the prime ministers who succeeded Nehru went the other way, leaving any issue even remotely pertaining to foreign countries for the MEA to tackle immeasurably expanding its operational space. In the new millennium, the Westphalian order of sovereign states has grown more complex. Endemic intra-state turmoil and instability, permeable borders, technological advances, active social networks, and proliferation of non-state actors have upset the systemic certainties of the latter half of the 21st century. Specialist knowledge, technical acumen, and domain expertise are now the bread and butter of foreign policymaking. Absent such strengths in the MEA peopled by generalists and Modi’s unwillingness to trust in non-careerist policy counsellors, Indian foreign and military policies have tended naturally to stick to old policy lines justified in terms of continuity. Thus, the PM’s desire for close relations with the United States, for instance, was translated by MEA honchos into the nuclear “breakthrough” justified by tracing its origins to the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership obtained by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime.

The bureaucrats in the MEA, as in the rest of government, can at best implement policies. But they are happy to expropriate the policymaking role if allowed to do so. The result is a dearth of strategically agile national security policy options for the PM to ponder. While Modi from time to time calls in outside experts for consultation, these are episodic events, not everyday fare. It has left MEA officials free to insinuate themselves into the policymaking space the PM had carved out as his own by keeling over on the side it believes Modi is inclined.

This was evident in why no dialogue was initiated with Pakistan before Barack Obama advised this course of action, thereby according the US the go-between role it craves. It projected the impression of an India bending to Washington’s will, an image reinforced by the nuclear understanding, perhaps motivated by “professional” advice to Modi that a bad deal is better than no deal. It has confounded an already awful situation. It is doubtful whether Modi was advised about the negatives of this agreement, considering that the very persons and bureaucratic interests responsible for the 2008 nuclear deal, which achieved for the US its goal of “capping and freezing” India’s nuclear weapons capability—science and technology adviser to the PM, Dr R Chidambaram, the MEA, and Nuclear Power Corporation Ltd., also gunned for this nuclear compromise that violates Indian law—the Civilian Nuclear Damage Liability Act 2010. Assuming it withstands legal scrutiny, the disastrous consequences—the indigenous nuclear industry going into a tailspin, the burial of the 3-stage Bhabha Plan for energy independence based on Indian thorium reserves, and the commensurate revival and enrichment of the American, French and Russian nuclear industries—seem to be no one’s concerns, nor the fact that the promise of “63,000MW by 2032” is so much hot air.

But bending over backwards to accommodate the US makes little sense at a time when India’s leverage is waxing. Russia, post-Crimean annexation, has rediscovered its mojo, China has grown surer about realising its hegemonic plans, states on the Chinese periphery daily become more anxious, and the US is backsliding, desperately wanting regional heavyweights, like India, to join it in shoring up the status quo. These are circumstances tailor-made to enhance India’s strategic worth as balancer with respect to the US-China, China-littoral/offshore Asian states, and US-Russia tussles.

As a self-confessed Gujarati with an eye for opportunity and profit, it is surprising Modi did not capitalise on this situation to recover lost ground by rejecting the Establishment advice and sidelining the original nuclear deal, and extracting a high cost from Washington for an ambiguous promise of partnering it. So once again India is in the familiar position of supplicant. Modi surely did not want this but it is something he is unwittingly realising by relying primarily on serving and retired civil servants.

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[Published in New Indian Express, March 20, 2015, at
http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Holdover-Foreign-Policy/2015/03/20/article2721367.ece

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Terminate the Rafale Deal

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha has repeatedly and publicly declared “there’s no Plan B”, that in effect it is Rafale or nothing with respect to the Indian Air Force’s dubious Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) requirement. It merits his dismissal from service, because these words denote gross incompetence, failure to anticipate the unexpected and prepare for it—axiomatic in all military planning and, hence, of leadership. For every plan there is always an alternative plan of action in case things don’t work out as envisaged.

