Bharat Rakshak

CAG puts offset question to Defence Ministry

By N C Bipindra | ENS - NEW DELHI

Published: 02nd Dec 2012

Photos

The defence ministry, while admitting that DFI proposals do not qualify for offsets, noted that the same had been conveyed to Boeing. (FilePTI)
The defence ministry, while admitting that DFI proposals do not qualify for offsets, noted that the same had been conveyed to Boeing. (FilePTI)

Was Defence Minister AK Antony party to his ministry’s decision to waive rules in favour of US aerospace major Boeing to escape its obligation to plough back $1.74 billion as offset into the Indian defence and aerospace industry? India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has put the defence ministry on the mat over the $4.1-billion deal with Boeing to supply 10 C-17 Globemaster heavy lift cargo planes for the Indian Air Force (IAF) and eight P-8I Poseidon long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft for the Indian Navy. The defence offset policy mandates that a foreign vendor who wins any Indian defence contract worth over Rs 300 crore ($55 million) should plough back at least 30 per cent of the deal back into India.

On Boeing’s P-8I deal, the company had agreed to provide DFI worth $153.90 million (Rs 750 crore) in the form of safety, reliability and air-worthiness seminars; establishment of fire finder classrooms; transfer of metallurgy and hydraulic lab facilities; composite manufacturing assembly/tooling; mobile broadband; friction stir welding and aero structures tools and processes. CAG objected that these, too, don’t fall under the three offset rules. “The DFI proposals relating to safety, reliability and airworthiness seminars and establishment of fire finder class rooms were not valid offset as there was no value addition through the IOP. The remaining proposals relating to transfer of metallurgy/hydraulic lab facilities, composite manufacturing assembly/tooling were also a kind of direct import without any value addition through the IOP,” the CAG audit found.

The defence ministry, while admitting that these DFI proposals do not qualify for offsets, noted that the same had been conveyed to Boeing, which had not yet claimed offset credit so far. Defence companies are awarded points for executing their offset responsibilities. The CAG isn’t convinced. “The reply, however, does not reckon the fact that the elements of offset once included in the contract are liable to be claimed by the vendor. Moreover, even if a claim by the vendor is not admitted by the ministry, offset deficit of $153.90 million (Rs 750 crore) would still remain,” says the report.
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Comments(2)

It is very clear that for some strange reason the present government wants to grovel before the US. This again will go against the government in the coming Gujarat elections. It is equally clear that the CIA/Pentagon machinery has for many years used funding through some religious assemblies to further its own interests in India. The government of India and Sonia Gandhi in particular must make their stand on this issue clear.There must be a clear white paper trail of how funds of religious organisations throughout India receiving aid from abroad are being used. Equally important is for Modi to state his stand on the issue. Its high time we bring to an end funding from abroad once and for all with respect to religious organisations.They are sowing the seeds of divide and rule

Posted by Raj at 12/02/2012 10:50 Reply to this Report abuse

Well the deal must be scrapped if the rules were not followed This again goes to show that some sections of the defence industry are on the pay roll of the Pentagon To my mind Antony himself is honest and a true Indian who cannot be bought by the US But there are many in the defence ministry unfortunately who can I again stress that in addition to a certain amount of money being ploughed back into Indian Industry, transfer of technology is a must and there must be a clear time table for India to become completely self reliant in the Defence sector over the coming decade

Posted by Raj at 12/02/2012 11:36 Reply to this Report abuse

nuclear-enabled.. nuclear capable.. nuclear armed.. ... the most commonly overused sensationalism tactics of desi jurnos..

With the CBU-105 SFW deliveries to begin early next year, Jag Darin 3s will be the first to recieve these. Jag is about to become the dealiest ground pounder in our arsenal till offcourse the Raffy arrives. I think we need to order another 2500 CBUs asap.

The eighth Indo-Singapore Joint Military Training (JMT) between Indian Air Force (IAF) and Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), held annually at Air Force Station, Kalaikunda, West Bengal, concluded on Friday. The JMT earlier began on October 16.

The JMT held under a bilateral agreement signed between the two countries help both Air Forces gain greater understanding of each other's concept of operations. The first JMT was held in 2006.

IAF Su-30 MKI and MiG-27 aircraft participated together with RSAF F-16D Block 52+ Fighting Falcons during the six week, day-night joint drills. The RSAF detachment comprised 30 officers and 87 personnel. The RSAF Fighting Falcons have flown back to Singapore today in the morning, said Air Officer Commanding, Air Commodore R Radhish from Kalaikunda.

While AWACS and long range AAMs are a buzz-word these days - how will the fighters fare at this altitude? IAF fighters taking off from virtual sea-level and PLAAF taking from 10K+ feet airbases.

- in terms of air-combat performance in the 20k-30k feet (ASL) sub-set, how do Indian and PLAAF aircraft fare?

Now, the valley floor is at 14K-15K feet - I am assuming that any ground attack on targets in areas like this will have to commence from 25K-30K feet bracket.

^^ To negate that issue the need of the hour is a good, mobile and cheap quick reaction anti air system.. May be something like the avenger, integrated into the early warning and detection network can be employed here to provide the solid bubble against low flying long range subsonic cruise missiles..

For about two years, half of the IAF’s fleet of IL-76 strategic freighters remained grounded for want of overhaul and extension of the aircraft’s total technical life (TTL) because of delay on the part of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in finalising a multi-million dollar contract with a foreign firm.

