IAF Rafale News and Discussions - 26 May 2015

[Karan M]

>>Even the ex-IAF top brass admitted in a video that the LCA was not that cheap of a fighter if you take into account decades of development and delays.

More cooked up bullshit.

Its one thing Arthuro if you want to peddle your wares, but spare us your half truths and agenda.

[srai]

^^^

Medium category will have 4 types (Mirage-2000, MiG-29, Jaguar and Rafale) in itself.

Oh yeah ... should have added a possibly of a 5th type in there as well ... F/16 or F-18 or Gripen etc.

[Vivek K]

One should be realistic.

Even the ex-IAF top brass admitted in a video that the LCA was not that cheap of a fighter if you take into account decades of development and delays.

The debate should not be about the rafale being expensive: it is, but just like any new fighter jet type for IAF with such contract conditions...(50% offsets!). But rather whether the IAF need a new type and what is the expected rationalization of IAF assets after the rafale deal (too many types in service).

Utter BS!! But if India wants to send her money to the French, no one can stop them. Lack of orders to world class home grown weapons like LCA and Arjun will make sure India will remain a country on the fringe that is never ready for a war (because key items have to be imported) and will need to convince supplier nations that its actions are justified. The lack of development of the aerospace industry will deprive India from catching up with the rest of the world and remain backward forever.

The Chinese are shivering in their lungis because India will have 36 fighters by 2020 to match 100s of their fighters!! What a disgrace!

[Karan M]

@Karan M ^^ I am not expecting 300 Rafales and nowhere (that I recall) have I said that. You may be conflating my response to ldev with the that number.

I hope I state this clearly as I can: you can can have all the social projects you want and can afford, BUT they have to deliver what the end user wants. Dassault delivers what the ADA wants along with the rest of their MIC. If they don't, people get fired, companies get restructured and they move on.

Lets see LM with the F-35, billions over budget, over timeline - goes on as usual. MiG-MAPO constantly delivers underperforming aircraft to needy customers - gets state support. Dassault, only game in town - who replaces it in the French industrial structure?
Details, details - but very inconvenient.

No social projects here, no sirree.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f0be07a4-0665 ... z46MtooNlY

Berlin unhappiness over EADS grows

By Jim Pickard and George Parker in London, Gerrit Wiesmann in Berlin and Hugh Carnegy in Paris

UK prime minister David Cameron has spoken to the French and German leaders about the proposed €35bn merger of EADS and BAE Systems amid increasing signs of political concern over the defence deal in Berlin.

With the historic merger moving sharply up the European political agenda, the German economic ministry has warned that any guarantee to protect jobs and plants in Germany would not be legally enforceable if breached. Job losses are one of the German government’s chief worries with the next national election coming in a year’s time.

The economics ministry also warned in a paper seen by the FT that the proposed 60:40 per cent merger ratio between EADS and BAE, respectively, was an “incorrect reflection” of the companies’ sizes and should “be closer to 70:30” instead.

The pace of diplomatic activity around the deal is speeding up with defence ministers from the three countries set to discuss it at an EU meeting in Cyprus this week.

Mr Cameron spoke to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Friday night and to French President François Hollande on Monday morning to gauge the thinking in those two countries and to spell out the British position.

The approval of all three governments is needed for the deal, which will create a defence and aerospace group that rivals Boeing of the US. The British Government holds a “golden share” in defence contractors BAE while the French and German governments have stakes in EADS.

Oh but furren PSUs or private firms have everything in place. It has nothing to do with being a monopoly or putting up a united front while selling abroad (EFs best bet for MMRCA anyone?) while Indian PSUs with ALH, LCH etc are science projects.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/c ... 977202.htm

German Military Frustrated with EADS
August 06, 2009

Angela Merkel was in a resolute mood. German defense contractors liked to talk about "patriotism," the Chancellor declared irritably when Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung and top military officials came to her complaining about delays in the supply of combat jets, helicopters and other equipment. "So we can't have the army spending years waiting for its equipment."

"It's time more pressure was put on industry," she declared, in an unmistakable instruction to Jung to get tough with defense suppliers.

But Merkel doesn't seem to be sticking to her own line.

More than a year after that meeting in her office in Berlin, all it took was a telephone call and a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the Chancellor to cave. The two leaders were discussing the military transport aircraft A400M built by the Airbus parent company EADS (EAD.PA), a Franco-German defense giant that enjoys a quasi-monopoly in Europe's aerospace industry. The A400M has been subject to so many delays and glitches that Europe's defense ministers threatened in March to cancel their deal to buy 180 planes at a price of €110 million ($158 million) each.

But Angela Merkel undermined her own people. She and Sarkozy shelved the cancellation threat in June before the company had even acceded to demands from European ministers that it provide "transparency" on technical problems, costs and on the reorganisation of its management.

So the ministers had no option but to postpone the deadline for negotiations until the end of the year. No defense official in Berlin or Paris still believes that the countries will end up cancelling the contract and forcing EADS to pay back €6 billion.
The monopolist now has a firm grip on its customers. "We need a transport aircraft," Merkel said in Paris. The Transall aircraft that are due to be replaced by the A400M are 40 years old and rickety. The German army has ordered 60 of the new aircraft for more than €8 billion including equipment.

History of Shortcomings

When it comes to EADS, the German army always fights a losing battle. No supplier is as frowned on among German military top brass as EADS. Many of the products the company offers arrive later, perform less well and turn out more expensive than expected. Be it "Eurofighters," combat helicopters, transport helicopters, electronic equipment for frigates or infantry equipment—EADS almost always gets a chunk of government defense contracts but it's rare that its products work the way they should.

Nevertheless, German budget committees under conservative and Social Democrat-ruled governments have kept on approving fresh cash. Defense managers and government officials tend to warn that that cancelling an order would jeopardize Germany's reputation as a reliable business partner. Or the lobbyists make dire warnings about the loss of thousands of jobs.

The chairman of parliament's budget committee, Otto Fricke of the opposition pro-business Free Democrats, wants parliament to be involved in any further decisions regarding the A400M. "We don't want to be degraded to a rubber-stamping club like with previous defense contracts," he said. EADS, he warned Jung, "mustn't have carte blanche."

That realization comes pretty late given that when the FDP was still in government, it also tended to approve questionable projects. Loyalty to the coalition took precedence over business sense, for example in the case of the controversial "Eurofighter" jet. In the 1980s, Franz Josef Strauss, then leader of the Bavarian conservative Christian Social Union party, and Defense Minister Manfred Wörner both promoted the project. The plan was to order at least 200 "Jäger 90" jets, and they were to be ready for use from 1997. One fighter was to cost around 83 million German marks including spare parts.

Part 2: Surging Price, Technical Problems

By 1992 the price had jumped to 134 million marks. Defense Minister Volker Rühe demanded a "reversal" but all he got was a change in the name to "Eurofighter." Technical problems piled up. The computer software didn't work properly, or there were problems with the tail fin or the wings. The German air force didn't get the first jets until July 2006. It now has 38 Eurofighters. But 14 of them have been sent back for repairs. Some of them still suffer instrument failure during flights. Of the six single-seat aircraft at the Neuburg air base only four are fit for service on average. That's just enough to provide day and night cover for Germany's airspace.