The absence of a fallback scheme is, of course, a ruse by Raha to pressurise the government into acceding to IAF’s wishes for the Rafale, despite defence minister Manohar Parrikar spelling out an alternative—the cost-effective, Nasik-produced Su-30MKI, which won’t require multi-billion dollar investment in another production facility and beats the French combat aircraft by any performance standard.

The prohibitive cost and questionable fighting qualities of the Rafale apart, the unwillingness of the French consortium headed by Dassault to guarantee the aircraft licence manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), and to fully meet transfer of technology (TOT) obligations involving Indian public and private sector entities directly or by way of offsets, too, are factors of serious concern. Source codes, flight control laws, and “black box” technologies, including all aspects of the engine, advanced sensors and avionics are likely to be left out of any TOT agreement or worse, paid for but not delivered, if previous defence deals are any guide. Dassault plans on supplying critical components and technologies for the entire production run of the “Indian-made” Rafale to ensure massive recurring profits, whence its insistence that its novice Indian partner, Reliance Aerospace, be part of the local production cycle. One other aspect is equally worrying. HAL assembling Rafale may face the kind of troubles Mazgaon Dockyard Ltd. is experiencing with the French Scorpene submarine where French vendors are delaying the supply of material and hence delaying induction and raising the direct and indirect costs.

The Price Negotiation Committees (PNCs) instituted by the defence ministry to hammer out contracts with foreign firms are to blame for such flawed transactions. Voluminous contracts are drawn up—the Rafale document reportedly exceeds 1,500 pages—but the use of indistinct language deliberately leaves large enough loopholes for even middling technologies, what to speak of the more sensitive “know why” knowledge, to be legitimately denied even as the suppliers pocket the monies the defence ministry is quick to disburse in full at the start. The PNCs need investigating, particularly for the vast leakage of the national wealth through this route.

A recent visit to HAL facilities by Dassault officials is a pointer to things to come. They complained to the US-based Defense News about the low productivity of HAL workforce and lack of economies of scale to argue that Indian-built Rafales will be costlier. Besides indicating that defence PSUs are not proficient in even the low-end screwdriver technology, the French hinted at further escalation of realistic cost beyond the presently estimated $30-$35 billion!

Flawed contracts drafted by PNCs that do not insist on penalties for time and cost overruns, and on staggered payments to fit delivery schedules, moreover, substantiate the fear repeatedly voiced by this analyst, of manipulation of assembly kits and spares supply, for foreign/economic policy reasons by France to ground the IAF squadrons at any time, is real. Such apprehensions are sought to be doused by Paris claiming that owing to TOT India will achieve “industrial autonomy”. But considering the guaranteed high level of French content in the supposedly “indigenous” Rafales, this is a laughable claim.

There are operational reasons as well why Rafale will be a liability. The IAF has always been wary of buying foreign aircraft accessible to its Pakistani counterpart. This was a reason for the rejection of F-16s as MMRCA given that they outfit the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) strike squadrons. Now consider this: Dassault is cock-a-hoop about the likely purchase by Qatar of some 66 Rafales. The Qatari Air Force (QAF) has traditionally been run by PAF pilots, with the understanding that these squadrons will switch to PAF use in any conflict with India. So, IAF Rafales will go up against Pakistani-flown Qatari Rafales that potentially will be better equipped and periodically upgraded with more sophisticated sensors, avionics, and weapons that Saudi Arabia will happily finance, as it did the $500 million deal for PAF’s F-16s and Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and missile technologies from China. The Gulf regimes, after all, consider the Pakistan military their palace guard.