Out of the 17 IL-76 aircraft procured by the IAF, nine remained grounded between December 2007 and September 2009. Besides, the IAF had to shell out an additional Rs 88 crore as the contract had to be renegotiated, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pointed out in its latest report.

The IAF had inducted these aircraft between 1985 and 1989, with a TTL of 20 years. In November 2005, the MoD concluded a $28 million (Rs 128 crore) contract with a Russian firm for the overhaul and life extension of six IL-76.

In April 2007, MoD negotiated a $33 million (Rs 139 crore) contract for the overhaul and life extension of another nine aircraft. The price was valid till December 2007. In the meantime, the MoD received two representations from other firms alleging irregularities in the contract process. The MoD disposed off the matter in March 2008, by which time the validity of the contract had expired.

A fresh limited tendering process had to be initiated and though it was again the same Russian firm that bagged the contract, the new price as quoted as $41.77 million. The CAG observed that the price difference worked out to about Rs 57 crore. In addition, the IAF had to spend another Rs 30 crore to procure minimum essential spares to make the grounded aircraft fly worthy so that these could be positioned at the overhaul facilities overseas.

during the incident where an IAF pilot refused to Yuvraj on a Mi-17 in bad weather conditions in the NE area, the question came up on the how the supposedly state-of the-art for all weather flying Merlins would fare, you said that the Merlin didn't need high-altitude performance since its for VVIPs only, in the recent Italian investigation on the Augusta-Westland sales the same issue came up, an initial requirement was for 6500m and after the single vendor situation was scaled down to 4500m(?), something the Merlin could manage, so whats really the motive? bad Specs or vested interests?

Abhyas fuselage consists of five sections namely Nose cone, Equipment bay, Fuel tank bay, Air intake bay and Tail cone. The material for nose cone and tail cone are made up of composite material (GFRP). The material of equipment bay, air intake bay and fuel tank are made up of aluminum alloy and alloy steel. Provisions are provided on fuselage for mounting of wing, vertical tail, horizontal tail, air intake and boosters. It also has the provision for providing ballast for weight and C.G. management.

Terrestrial radars are practically useless especially in the north-east as they wont be able to see beyond the foothills.

The main problem for the AW101 was the heaviness of the platform, not the engine ratings. Just to give you an idea where that 4500 figure probably came from, here's a first order power analysis of the AW-101 (at work so cannot spend more time on the analysis other than a first order simulation. Perhaps later I can add more details later once I get off from work).

The plot shows the decay of available power with altitude (red line) versus the power required for two different rate-of-climb (ROC) ratings (service and combat ceilings). Where the black line stays under the red, there is spare power available for the flight. Where the red dips below the black, you cannot fly. These numbers are rated for the empty weight of the machine plus some fuel and passengers (close to the MTOF).



So it is indeed a specs issue. Why it was lowered could probably have to do with the fact that the specs could not be met by any vendor (speculating here; need to dig up my analysis on this from about a year back).

-Vivek

@rohitvats, answering your questions one by one...



Leh and other high-alt bases apart, the IAF has a definite advantage across the board at all its bases. Taking off from almost sea level both in the Gangetic and Brahmaputra basin, IAF fighters can do full-load take offs with very efficient runway length utilization. Even hot days are manageable because of the high density of the air.

The PLAAF on the other hand has a fight on its hands at bases above 8,000 ft. Aircraft will require a lot of runway to pull off loaded take offs, often will have to sacrifice weapon or fuel loads to make best use of available runways. Things will be especially bad between April to August with high day temperatures affecting the density of the air.



Answering this from a pure air-to-air engagement perspective, 25,000 ft to 45,000 ft is kind of the sweet spot for long range air engagements for gen 4++ aircraft. Turbofan engines in today's A2A fighters are optimised for this altitude regime, this applies to both the IAF and the PLAAF. Launching missiles in this region offers good kinematic performance. (Gen 5 -- Raptor, PAK-FA etc are optimised for 55,000 ft plus offering its own advantages but that's beyond the scope of this question)

The biggest catch I see is the high floor of the plateau pushing engagements to the higher end of that band to allow for more space to pull up from evasive maneuvers. Pulling up at 15,000 ft is not the same as 5,000 ft. Also pilots would need to watch out for low-level flak and radar directed guns that are placed on the high floor. These guns are typically good till 6,000 ft, so if they are at 10,000 ft, you'd better not venture below 16,000 ft. (If you recall in one of Vivek Ahuja's scenarios a Su-30MKI gets hit by flak while pulling up over Manasarovar lake.) Also from what we saw in Kargil MANPADS work really well in the cold rarefied air, and they can engage upto 9,000 ft. These things will have to be factored into while planning air to air ops.



Definitely if you want to use LGBs you would look at dropping the bombs from 25,000 ft+. Here again bomb kits need to be calibrated for the higher altitude release and corresponding adjustments might also be need to made on aircraft avionics. But we have knowledge of this from Kargil. Operating at a higher altitude with a full bomb and fuel load will not matter for the aircraft if its engines are optimised for this regime. This is the reason why the Jags are getting new engines.

No.

When Jags were first ordered it was requested that the IFR probes be removed. Decades later when the IAF wanted them, the plumbing was still there and that was used. There is a story about that somewhere...

Air Marshal Kumaria pointed out that in the late 1970s, for instance, the IAF actually sought removal of aerial refuelling plumbing from the Anglo-French Jaguar aircraft even though they were meant for a deep penetration strike role.