The defense ministry recently admitted to budget committee members that the approved sum of €14.7 billion would only be enough to pay for 143 Eurofighters. Parliament would have to approve an additional €3 billion if the air force was to get the planned 180 aircraft, ministry officials announced meekly.

The situation isn't much better when it comes to helicopters. The EADS subsidiary Eurocopter prides itself on being the global market leader for civilian helicopters. But it neglects its regular customer, the German army, which at one time aided the company's ascent by acquiring hundreds of its helicopters.

Back in 1983 Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand had agreed to develop the "Tiger" combat helicopter. It was supposed to be ready for service in 1992. Military officials demanded many alterations and the partners at time also lacked money. But the project was mostly dogged by technical problems. The defense ministry kept on agreeing to postponements in the delivery dates.

Chafed Cables, Inaccurate Guns

The German army ordered 80 "Tigers." The prototypes delighted crowds at air shows from 1991 onwards. But the German army hasn't received a single Tiger helicopter that is capable of reliably hitting targets with its rockets and cannon. The 10 "Tigers" it currently has are only suitable to provide basic instruction for pilots. More have been built but they haven't been accepted—mechanics recently complained about chafed cables.

The NH90 transport helicopter is also regarded as a flop by the military. The plans to develop the aircraft go back to 1992. The Bundeswehr had ordered 80 of the helicopters for a total of €1.7 billion. However, the first sample aircraft only arrived at the end of 2006. Admittedly, the army is now in possession of eight of them. However, they are only 26 percent fit for service. That means that on average only two of the helicopters are ready to start at any given time.

And the helicopters cannot be deployed in the way the military had originally planned. The NH90 is supposed to accommodate 16 fully-armed soldiers. It's not yet clear if this can be achieved. Recently a somewhat heavy passenger was told that the maximum weight per seat was 100 kilograms. However, even a slim soldier with a combat pack would easily make that weight—after all, a bullet-proof vest alone weighs around 15 kilograms.

"Never again" the top brass swear, will EADS be allowed to get away with something like this. That was why the rules were so strict when it came to the contract for the A400M. The company would have to accept wide-ranging rights of cancellation and compensation if the aircraft was not delivered on time or with any deficiencies.

It is exactly these clauses which EADS CEO Louis Gallois ("We are not starving for contracts") and the German Airbus boss Thomas Enders want to see revised. In order to keep the losses to a minimum, customers should pay more, even though it is still not clear when exactly the A400M will take to the skies.

The relevant ministries have so far rejected these demands. Jung's state secretary Christian Schmidt, a member of the CSU, is already regretting that another offer was rejected in the 1990s. "Maybe we should have bought the Antonov after all," he said.

At the time Russia and Ukraine had offered to build its An-70 military transporters in cooperation with the Western Europeans. The four-engine aircraft would have met all the German air force's requirements and, at a bargain price of €50 million, was far cheaper than the military Airbus, the defense procurement department in the Defense Ministry said back in 1999.

However, the government at the time—a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens—opted for the A400M, although it was still only on the drawing board, for the sake of its friendship with France and Airbus. The rebuffed Russians and Ukrainians repeated their offer several times but they never made any headway.

And yet their model not only had the advantage of being far cheaper than the military Airbus. It had one other important plus: The An-70 had already been flying—since 1994.

Indian DSPUs/PSUs have neither a reward nor a penalty structure. When they don't deliver, no heads roll and we just import from IAI which is a PSU which can and does deliver.

IAI which can and does deliver.

Those recced pods which IAF got, you mean? Or our Harpy drones for that matter?

Or, Bulgaria, Poland Ukraine, SA or Brazil. This has been going on since the Ishapore 303 rifles froze in the 1962 war. Kargil is another example of last minute frantic purchases from IAI and anyone else who could deliver basics at exorbitant prices.

Cosmo, I suggest you spend some time looking into the actual details before getting into more of this PSU vs foreign PSU stuff. You claimed that defence industries abroad are not a social project. Sure.

I see, so is that the reason why Indian PSUs (such as HAL) fix defects in Russian PSU sourced aircraft like MiGs?

Is IAI so unimpeachable that its wares to India all work? I have no interest in laying bare the reality but even a cursory look into the details would tell you that many of IAI's programs in India have been hit or miss. The ones that have "hit" do so despite delays, because other options are either unavailable (eg proper JVs with US) or too expensive (MBDA and similar programs).

If Indian PSUs are unaccountable, how is it that ECIL managed to get back to a decent level after near collapse, working with DRDO, BARC & currently supplies critical items to Akash, Prithvi etc.

I suspect these fine details are inconvenient because they puncture the central thesis of your claims, that its somehow a PSU issue, whereas the truth is that its a political issue of interference and deliberate neglect by certain sections of the GOI which made this import shindig continue.

The current firm which was tapped by the French to assemble the Rafale of course has a track record of above the board performance, correct.

It's not ideology, it's performance. I don't want to bore the rest of the BRF community with endless debate on what HAL and the DPSUs will do/can do if given more money and time.

Yes, but you can make endless assertions about the incompetence of PSUs with claims about how the PSUs cannot perform irrespective of the real details. Of course when pressed to backup your assertions with the details eg an analyis of the capex/opex under prior GOI and how it correlates to how their plans were stifled, that would be "boring the rest of the BRF community".

Anyone would know its not a private or public issue but simply a matter of governance at the MOD/GOI level. If MOD/GOI are dysfunctional, the organizations they lead - private or public, will be suborned. If they are honest and capable and have the right intent, the folks aligning to them, their suppliers will fall in line.

In short, elect the right people.

If the IAF /GoI is happy with 36 Rafales and a 50% offset for something or other and wants to have HAL and co pursue science projects that will determine the future, great.

Yes, all HAL does is science projects. ALH, LCH etc are science projects. With statements of this nature of course its not idealogical but factual.

Anyway, all this is an aside. I was responding to ldev.

If you respond on a public forum, people will respond in turn. If you want to have a private conversation with ldev, where nobody has the temerity to fact check, there may be methods offline.

[alexis]

RIP, Indian MIC....

9 Bn dollars...I just dont want to think what we could have bought for that money. MII is just a slogan like "Shining India", i guess. More things change, the more they stay the same.

Sorry; however anyone tries to convince it is a worthwhile deal, i wont be convinced.

Nothing chanakyan about this; unless we get some nuclear propulsion technology or something (which we would have mastered anyway if we were willing to spend such money on it!).

This govt is continuing the policies of the earlier govt. Execution may be better; that is it.

[Gyan]

36 frogs Vs 360 J-20s. Advantage India. China will vacate Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Uigher land and adopt Rupee as it's currency.

Re Admin:- Ban Karan for spoiling the mood, my Champagne high came off due to the effort of writing this informative post.

[Karan M]

^^^
Very true regarding Indian PSU's non performance record.

That would be as true as your statements on Brahmos & Indian contribution, HAL and its assembly of the Su-30.

