Two part article on what is being done to fix the ammo shortages
Part 1
Gautam Moorthy & Syed Ata Hasnain
Two major heart-warming decisions by the government: the first came before the Doklam standoff and the second even as the Chinese continue to blow hot and hot with intimidation, threats and rhetoric.
The Army has been delegated special financial powers by the government to make up its critical deficiencies in ammunition and spares. This was received with much satisfaction among those whose responsibility it is to ensure that the fighting troops get the wherewithal to implement the military goals set out for them.
Setting a figure of Rs 40,000 crores for this is not a small sum even though making up critical deficiencies may need much more. Then the Ministry of Defence (MoD) demanded an additional of Rs 20,000 crores, presumably for the current annual defence budget for the purpose of once again making up deficiencies in ammunition and spares. The latter presumption is a fair one considering that acquiring weapon systems at this stage to meet the Chinese threat may be too little, too late.
Some have even put a number on it: about Rs 98,000 crores if we wish to make up ammunition for the 40 day-reserves by 2019.
{NoteRs 60,000 crores of the Rs 98,000 crores (i.e.2/3) have been provisionsed. But some peolpe want evrythin yesterday.}
Governments in the past appeared to believe the threat of conventional war to be either non-existent or negligible enough not to warrant even making up of deficiencies, let alone a sustained build-up. Or perhaps the view was that we have lived with the deficiency for many years and could do so for some more, in the absence of ‘real threats’. The real threat seems to be upon us now and the procedure to release and delegate additional funds has been in progress for the last few months.
The current government has fathomed the seriousness of the issue and has moved to empower the Vice Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS) to move ahead without the Army having to look over its shoulder. It is a critical decision for the Army whose current holdings of major war fighting equipment cannot be effectively brought to bear on the enemy and would be rendered ineffective in the absence of critical spares and ammunition.
So what has actually been done? First of all, and perhaps a case of better late than never, the government has finally accepted the inability of the ordnance factories to meet the annual targets set by the army, targets that the factories themselves agree to. Ten separate contracts in respect of various ammunition items have been signed under the delegated financial powers of the VCOAS.
To diversify the supply chain, the army is procuring ammunition from private industry as well as public sector undertakings (PSUs), a domain that was entirely of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) until now. It is also in keeping with the Make in India philosophy. ‘Requests For Proposals’ for various types of ammunition items, 22 in all, have been issued to Indian companies for the first time in history since Independence. Invitation of
bids have been asked for supplying yearly quantities, for a contractual period of ten years under ‘Manufacture of Ammunition for Indian Army by Indian Industry’ initiative.
Full powers have to be given to the Army HQ to procure operationally critical ammunition and spare parts. Additional steps include monitoring of delivery to the Army by the manufacturers by fixing numerical targets instead of financial targets, strict budgetary controls, an eagle eye focus on quality and an increase in storage capacities.
Critical equipment, ammunition and spares have to be put in the hands of the fighting formations early enough, perhaps as early as to empower and enable our formations not to be deterred by the bellicose Chinese threats and propaganda.
Consequent to the devastating fire that took place last year in the ammunition depot at Pulgaon near Nagpur that killed 19 people, the MoD, has approved a procedure for disposal of dangerous ammunition and regularisation of losses for defective ammunition to bring in accountability in the functioning of ammunition factories that are under the OFB, which till now were not held accountable. However, much remains to be done on the major issue of quality checks during manufacturing.
Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd), a former GOC of Srinagar-based 15 Corps, is associated with the Vivekanand International Foundation and the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Twitter: @atahasnain53
Lt Gen Gautam Moorthy, former DG Ordnance Services, is now a part of the
Armed Forces Tribunal at Kolkata. Twitter: @GautamMoorthy
Link to Part 2 is in first part
In the second of a two-part series on the ammunition shortage in the Army, Abhijit Iyer-Mitra writes that the Army was willing to let massive shortages accrue in a dangerous game of brinksmanship to extract more money from the bureaucracy. Read the first part.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra
Motives have been attributed to the CAG report for pointing out the Army’s critical ammunition shortages. However, the CAG report has been the single biggest enabler of combat effectiveness in the last decade – the government releasing upto Rs. 40,000 crores to tide over critical shortages.