And, Rafales cannot be effectively used against China either. Why? Because, firstly, it will not survive sophisticated Chinese air defence; secondly, Dassault won’t allow the indigenous Brahmos supersonic cruise missile to take out targets inside China from standoff range to be integrated with it; and thirdly, because the Rafale is a compromised system for another reason. Pakistan is the prime conduit for Western military, especially aerospace, technologies to China. A Qatari Rafale will be disassembled in Pakistan for Chinese engineers to scrutinise, or wing its way to a Chengdu Aircraft Industry Groupsite for its best features and technologies to be reverse-engineered and incorporated in Chinese combat aircraft, and otherwise permit the Chinese military to familiarise itself with its technical weaknesses and configure appropriate counter-measures and counter-tactics.

Every demerit attends on the Rafale aircraft deal, including its outrageous cost and negligible effects in growing a self-sufficient Indian defence industry. It should be terminated also because of the country’s meagre resources—the capital defence budget of Rs`94,588 crore for 2015-16 remains unchanged from last year, and careful inter se choices will have to be made from among myriad military procurement programmes. In the competition for the defence rupee, the Rafale is eminently expendable. It is time Parrikar told IAF, using the words of former US defence secretary Robert Gates, that “there’s no endless money”. If a Rafale deal is still signed to crown Narendra Modi’s April 10 visit to France, the government will have much to answer for.

[Published in New Indian Express on 6th March, 2015 at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Terminate-the-Rafale-Deal/2015/03/06/article2699390.ece

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, 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 ecobomic situation | 4 Comments

What should defence expenditure priorities be?

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Having wasted the first budget opportunity in 2014 after BJP assumed power by staying with what may be called a continuation budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did a better job the second time around. He was particularly realistic in increasing the defence allocations so marginally to Rs 2,46,727 crores (from Rs 2,29,000 crores), i.e., by a mere 7-odd % as to barely take care of inflation. Indeed, going by past patterns — inflation plus 5%-7% is the norm. Indeed, Jaitley, pointedly increased the defence capital budget not at all — staying locked in virtually at last year’s level of Rs 94,588 crores (up by a measly Rs 0.5 crores to round out the figure!). In effect, it leaves little money for the kind of procurements programmes the military has lined up. In this situation there’s a critical necessity for a high-level mechanism to determine the armed forces acquisition priorities inter se, which need I first articulated in my classified report as adviser, defence expenditure, to the 10th Finance Commission in 1995 and have been publicly iterating for the last exactly 20 years, around budget time!! With each service believing it cannot do without every last item on its wish list and always holding out the dire consequences for national security if it is not realized in full, it ends up as an unending farce.

In the circumstances, what exactly should the defence spending inter se priorities be? The principle for service-wise allocation should be urgently to meet the requirements for the China front — (1) light, air transportable, howitzers for mountain use, (2) C3 and data fusion in a nationally networked grid for the army and air force entities — tactically-deployed forward units, brigade and Division HQrs, and theatre commands to plug into, (3) accelerated equipping and positioning of the mountain strike corps for offensive ops on the Tibetan plateau, (4) 192-strong force of light utility helicopters, (5) raising of two additional Brahmos-II land cruise missile regiments, and (6) speedy augmentation of the Su-30MKI force (by ditching the Rafale for once and for all) and its massed deployment for use on the elongated front from Aksai Chin to Arunachal. These priorities to proceed along with the build-up of the nuclear and conventional submarine strength, in the main. But if past is guide, these will not be the priorities and the defence rupee will be squandered.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Military Acquisitions, Missiles, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, South Asia, Tibet, Weapons | 3 Comments