Because there is no long term "body/organization/group of people" in India to build strategies beneficial to India, strategies which require a multi government, multi party length of time possibly measured in decades to give results. The US has it's Deep State, the UK has it's Old Boy Network, the French have their network of Grandes Ecoles graduates, China has a collaborative nexus betwen it's Communist Party and the Armed Forces, heck even Pakistan has it's Army. These institutions in these countries guarantee the continuation of policies irrespective of which political party /government is in power. It is no wonder that every single member of the P-5 has it's own version of the Deep State and hence they have reached where they have. In contrast in India e.g. a covert capability built up at great effort by one Government is canceled by the next, no continuation of policies and hence no long term benefit for the country.

The Soviet Union had the Communist Party, today's Russia is a "One Man Band Putin". He has not built up the replacement for the CPSU. Hence Russian policies post Putin could change quite dramatically. And that is one primary reason IMO to reduce the overwhelming dependence India has on Russia for military equipment.

There is a deep state, but its Nehruvian and that's the exact reason why we are in such deep sh!t with decades of bureaucrats and others brainwashed into muddled decisions with using hard power versus TSP.

[RKumar]

Sad, we dont know when to walk away from a bad deal. It is like PM gave a personal word so we have to sign the deal. It is nothing personal, it is a direct buy with no new production line. It was required 10 years back due to

- no clear status of LCA - technology, maturaity and production.
- we had no reliable noclear delivery platform

There are no such issues today. We have alternatives and should use them. We fall again n again in the trap of delay tactic by western world and we still pay the premium price for old configuration. We as a nation dont learn from our past mistake, really shameful deal.

[GeorgeWelch]

But I was assured Russia is such good friend and sanction proof . . .

they are and will continue to be so long as some red lines are not crossed.

Doesn't that apply to any country? Do what they want and they won't sanction you?

Russia's red line is buying from someone they don't like? "Don't play with Billy or I'm going to take all my balls and go home." Since when did Russia get veto authority over India's defense policy? I thought India highly prized its independence in such matters?

[Karan M]

36 frogs Vs 360 J-20s. Advantage India. China will vacate Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Uigher land and adopt Rupee as it's currency.

That is a key area of concern at end of day. That small sized nose on the Rafale able to detect LO targets like the J-20 at any decent range. Hopefully Spectra and IRST will compensate.

[Karan M]

Doesn't that apply to any country? Do what they want and they won't sanction you?

Russia's red line is buying from someone they don't like? "Don't play with Billy or I'm going to take all my balls and go home." Since when did Russia get veto authority over India's defense policy? I thought India highly prized its independence in such matters?

Your lot is the worst in that respect, so get off your high horse. Russia has never sanctioned India and doesn't play at being global cop. Your lot OTOH..

[Karan M]

And before folks start getting hoity toity about how them folks abroad run things all the time. Unlike them 3rd worlders..

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/acc ... -pentagon/

“In a May 2011 speech, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates defense Robert Gates described the Pentagon’s business operations as “an amalgam of fiefdoms without centralized mechanisms to allocate resources, track expenditures, and measure results. … My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as ‘How much money did you spend’ and ‘How many people do you have?'”

Furthermore, Reuters found that disorganization in the Defense Logistics Agency, which is responsible for buying and storing weapons, ammunition and many other supplies, caused repeated expenditure on supplies it already possessed. The report uses an example from 2008, where the DLA had 15,000 “vehicular control arms” (part of the front suspension of a military Humvee) in stock. Although the quantity was equal to a 14-year supply, the agency reportedly bought 7,437 more of these parts between 2010 and 2012.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pen ... icle/part2

Behind the Pentagon’s doctored ledgers, a running tally of epic waste

Part 2: For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollars

LETTERKENNY ARMY DEPOT, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania - Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.

Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s - a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. “A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate,” Woodford says. “We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it.”

The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford says, staff were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take “unsubstantiated change actions” - in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called “plugs,” to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury’s.

Jeff Yokel, who spent 17 years in senior positions in DFAS’s Cleveland office before retiring in 2009, says supervisors were required to approve every “plug” - thousands a month. “If the amounts didn’t balance, Treasury would hit it back to you,” he says.

After the monthly reports were sent to Treasury, the accountants continued to seek accurate information to correct the entries. In some instances, they succeeded. In others, they didn’t, and the unresolved numbers stood on the books.

At the DFAS offices that handle accounting for the Army, Navy, Air Force and other defense agencies, fudging the accounts with false entries is standard operating procedure, Reuters has found. And plugging isn’t confined to DFAS (pronounced DEE-fass). Former military service officials say record-keeping at the operational level throughout the services is rife with made-up numbers to cover lost or missing information.

In its investigation, Reuters has found that the Pentagon is largely incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies; thus it continues to spend money on new supplies it doesn’t need and on storing others long out of date. It has amassed a backlog of more than half a trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with outside vendors; how much of that money paid for actual goods and services delivered isn’t known. And it repeatedly falls prey to fraud and theft that can go undiscovered for years, often eventually detected by external law enforcement agencies.

The consequences aren’t only financial; bad bookkeeping can affect the nation’s defense. In one example of many, the Army lost track of $5.8 billion of supplies between 2003 and 2011 as it shuffled equipment between reserve and regular units. Affected units “may experience equipment shortages that could hinder their ability to train soldiers and respond to emergencies,” the Pentagon inspector general said in a September 2012 report.

How much are we paying for the Rafale, again?

[Karan M]

First world expertise to be told to us 3'rd worlders.

The Air Force’s Expeditionary Combat Support System was intended to provide for the first time a single system to oversee transportation, supplies, maintenance and acquisitions, replacing scores of costly legacy systems. Work got under way in 2005. Delays and costs mounted. In late 2012, the Air Force conducted a test run. The data that poured out was mostly gibberish. The Air Force killed the project.

The system “has cost $1.03 billion … and has not yielded any significant military capability,” the Air Force said in a November 2012 announcement.

Fixing the system would cost an additional $1.1 billion, it said, and even then, it would do only about a quarter of the tasks originally intended, and not until 2020.

The Air Force blamed the failure on the main contractor, Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp, saying the company was unable to handle the job.

Computer Sciences spokesman Marcel Goldstein said that the company provided the Air Force with important “capabilities,” and that “the progress we made, jointly with the Air Force, and the software we have delivered could be the foundation for the next effort to develop and deploy a logistics system for the Air Force.”

David Scott Norton, an expert in accounting systems who worked for CSC on the Air Force contract, said the project employed too many people, making coordination and efficiency impossible. “There were probably thousands of people, both Air Force and contractors, on it,” he says. High turnover among both Air Force and contractor staff hurt, too, he says; many of the people who worked on it weren’t the people who had conceived and designed it.

More than $1 billion was wasted when the Pentagon in 2010 ditched the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, launched in 2003 as a single, department-wide pay and personnel system that would eliminate pay errors. Interagency squabbles and demands for thousands of changes eventually sank it.

The Air Force’s Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System was supposed to take over the Air Force’s basic accounting functions in 2010. To date, $466 million has been spent on DEAMS, with a projected total cost of $1.77 billion to build and operate it, an Air Force spokeswoman said. The system lacks “critical functional capabilities,” and its “data lacks validity and reliability,” according to a September 2012 Defense Department inspector general report.

It now isn’t expected to be fully operational until 2017.