It is laudable as a short-term measure, but in the medium to long term, this will merely act as a failure-reinforcing mechanism – intending to fund readiness but ending up subsidising obsolescence and rewarding ossification.
Why exactly have these ammunition shortages arisen? The answer is very clear – the generals have over decades prioritised flashy, new “status” items like tanks – preferring to accumulate tanks, rather than building up stocks of ammunition for those tanks to fire. This is not something new and fits well with the Indian psyche. Much of medieval India’s income was spent on acquiring war horses from Arabia, even after the equation had been decisively settled in favour of infantry. While the export of Arab stallions were allowed, the export of mares for breeding was banned on pain of death so that India would never be able to develop and indigenous horse breeding capability. Tellingly, not one Indian ruler, ever invested either in an intelligence operation to capture a bunch of mares, nor did they move away from cavalry – horse or elephant towards infantry – preferring peacockery & vainglory to operational readiness.
When the Army decided to purchase tanks – the latest being the T-90, the generals wanted their capital outlays for the procurement of the actual beast. Not one general, however, wanted to give up part of this outlay for a robust improvement to the Ordinance Factory Board (OFB) capabilities in order to deliver ammunition in time. This is a classic case of “for want of nail the kingdom was lost”.
To many people this seems like plain and simple blackmail – buying unusable equipment in the short-term, forcing financial costs on the civilian leadership to make that equipment usable in the medium term – effectively financial mismanagement followed by blackmail, literally at the point of a gun.
If we know the OFB is an obsolete dinosaur that will never deliver, why persist in making national security dependent on a known failure? This fact alone should have forced the Army to move into new ways of war – discarding the old lumbering armoured formations for light, highly mobile infantry and focussing on quality instead of quantity. Such a shift would organically move Indian military thinking from obsolete notions of ground control, which are now ruinously expensive because of the emergence of sub-urban warfare to area denial and strike which can deliver rapid and tangible results to political masters.
Sadly, jeeps and trucks simply aren’t as sexy as tanks, forget the fact that France controls and area of North Africa twice the size of India with just jeeps and tanks & it was American jeeps, not tanks that made the first forays into Baghdad in the 2003 US Invasion.
Finally, we must equally realise that wars are no longer won by the army – but rather by Air Forces and Navies. Yet instead of becoming a small but effective army, the Army’s leadership has chosen to remain a lumbering, poorly equipped giant. When the ill-considered move to create the mountain strike corps to deal with China was initiated, every commentator had pointed out the massive logistical trail and economic costs, yet the army leadership earmarked no funds for this persisting in wasteful expenditure, forcing the civilians to divert other resources to make this division operational over and above the allocation they sought. The problem is on the China border using infantry is literally an uphill battle – whereas air combat works to our advantage. Yet the army in its turf battle to get more money insisting on creating what is in effect a suicide squad that will suffer some of the worst attrition for the least gains, simply because size and budget translate to strength in the Indian system.
What we need to understand is that neither was the government “sleeping” as some have claimed, nor is the Army a “valiant & stoic” party as others have posited. The ammunition shortages are a result of normal bargaining process that happens between every army and bureaucracy. However, in the Indian case, it was the Army that was willing to let massive shortages accrue in a dangerous game of brinksmanship, trying to extract more money from the bureaucracy. Ultimately, the bureaucracy blinked and lost a critical opportunity for forcing much-needed reforms in doctrine and war fighting down the army’s throat.
That this will secure India in the short term is undeniable, that this sets a dangerous precedent, rewards failure and recklessness and will come back to bite us in the long term is equally undeniable.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Twitter: @iyervval
\The second part article is a polemic and detracts from the first part. Will comment on it in Twitter too.