24 Rafales, seriously?!

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

Times of India reported from Kolkatta (refer http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-inks-a-deal-for-supply-of-24-Rafale-aircrafts/articleshow/46364875.cms) per info from an MOD source, that a mini-deal for 24 Rafales has been signed with Dassault, described by the reporter as “testing waters…for a full-fledged tie-up”. If true, this is so atrocious a transaction that it will make quite a dent in Defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s reputation for common sense decisions. If Rafale isn’t good to fill the full complement of 126 MMRCA in IAF, 24 of these aircraft in Indian colours aren’t going to be any good either. In fact, this decision verges on the silly considering there are so many question marks hanging on this aircraft as combat aircraft that to buy squadron and half worth almost $2 plus billion makes as much sense as throwing away $30 billion for 126 of them. If the idea is to incentivise the French, get Dassault to take ownership of the planes rolling off HAL lines, the French company will, in fact, think of this toe-wetting by the GoI into the Rafale waters as a hook to pull IAF in (with the connivance of the IAF brass, of course). And this is supposed to be brilliant business strategy?? Conceived by whom — PNC members, MOD, MEA? What will these guys think up next to justify giving away the store? And why has Defence Minister Parrikar approved it and if he has not why has this piece of news not been authoritatively refuted?

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, 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 assistance, russian military, South Asia, Technology transfer, Weapons | 3 Comments

Pakistan soon to commission a DARHT facility

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

A disturbing but not surprising piece of news was conveyed by a reliable non-Western, non-Indian government source. The Strategic Plans Division, Chaklala, Pakistan Army — that country’s nuclear secretariat responsible for strategic planning, and operational readiness of that country’s nuclear forces, has been preoccupied with building with China’s expert and material help and technical assistance a Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Testing facility. This DARHT installed in the underground nuclear complex at Golra, will soon be commissioned. In the absence of physical testing, the DARHT facility will help the Pakistani nuclear weaponeers improve their weapons designs and refine their yields. DARHT only provides more evidence for what I have always maintained that, unlike India, Pakistan is very serious about nuclear security, takes nothing for granted, and will not risk weapons that may work well on paper but not as well in reality. The DARHT will propel Pakistan past India in the quality of its nuclear arsenal. What to talk of China, Indian nuclear weaponry may not even stand up to Pakistan’s inventory. The fabled China-Pakistan nuclear nexus, in the event, would become well nigh insurmountable.

Meanwhile, the weapons directorate at BARC, Trombay — severely neglected by New Delhi, languishes — unable anymore to attract the best and the brightest from among the talent pool recruited by DAE because there are no technical challenges to overcome, no forward-looking agenda to realize. India, thus keeps sliding strategically on the nuclear military front and, with the Modi-Obama nuclear compromise, in the civilian nuclear energy sphere, as well. And, the most disastrous thing to happen to the country’s nuclear programme — Dr R Chidambaram continues as Science and technology adviser to PM Modi and, like Nero, fiddles as the Indian nuclear energy programme burns.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, disarmament, Geopolitics, India's strategic thinking and policy, nonproliferation, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, society, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, United States, US., Weapons | 7 Comments

Modi’s Action Deficits

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Bharat Karnad

The Delhi poll-quake produced an outcome almost everybody in the political firmament, including many within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, it seems, craved for—the crashing of the Narendra Modi juggernaut. It has highlighted the shortfalls in Modi’s nine-month rule encapsulated in the opposition’s jibe that he is “All talk, no action”. Paperless cabinet meetings, ministers staying late in office, civil servants turning up in time for work do not, apparently, constitute the social and economic revolution the people expected. Arvind Kejriwal, in the event, has emerged, remarkably, as the rival the prime minister will be judged against.

Modi’s achievements to date amount, in substance, to an easy camaraderie with world leaders and exhortations to the people. In contrast, the 49 days of Kejriwal’s first tenure as chief minister had such impact it carried his Aam Aadmi Party to an overwhelming victory in the capital and, the day after the declaration of the poll results, for instant changes—government tankers appeared in water-starved parts of the capital, touts disappeared from the regional transport offices, and bribe-demanding police turned into paragons of propriety. While Modi’s “corruption-free India” remained a slogan, Kejriwal’s campaign motivated the citizens to use mobile telephony to trap wrongdoers, and become the agent of change they desired.