Now in use, the Navy ERP relies on data fed to it from 44 old systems it was meant to replace. “Navy officials spent $870 million … and still did not correct” the system’s inability to account for $416 billion in equipment, the Pentagon inspector general said in a July 2013 report.

Science Projects I presume.

Oh wait.

http://nation.time.com/2012/05/25/real- ... elicopter/

The Army’s RAH-66 Comanche helicopter was going to be totally awesome, dude. This super-stealthy light attack helicopter, bristling with advanced sensors and communication gear, was going to perform loads of armed reconnaissance and surveillance missions. Its planned ferry range would even allow it to cross an ocean. The Army wanted to buy 1,200 of them, replacing older helos and bringing Army aviation into the 21st century.

The other reason the Soviets never saw it coming is because none were ever built – not counting two early prototypes. Even if there had been any Soviets around, there wasn’t anything to see, and not because the thing was so stealthy. Looks like Comanche was less awesome and more bogus than predicted.

Work continued for a couple more years, and the end came in 2004. After spending 22 years and $6.9 billion, the Army cancelled the Comanche program, having received precisely zero helos. Reasons for the cancellation abounded...Then again, maybe the engines would have been fine – as Dr. James Williams explains in his 2005 book A History Of Army Aviation: “no one could say what the weight really was, because many designs remained unfinished.” So. Many. Questions.

Lets not talk about how much funding is given to Indian firms including PSUs. That might bore you.

Wait, till 2015, the entire Tejas program has been allocated Rs 17,269 crores. Lets assume an unrealistic 30 Rs to a dollar to biase the costs, (even though the bulk have been spent under FSED) and it comes to around $5.8 Billion.

Yup, that's right - lets not discuss costs, funding etc. Inconvenient details. Lets even ignore the fact that a huge proportion of the spend goes in tech infra & equipment which is the same worldwide & not manpower.

"Indian firms are very well funded and don't deliver".

Meanwhile, lets buy from abroad and have them screwdrivered in private firms. Problem solved.

[Karan M]

First world problems and science projects.. Of course, we'll definitely have brarji to present us a soothing anodyne of badly these programs were misunderstood & all iz well in the land of the free and the brave.

But that's not the point - its more to do with our gents who pontificate to us about "science projects" and PSUs while touting up the accomplishments of the superpowers elsewhere, completely ignoring their funding.

But yup, how much has India spent on its entire R&D from 1990 to today? Comparing the cost of merely these cancelled programs to ALL that India has spent in its "over spending" in PSUs etc.

http://www.defensetech.org/2011/07/19/4 ... -programs/

So here’s an interesting bit of defense technology related info presented by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments at a press conference to discuss defense spending yesterday.

It’s a breakdown of just how much all those weapons programs that were cancelled in the last decade cost us:

Future Combat Systems (FCS) $18.1B

Comanche helicopter $7.9B

nPOESS satellite $5.8B

VH-71 Presidential Helicopter $3.7B

Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) $3.3B

Transformational SATCOM (TSAT) $3.2B

Crusader $2.2B

Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) $0.6 B

Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter $0.5 B

Aerial Common Sensor $0.4 B

CG(X) next Generation Cruiser $0.2B

CSAR-X $0.2B

All told, that’s about $46 billion, a significant chunk of change. CSBA’s Todd Harrison (and many others throughout the years) urged the Pentagon to start programs off right with realistic requirements and tight oversight to prevent such cancellations from ever happening.

India's science projects have no rationale. Whereas Amricas science projects.

Still, you’ve got to realize that a lot (but certainly not all) of the lessons learned in the development of these systems will be put to use in their replacements. Who knows how much tech from the Commanche was featured on the stealth helos that took out bin Laden?

So, them dutty fellows working in PSUs cant do anything with ALH and make a Rudra. Nope.

[srai]

^^^

MIC are generally a wasteful bunch ... if looking fo how to do things that's not where one should look There's just so much money flowing in that if you are well connected you will make quite a bit of wealth without necessarily delivering anything. Oh billion dollars poof ... at least xx number of people got employed doing "high-end" work

[Gyan]

India does not have Military Industrial complex because Babus don't want one. Do you think IAS officers are idiots who cannot understand what each BRF poster knows? India allocated USD 100 million for Kaveri when on similar timeline France allocated USD 2 Billion to develop M88. Look at what happened? I think slow de-industrialization and understanding not to develop a major military industrial complex has been embedded into Indian Policy by Geopolitics.

[brar_w]

First world problems and science projects.. Of course, we'll definitely have brarji to present us a soothing anodyne of badly these programs were misunderstood & all iz well in the land of the free and the brave.

But that's not the point - its more to do with our gents who pontificate to us about "science projects" and PSUs while touting up the accomplishments of the superpowers elsewhere, completely ignoring their funding.

But yup, how much has India spent on its entire R&D from 1990 to today? Comparing the cost of merely these cancelled programs to ALL that India has spent in its "over spending" in PSUs etc.

http://www.defensetech.org/2011/07/19/4 ... -programs/

These and others were part of a phase of extremely poor acquisition management, program requirements structure resulting in very very poor performance when it came to delivering a system on cost. Through the BBP they have largely addressed these, but I'd guess the damage done was significantly higher than the $40 Billion cited by Tod Harris, who is a brilliant mind at crunching the financials and projecting. There were luckily enough checks placed to cancel these when breaches occurred and once restructuring was determined to cost too much. Also, a lot of these were cut short for political reason, resulting from a volatile start-stop mechanism that occurred post the last supper and peace dividend (articularly those that came in with a change of administration, so whatever benefits that could have been realized weren't). The F-22 is a perfect case here, each developmental objective was met, kinks sorted, a working production line that was advancing to it its original full production goals, with an extremely impressive reduction in fly-away-cost all the way till the last article was delivered. But. cut short because the civil and political leadership at the time deemed the risk of not fully funding to demand to be bearable.
It took the Pentagon and the associated MIC a good decade post cold-war to fully cleanse of the Cold-War era (where cost was secondary to capability) and adapt to the prevailing acquisition environment. What happened in the interm was utter carnage that forced the creation of an Acquisition university and retraining of the entire acquisition work-force to better respond to the sort of financial challenges, and oversight that would follow. It took them nearly 15 years to fully get into a place where they are as an organization ready for an audit. There are however case studies and very well written published material from those times so that similar mistakes aren't made by any organization creating weapons systems.

Basic S&T funding combined with R&D is a metric to look, and what percentage of overall defense and industry spending is important. Essentially in the case of HAL and other government and privately owned organization - what percentage of their Defense budget, or revenue is spent on Basic Science and Technology and R&D.

[Akshay Kapoor]

Karan,

The problem is not that Indians working in PSUs do not have talent. I firmly believe that we have some very good pools of talent but that this talent cannot be tapped and motivated and channelised due to bad management practices and the way our polity controls and manages PSUs. We are not structured properly for PSUs to be effective and focussed on national interest. I remember a conversation with the late Wing Commander Balooja who was CMD of HAL for a long time and his insights were fascinating and depressing in equal measure. As an example he had said to the MOD (when the Soviet union was collapsing) that he wanted to hire a ton of Soviet designers at throwaway prices for design work. Was laughed out of the Secy's office.

We all know that Pvt sector has been very successful in a lot of areas, precisely because the govt has stayed away.

Its a tragedy we see everywhere - great Indian talent and valour (remember our discussion a couple of years ago on how our valour was yoked by the british for their success) is not harnessed for national and civilizational interest. Our problem is organization not talent.

Akshay

[Karan M]

Karan,

The problem is not that Indians working in PSUs do not have talent. I firmly believe that we have some very good pools of talent but that this talent cannot be tapped and motivated and channelised due to bad management practices and the way our polity controls and manages PSUs. We are not structured properly for PSUs to be effective and focussed on national interest. I remember a conversation with the late Wing Commander Balooja who was CMD of HAL for a long time and his insights were fascinating and depressing in equal measure. As an example he had said to the MOD (when the Soviet union was collapsing) that he wanted to hire a ton of Soviet designers at throwaway prices for design work. Was laughed out of the Secy's office.

We all know that Pvt sector has been very successful in a lot of areas, precisely because the govt has stayed away.

Its a tragedy we see everywhere - great Indian talent and valour (remember our discussion a couple of years ago on how our valour was yoked by the british for their success) is not harnessed for national and civilizational interest. Our problem is organization not talent.

Akshay

Akshay, there you go with the exact point I was making earlier.

The polity - and we all know who - has run Indian MIC as a fiefdom precisely because it is so lucrative to ensure "Right contracts" are done, for "specific reasons".

Proper funding, direction is deliberately with held because it will threaten the kickbacks. In the past few years under the guise of liberalization, crony capitalists also got into defense and other programs. We have seen multiple scams with private firms involved as well.

All this private-public stuff is bullsh!t precisely for that reason. Because if the politicians are corrupt and self seeking they will create an ecosystem wherein private or public, only the crooks will thrive and use such public-private excuses to figleaf their decisions.

If we elect crooks (as we have in the past) we will get crooks.

All that will happen is screwdriver assembly will move from DPSU to pvt sector.

DPSU gives perks to bada babus whether they want to or not by giving them cushy positions post tenure and politicians get free access to flight equipment at campaigning etc. All such things.

Pvt sector can do 100x more and has as well. We have had the biggest crook in the land running everything from finance to home affairs and we all know under whose tenure loads of dodgy purchases were made for BSF etc.

[Akshay Kapoor]

Biggest crook in the land running fiance and home affairs ? You mean PC ?

[Karan M]

First world problems and science projects.. Of course, we'll definitely have brarji to present us a soothing anodyne of badly these programs were misunderstood & all iz well in the land of the free and the brave.

But that's not the point - its more to do with our gents who pontificate to us about "science projects" and PSUs while touting up the accomplishments of the superpowers elsewhere, completely ignoring their funding.

But yup, how much has India spent on its entire R&D from 1990 to today? Comparing the cost of merely these cancelled programs to ALL that India has spent in its "over spending" in PSUs etc.

http://www.defensetech.org/2011/07/19/4 ... -programs/

These and others were part of a phase of extremely poor acquisition management, program requirements structure resulting in very very poor performance when it came to delivering a system on cost. Through the BBP they have largely addressed these, but I'd guess the damage done was significantly higher than the $40 Billion cited by Tod Harris, who is a brilliant mind at crunching the financials and projecting. There were luckily enough checks placed to cancel these when breaches occurred and once restructuring was determined to cost too much. Also, a lot of these were cut short for political reason, resulting from a volatile start-stop mechanism that occurred post the last supper and peace dividend (articularly those that came in with a change of administration, so whatever benefits that could have been realized weren't). The F-22 is a perfect case here, each developmental objective was met, kinks sorted, a working production line that was advancing to it its original full production goals, with an extremely impressive reduction in fly-away-cost all the way till the last article was delivered. But. cut short because the civil and political leadership at the time deemed the risk of not fully funding to demand to be bearable.
It took the Pentagon and the associated MIC a good decade post cold-war to fully cleanse of the Cold-War era (where cost was secondary to capability) and adapt to the prevailing acquisition environment. What happened in the interm was utter carnage that forced the creation of an Acquisition university and retraining of the entire acquisition work-force to better respond to the sort of financial challenges, and oversight that would follow. It took them nearly 15 years to fully get into a place where they are as an organization ready for an audit. There are however case studies and very well written published material from those times so that similar mistakes aren't made by any organization creating weapons systems.

Basic S&T funding combined with R&D is a metric to look, and what percentage of overall defense and industry spending is important. Essentially in the case of HAL and other government and privately owned organization - what percentage of their Defense budget, or revenue is spent on Basic Science and Technology and R&D.

Brar I actually do agree with you, and Srai, in that acquisition malpractice in the US is a huge thing and has happened and will continue to happen. Its how it is.

Point being made was that our structure imperfect as it is, exists because the "powers that be" unlike the US were personally benefited from imports. In the US, pork barrel politics is cited for corrupt or imperfect decision making.

In India, the famiglia which ran India was/is claws deep into every facet of procurement.

So, its not surprising that local programs (under prior GOI) to make ammunition locally never take off and India imports huge amounts of expensive, obsolete ammunition which our "BRF experts" will tell us because state owneed Israeli firm IMI was better.

Yet, somehow, IMI's TOT to super effective state owned OFB stalls. And it gets blacklisted. But hey, Poland also rejects IMI rounds after TOT is found to be flawed and they cooperate with Rheinmetall. Which is also blacklisted.

I suspect since our previous DM could not prevent anything from happening including people bypassing him, he struck upon the brilliant idea of blacklisting everyone. Indian procurement be darned.

Meanwhile a local 125mm round which is waiting for trials with zero interest from IA, gets dusted off and restarted. Guess what, its the only round now available and is superior to the Russian round which was imported (and is thoroughly obsolete even though it was purchased at several times the regular price).

So, somehow, the "state owned" defence industry is not asked to pursue a program while imports, which are often obsolete, are still available.

How surprising.

[Akshay Kapoor]

I think where you and I differ Karan a bit is the importance of funding. I believe governance , leadership and management are bigger problems. If you dont solve them, any increase in funding will simply be wasted or pocketed. Funding is an easy solution, freeing PSUs from the controlling ministry, doing a really inspired selection for CEOs and top leadership, and giving them the freedom to operate is far tougher.

[Bharadwaj]

If we can spend 200 mill a pop for the rafale we can look at this birdie as well.... If this move ever comes to fruition.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defens ... /83248788/

[Karan M]

Akshay saar, you will find this article interesting.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bill ... 21665.html

So, its also interesting to see why and how despite ostensible licenses being given, nothing happened on "beyond the INSAS front", private or public.

[Akshay Kapoor]

Akshay saar, you will find this article interesting.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bill ... 21665.html

So, its also interesting to see why and how despite ostensible licenses being given, nothing happened on "beyond the INSAS front", private or public.

Yeah. I think DRDO designs for small arms were okay (20 round magazine apart). The problem was production quality. Here is my solution - get DRDO + 5/7 officers from army + team from Bharat Forge to design a good pragmatic assault rifle. This team will report to DG Infantry and will deliver plans in 6 months. BF will develop a prototype in 6 months. Testing will finish in 3 months. Giver order to BF for 60% and 40% to OF.