The irony is that as a former chaiwallah who made it to the top on his own, Modi has a better story to tell, but has failed so far to parlay it into policies that encourage and reward personal initiative and individual effort, reduce the profile of the government as employer of the first and last resort, and to embark schemes to grow jobs by growing the economy. Over the months the people found that Modi did not trim government waste, or reconfigure the system, or rectify its ways of doing business with the people, or ramp up the abysmal-quality services it delivered, or devise policies to encourage and incentivise private enterprise, or initiate training schemes to upskill the potential industrial workforce needed for the country’s industry to be at the cutting edge, or facilitate a take-off by the manufacturing sector by putting teeth into his “Make in India” policy, or attract the fabled foreign investment to get trillion dollars worth of infrastructure and connectivity projects going. More disheartening still, pronouncements aside, labour and judicial reforms, like their economic counterpart, have stayed stuck in the political and administrative quagmire.

By way of relief, Modi sought visibility on the international stage where “success” can be gleaned by managing the pomp and attendant pageantry and playing to the delirious non-resident Indian crowds from New York to Sydney. The trouble is the law of diminishing returns kicks in fast. While the occasional international summit and Madison Garden-do is fine, too many foreign jaunts and diplomatic jamborees quickly pall, giving the impression of a democratic leader seeking escape or diversion from his failures on the domestic front.

Problematically, Kejriwal has scored in the areas Modi appears deficient. The AAP supremo did what he promised—improve, even if slightly, the everyday life of the majority—the underclass surviving in miserable slums and shanty towns by ordering cut-rate electricity and water for it. Populist programmes cannot be long sustained because the policy of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” is guaranteed ultimately to alienate both but, in the interim, he can coast. Relying on his “brains trust”, Kejriwal has been inventive—like asking the Centre to allot Delhi a coal block as a captive source of energy for thermal power plants in the capital region. He has less in common with the lowliest in the land than does Modi but compensates with the kind of empathy, humility, and ability to connect with the common folk the PM seems unable to match. And, bad optics—the supposedly expensive suit he donned in his session with Barack Obama—hasn’t helped.

The Left liberals comprising the bulk of the country’s media, intelligentsia, and political parties, who have benefited from the quasi-socialist nanny state, see Modi’s failure as rooted in a faulty ideology symbolised by the carryings-on of the Hindu fringe. The miniscule minority forming the more responsible liberal Right in the country, among whom this analyst counts himself, on the other hand, is a frustrated lot. With the government identified by Modi as the mother of most ills afflicting the state and society, he was expected to slash government, rid the system of the careerist civil servant-dominated decision making, redefine the national interest along hard nationalist lines, and shape policies accordingly. Instead, Modi empowered the bureaucrats.

Meanwhile in the policy-making field, too, Kejriwal has taken the lead, appointing domain experts to advise him on innovative solutions and policy options. Other than in the economic field where outside experts have been installed in the NITI Aayog and as advisers, they are conspicuously absent in most of the rest of the Modi government. Thus, the technical ministries at the Centre continue to be run by generalist civil servants, foreign policy by the prime minister’s instincts (which has resulted in inadequate attention paid to neighbours—Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, compounded by ill-thought out actions, such as the nuclear compromise with Obama, in violation of an Act of Parliament, that could make the indigenous nuclear energy programme extinct), and defence is constrained by the limited imagination of external affairs. Judged broadly, the current policies generally seem unchanged from Manmohan Singh’s days which, perhaps, explains the popular disillusionment with Modi.

For Modi to pull things back, which he can do in the remaining four odd years in office, it will require him to return to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s nationalist ideology and the BJP’s root social self-help principles. He will also have to bank on conservative strategists from outside, who helped Atal Bihari Vajpayee chart an expansive national security policy and set India on the great power course, to fill his strategic policies with meaningful content. Without the right intellectual heft and expertise in the Prime Minister’s Office and in government, Modi may end up winging it on his own without taking the country or even himself very far.

[Published in the New Indian Express, February 20, 2015, at http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Modis-Action-Deficits/2015/02/20/article2676686.ece

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, nuclear industry, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, nuclear power, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US. | 6 Comments