[Karan M]

I think where you and I differ Karan a bit is the importance of funding. I believe governance , leadership and management are bigger problems. If you dont solve them, any increase in funding will simply be wasted or pocketed. Funding is an easy solution, freeing PSUs from the controlling ministry, doing a really inspired selection for CEOs and top leadership, and giving them the freedom to operate is far tougher.

Akshay, this is where tracking the programs helps. If you have PSUs and Govt labs consistently delivering on specific programs, then why are they underfunded - huge gap between needs and budgets, posted in R&D thread.

Delaying funding for critical programs is a good way to delay programs and create an artificial scarcity.

Kaveri, aircraft serviceability - all related issues in that way. What kind of MOD has the revenue budget fall year on year (which directly correlates to aircraft spares and munitions) AND at the same time has IAF go ahead with a MMRCA acquisition?

In any rational structure, wouldn't the focus be on fixing what is already in service & ensuring its high availability?

HAL's capex plans- were they ever implemented? When did BEL get approval for its NV funding? How much are they allowed to spend as a percentage of R&D? Who sits in MOD/GOI and ensures these are per national goals? Every element of our process was subverted because if you elect crooks you get crooked decisions.

If we track these answers (and things like Scorpene indigenization) and the answers are apparent.

In the prior dispensation/s, the following things were de jure.

1. Arms import acquisitions are a good way to get no questions asked big ticket funding
2. Trickle feed local programs which are constantly kept under want of resources and NEVER get the funding they project to MOD.
3. Use delays accruing from above as further excuse to do 1.
4. Put pliant folks at every level - across all areas who cooperate with 1-3.

This is how our system is. That is why we can make Agnis and yet go shopping for small arms.
Many private firms wanted to get in on this wonderful racket, but why would the prior dispensations bother since everything was running oh-so-well.

[Karan M]

Akshay saar, you will find this article interesting.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bill ... 21665.html

So, its also interesting to see why and how despite ostensible licenses being given, nothing happened on "beyond the INSAS front", private or public.

Yeah. I think DRDO designs for small arms were okay (20 round magazine apart). The problem was production quality. Here is my solution - get DRDO + 5/7 officers from army + team from Bharat Forge to design a good pragmatic assault rifle. This team will report to DG Infantry and will deliver plans in 6 months. BF will develop a prototype in 6 months. Testing will finish in 3 months. Giver order to BF for 60% and 40% to OF.

Which is so straight forward that it should have been the first thing to strike people from the forces, yet why did it take DG Arty to push for Dhanush. A senior person had to push for this under the guidance of the COAS (who took a public stance against corruption). Clearly others had the idea but knew in prior years, some vested interests would stall it and target them (same story across services, DPSUs etc).

But we know the answer to that. If a local design gets made & is successful, and is public enough that no hafta vasuli can be done from Govt departments & pvt partner says "go jump", then it shuts off ALL the 10,000 tenders out for NSG 40 guns, BSF 10000 guns, IA x requirement - many of which could have been addressed by above.

[Akshay Kapoor]

Come on Karan, you also know that not all DRDO labs and PSUs have delivered consistently. I think we must call a spade a spade. I am not saying that they are underfunded because of some great fiscal management by the govt. If there is underfunding (and you have stronger views on this than I do) then that may well be beacuse of the reasons you mentioned.

No quarrel on the disasters visited on this nation by the previous dispensation. Also no quarrel that despite its flaws this one is better.

[Akshay Kapoor]

Which is so straight forward that it should have been the first thing to strike people from the forces, yet why did it take DG Arty to push for Dhanush. A senior person had to push for this under the guidance of the COAS (who took a public stance against corruption). Clearly others had the idea but knew in prior years, some vested interests would stall it and target them (same story across services, DPSUs etc).

But we know the answer to that. If a local design gets made & is successful, and is public enough that no hafta vasuli can be done from Govt departments & pvt partner says "go jump", then it shuts off ALL the 10,000 tenders out for NSG 40 guns, BSF 10000 guns, IA x requirement - many of which could have been addressed by above.

Its simple - every decision needs okay from MOD. So army and DRDO cannot collaborate in a big way without permission. Thats is exactyly why Army was given a bollocking by MOD for DG Arty daring to tell Commandant Arty School to test Bharat Forge Gun. These two gents took the iniative and got rapped. Next gents might not.

Second - command tenures in army are so short (15/20 year old phenomena) that not every one wants to take the burden of pushing through things. Another reason, the forces are treated like dirt in the government dispensation - so when you become senior and are about to retire you have a 100 things to worry about - building a house (you have been in feild areas away from families for years), children's education etc. Not every one wants to fight the bureaucracy unless things become really egregious and sadly they often do.

[GeorgeWelch]

Doesn't that apply to any country? Do what they want and they won't sanction you?

Russia's red line is buying from someone they don't like? "Don't play with Billy or I'm going to take all my balls and go home." Since when did Russia get veto authority over India's defense policy? I thought India highly prized its independence in such matters?

Your lot is the worst in that respect, so get off your high horse.

The only high horse around here is the 'Russia is always super-friend' high horse, speaking of which . . .

Russia has never sanctioned India

Yet they just threatened to do so over the most minor issue. Does that not concern you?

What kind of reliable friend would threaten to leave over something like that?

[Karan M]

Come on Karan, you also know that not all DRDO labs and PSUs have delivered consistently.

Which is the point - how is it that the DRDO labs and PSUs which can make Agnis and items whose production quality is 100X more stringent than those on basic small arms, are able to succeed but yet those items which are available via import and whose volume is far far more (hence a nice lucrative stream) somehow still need to get imported?

How is it that ARDE gets production clearance for Pinaka Mk1,2 level items. Yet, progress on small arms programs is halted (because no requirement and MOD doesn't step in or was that a thought out policy with the decision fobbed off on bakras - yet tenders for imports for multiple classes of items go out?).

And its not that one group has secret sauce (and its not that, all the stuff the original people came from ISRO, Amreeka, xyz labs are different - that stuff no longer holds true). Huge difference between the nature of some of these big ticket programs, institutional support (Navy for instance) but also that some ambitious programs which go up against imports will be opposed & underfunded. Or the system is subverted from within.

See reference to Ratan Tata and events from 1990-91.
http://tarmak007.blogspot.in/2011/01/to ... -2011.html
In particular, see here:
viewtopic.php?p=1908157#p1908157

Coincidence only.

DRDO in particular was chronically underfunded over the last decade. Public reports of all iz well apart, Parliamentary reports appearing now show that none of the planned funding was released (which means mission mode programs will suck up whatever funding is available and all the fancy stuff BRF talks of re Mk2, mk3 is not around).

The R&D thread has the parliamentary reports and details but this is by memory.

From some 2-3 years back.

HT looked at the report and found that 10 projects, worth an average sanctioned cost of Rs. 1,686 crore, have been delayed on an average of 5 years.

The highest delay was suffered by Aero Engine Kaveri, which is late by 4,745 days already and the revised day of completion is still under revision, followed by the phase two of the Light Combat Aircraft Tejas which is 2,555 days behind schedule. Both of the projects have a sanctioned cost of Rs. 2,839 crore and Rs. 5,777 crore respectively.

Prominent reasons for delays, as shown in the report, include lack of infrastructure and technology that led to re-designing, non-
availability of indigenous raw material to the organisation not anticipating the requirements of a few projects.

Remedial steps suggested by the DRDO range from development activities being outsourced, personnel working multiple shifts, close
monitoring by stakeholders to changing phased development approach to concurrent approach.

Significantly, around 5 projects have been closed by the DRDO in the recent past, that were sanctioned at a total cost of Rs. 65 crore, with Rs. 6 crore out of these amount already spent.

Lack of fund, manpower

The committee found that DRDO suffers from lack of funds and manpower. The organisation projected an amount of Rs. 18,495 crore, but was allocated an amount of Rs. 15,283 crore, denoting a shortfall of Rs. 3,212 crore.

Moreover, out of the total defence budget, DRDO's share was 6.98% in 2009-10, but reduced to 5.37% in 2013-14.

The share of DRDO to total GDP also declined to 0.09% in 2013-14 from 0.13% in 2009-10.

The committee also states that around 7,809 number of scientists work with DRDO as against the sanctioned strength of 7,932 as per government order in 2001.

The standing committee observed that DRDO's projects grew manifold, both in quantity and quality, but there has been no increase in the sanctioned manpower since the 2001 government order.

And around 65 scientists resigned on an average from the DRDO from 2009 to 2013. Till October 2014, around 23 scientists had resigned, mostly on personal grounds.

Way out

The solution could be to increase the budgetary provision of the DRDO, in tune with indigenisation policies of the government, and provide adequate incentive and professional growth opportunities, before sacking people.

Regardless, it must be noted that DRDO has achieved a lot with its meagre budget. For approximately Rs 70,000 crore spent in a decade (2002-12) DRDO seemingly developed various missiles, drones, radar systems and carried other forms of research.

In contrast, USA's unmanned aerial vehicle projects, the UAV Predator and the UAV Reaper, alone have a total project cost of Rs. 14,000 crore and Rs. 60,000, respectively.

For a detailed analysis of why this underfunding is a critical issue, see,
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp ... 790989.ece

For instance, the absence of an appropriate industrial base forces the DRDO to import raw material, components, and subsystems that go into a given product, whose exports, given the nature of the systems being developed, are either embargoed or are subject to a time-consuming licensing process. This often forces the DRDO to develop all the necessary major high-tech components and subsystems from scratch leading to delays and cost escalations.

Note below on actuators for Rustom.


Media reports - Kaveri funded, stealth program etc. all going on.
Reality? 800 crore program was not funded.
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 3#p1934093

All is well with Kaveri - see we gave so much money, no results. Reality? No fuel to even run the existing prototypes..

The inside view.

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 89#p616489

Ah this is just armchair forum giri. Ok, lets see what came out several years later.



Is it a mere coincidence that the budget kept declining or was kept at such artificially low levels for critical programs at a time when tenders were going out for everything from PGMs to rifles?

General perception - we import the best "technonology" - yet, somehow, many of which fail - who forced the trial process.
http://www.timesnow.tv/Indian-forces-ri ... 323554.cms

The difference is that the local ones are finally fixed (HSLD for instance), but we had the RM recently visit Russia for fixing the Su-30S primary A2A missile.

What will fix that issue? Astra.

What causes issues in rapid development of Astra? Not just technological but also DRDO has to play hopskotch in deciding who gets more money, the Agni guys or the Astra guys.

What gets imported by a desparate service in the meantime?
http://www.airforce-technology.com/news ... -air-force

A full generation behind current state of the art.

Is this an outlier?
You have the FSAPDS story mentioned earlier. Dubious TOT never takes off. Local project gets left in the dust until it is forced to be restarted since there are no other options available. More obsolete stuff ordered from Russia at 3-4x the price.

I think we must call a spade a spade. I am not saying that they are underfunded because of some great fiscal management by the govt. If there is underfunding (and you have stronger views on this than I do) then that may well be beacuse of the reasons you mentioned.

I am calling a spade a spade, and there is a good reason I can't even state many of the crooks who did all this openly.

A) It offends many folks who look are unaware of the depth of the rot our system has, across all groups which hopefully will dissipate if Indian public has the brains to stay on track.

The current GOI for all its tough talk, has NOT done enough to reassure the common public that these crooks hold over power is broken.

No quarrel on the disasters visited on this nation by the previous dispensation. Also no quarrel that despite its flaws this one is better.

This is the difference between present GOI and prior one.

Further hike in R&D budget proposed.

The Ministry in its Action Taken Reply has stated as under:
'In the current financial year (2014-15), the budget of Department of Defence R&D
has been raised to 6.7% of Defence budget as compared to 5.3% in the financial
year 2013-14. This although an increase, compares very modestly to the R&D
expenditure of world leaders with USA at 12% and China at 20%. A major chunk of
this funding is for Mission Mode (MM) projects/programmes of DRDO which are
basically projects undertaken for system development and focuses on immediate
requirement of the Services. This leaves limited funding for other DRDO projects
which are: Technology Demonstration (TD) projects for demonstration of specific
technology, Science & Technology (S&T) projects which cater to futuristic
technology areas and blue sky research undertaken through extramural research.
The organization is of the view that these are still not sufficient for futuristic projects
and justice towards indigenization can be done only if the budget of DRDO is raised
at least to 10% of the Defence Budget. MoD needs to pursue the matter with the
Ministry of Finance so that adequate increase in allocation is made in the next
financial year and subsequently in the next five year plan period ahead. Efforts for
the same will be made'.

And:

New Delhi: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has given the green signal to major changes in how India buys its defence equipment. From now, priority will be given to indigenously designed, developed and manufactured defence equipment, Mr Parrikar said.

India wants defence equipment to be designed in India. This will not only help India retain the Intellectual Property Right, but build an "eco- system" for manufacturing defence equipment.

To continue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Make in India push, under the new rules, indigenously designed, developed and manufactured equipment must have at least 40 per cent Indian components. In case the design isn't Indian, 60 per cent Indian component is necessary.

To encourage research and development in private sector, the department of defence production will bear 90% of design and development cost of major systems.

Small and medium scale industries will be given up to Rs. 3-10 crore funding for design and development and contract within 24 months. "If we cannot give them the contract, then we propose to refund their entire cost," the minister said.

"I will try to ensure that at least 30% of our procurement is sourced from them. Defence public sector companies have been instructed to source as much as possible for small and medium industries," he added.

Also, the earlier practice of off-set, where a foreign vendor had to source a percentage of contract from Indian companies, has been changed. Off-set will be applicable for contracts worth over Rs. 2000 crore.

The entire focus, including that of looking for strategic partners to manufacture critical equipment like fighter jets encourages business and enterprise in India, "therefore we didn't think fit to continue with the previous off-set policy," the Defence minister said.

A special committee will take calls on anomalies that come up during procurement.

India has embarked on a massive defence modernisation programme and during his recent visits abroad, PM Modi has emphasized that the manufacturing should be done in India.

While in the US, PM Modi has conveyed the message to various corporate leaders, including Lockheed Martin Chairman Marillyn Hewson and others.

A chunk of defence equipment including Russian Kamov helicopters, Sea Fighter Jets and artillery guns will soon be made in India.

This will help far more than farcical screw driver assembly in India.

[Karan M]

The only high horse around here is the 'Russia is always super-friend' high horse, speaking of which . . .

Yup go tell that to Phillip. Good going. Two intransigent rah rah shills going head to head..touting their respective arms vendors.

Yet they just threatened to do so over the most minor issue. Does that not concern you?

What kind of reliable friend would threaten to leave over something like that?

Where is the proof Russia threatened anything? Yet to see any official report.

On the other hand, your lots record is well known. Didn't you do this recently?
http://www.news18.com/blogs/india/saura ... 95842.html

Armed UAV development in India has been carried out at a rather slow pace till date owing at least partly to American concerns about the same. These concerns were likely taken into account because key domestic UAV development programmes till recently had been somewhat dependent on American sources for key components such as actuators. However the recent United States (US) State Department's withdrawal of export licenses on MTCR grounds for some seven types of MOOG actuators that feature in ADE's flagship Rustom-II MALE UAV means that India need no longer be so concerned about what America thinks. As of now, indigenously developed replacement actuators have completed electro-magnetic interference/compatibility tests etc and high speed taxi-trials (HSTT) of the Rustom-II have re-commenced. These taxi-trials will go up to a speed of 55 knots, just 10 knots shy of take-off speed. First flight will happen in June 2015 after a delay of more than a year on account of MOOG's non-supply. Currently, a move to indigenize all critical components for domestically developed UAVs is also underway.

You can't be relied on to even supply systems.

[Gyan]

I have personally talked to small arms designers in DRDO at a Def Expo eons back. They told that they were specifically barred from 2000 to 2006 from developing a follow on to INSAS. Only later they were permitted to proceed ahead and they developed MCIWS.

[Suraj]

The government's apparent desire to pursue this deal to fruition is extremely poor. I do hope the opposition will for once do something I'd happily support them on, and scuttle this deal in parliament. They've been spending far too much time with wasteful nonsense like opposing the GST bill. It's about time they stepped up and did the right thing here and prevented the Rafale deal from being signed.

[GeorgeWelch]

On the other hand, your lots record is well known. Didn't you do this recently?
http://www.news18.com/blogs/india/saura ... 95842.html

That was neither arbitrary nor surprising.

As mentioned in the article, it falls under MCTR which is designed to prevent the proliferation of ballistic missiles and drones capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The US had no problem supplying components until the Rustom-II improved its specs 'too much' and became subject to the limitations.

This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone involved.

Guess who else is a member of MCTR? Russia and France. So they wouldn't be able to supply those components either.

Of course once India pays off Italy and joins the MCTR it will be a non-issue.

[Karan M]

George Welch, sure sure. After India signs some stupid treaties all will be well.

Was this related to MTCR as well?

'Lockheed-Martin's Failure To Respond Has Affected Our Programme Schedule': LCA (Navy) Programme
http://www.livefistdefence.com/2010/05/ ... d-has.html

http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2009/09/n ... n-off.html

Boeing was approached for the regular LCA for the AoA testing. Refused, citing USG issues.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp ... 232069.ece

Lockheed Martin’s current situation replicates that of Boeing, which was front-runner for the air force Tejas consultancy. But earlier this year, after the US government failed to grant Boeing a clearance (called a Technical Assistance Agreement) in time, the MoD awarded EADS the contract. The European consortium obtained the sanctions in time and is now working with ADA.

So get off the high horse.

[GeorgeWelch]

George Welch, sure sure. After India signs some stupid treaties all will be well.

India apparently doesn't think it's stupid as it has been trying to join.

Was this related to MTCR as well?

There is a world of difference between pulling support for something you've already bought versus refusing to sell it to you in the first place.

All the cases you mentioned were the latter.

So get off the high horse.

Again, what high horse? I know there have been issues with the the US in the past. But bringing up irrelevant examples doesn't help clarify the current situation.

[Karan M]

George Welch, sure sure. After India signs some stupid treaties all will be well.

India apparently doesn't think it's stupid as it has been trying to join.

In a world full of hypocrites, India is doing what it has to.

There is a world of difference between pulling support for something you've already bought versus refusing to sell it to you in the first place.

So you agree, the US is refusing to sell India the kind of gear the Russians do. Good, you are out of first phase denial in thinking you are better than them.

Second phase. Where is the proof the Russians pulled support?

Unlike this:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commen ... -sanctions

So while Russia continued to support India, you went out of the way to attack it when it stood up to China and Pakistan.

Again, what high horse? I know there have been issues with the the US in the past. But bringing up irrelevant examples doesn't help clarify the current situation.

Issues with the US today, wherein US refuses to support ongoing Indian programs.

What about this?

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/zo6XNw ... in-In.html

It is this non stop meddling in other countries affairs, tendency to get on a high horse (even when the rest of the world is seeing you sit on a donkey viz your own affairs) and inability to provide the right kind of support that makes you unreliable from the defence POV.

More than Russia at any rate which minds its own affairs for the most part where we are concerned

[Bhaskar_T]

Gents, can we come back to Rafale. Isn't today DAC approval expected to come on this Rafale deal? Let's hope we get to eat Mithai today.

[Philip]

Please K,I am NOT a tout for Ru arms vendors.Nyet! I adopt a pragmatic approach,no ideology involved.As said many a time before "horses for courses" is my motto. Had it been the opposite,the US having provided us with arms for decades while the Soviets had denied us stuff and helped the Pakis,I would plump for continuing the relationship on a priority with the US. It is as simple as that.In general,Ru eqpt. comes in at very competitive prices and even if you factor in better reliability with Western wares,the cost-effectiveness still is in Ru favour.The MIG-29 costs and upgrades vs the M2Ks is just one example.Similarly,where can you get a Western equiv of the latest Kilo variant for just $300-350M? An old IN Kilo in recent exercsies with the USN spooked a US nuclear boat.

Similarly,when problems with OEMs arise,as with MKI spares,support,etc. (which has now been done) sort them out quickly.Fast decision making is the hallmark of success.It is astonishing that even the Modi regime after 2 years cannot decide upon which torpedoes to buy for the Scorpenes,French or German,the first Scorpene which will shortly be commissioned WITHOUT torpedoes.We will become the laughing stock of the world.Here,for example,I would plump for German fish as we also operate German U-boats,having done so for decades.

I've just posted in the For. Affairs td. how we stood upto China alone during the Sumdorong Chu incident,tx in the main to Gen.Sunderji.We didn't run to Uncle Sam or the Bear for help,neither did Vietnam when China attacked it. The defeatism expressed by some of the current gen of "starry" ex chiefs is most dismaying.They've lost the battle before the first shot has been fired . They have become softies tx to excessive Western indulgences and excessive interaction. The US army fights only with mineral water (Gulf Wars).WE fight differently.The Indian Army in Kutch in '65 was v.short on water.There is a great anecdote about a query from HQ to the troops there under Paki fire about whether water supplies should be sent.The reply went somewhat like this."We need water to wash our backsides,but to drink send rum!"

For the cost of the 36 Rafales,a simple table of alternatives will show that we can get over 120+ aircraft ( a mix of MIG-29/35s and MKIs) for almost half the cost. Similar alternatives can be done for a mix with Gripens too.