DEFENCE AND SECURITY OF INDIA - DEC 2011 by Armada International & Asian Military Review

DSI Cover_dec.qxp:cover-feb3.qxd 02/12/11 3:27 PM Page 1

DEFENCE POLICY

SIGNS OF STRAIN India's defence management cannot deal with national and international security challenges I C. UDAY BHASKAR NUCLEAR

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT 2011 brings few gains to India's quest for a nuclear energy programme I SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN DECEMBER 2011

DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA

DSI VOLUME 4

ISSUE 3

` 250

CHALLENGES

AHEAD

THE MILITARY'S AMBITIOUS PROGRAMME FOR INDIGENOUS ARMOURED VEHICLES MAY BE HAMPERED BY BAD PLANNING AND RISING COSTS I AJAI SHUKLA

216X276.indd 1

12/12/11 4:28 PM

Letter from the Editor.qxd:contents-aug.qxd 02/12/11 3:59 PM Page 2

DECEMBER 2011

LETTER FROM THE

DSI

editor

he year is winding up and that’s always an appropriate time to review what should have been and what should be. In the face of growing military assertion by China and the changing balance of power one would think it should be boom time for India’s modernisation plans for the next decade. However, economic challenges and programme delays are resulting in reducing the competence of India’s defence programme. At the same time, the capability differential between China and India is rising at an alarming rate. This year, India allocated only 1.8 percent of its GDP to defence, though it is claimed that military expenditure is up by 11.58 percent. However, as DSI’s annual review of India’s defence management indicates, an effective defence policy is not merely about deterring China. It is about not losing the confidence to conduct one’s foreign policy unhindered from external and internal security challenges. It is also about cutting down on the military jargon and keeping to one’s commitments. Keeping this focus in mind we celebrate Navy Day (December 4) and Army Day (January 15) in our own way. In this year-end issue DSI shines a torch on the Army’s indigenous tank programme and the Navy’s plan to build warships. In a detailed, first-hand account, DSI delves into how delays in India’s armoured vehicle programme will not only affect niche capability areas but put at risk a nation’s defence preparedness. The Navy’s plans to increase its fleet strength is also facing potential difficulties. There is a need to revisit shipbuilding strategies which could mean more imports since domestic shipyards are unable to meet the needs of the Navy. DSI also examines the Pakistan-China strategic axis and convergence of the mutual interests of these countries post-Abbottabad, especially in the area of nuclear cooperation. With the latest NATO air strike on Pakistan, there is bound to be a further strategic shift by Pakistan in China’s favour which will have regional implications. India’s endorsement of nuclear energy is significant in view of the recent disaster at FukushimaDaiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The nation may be on the path of a comprehensive civil nuclear energy programme but, as this year shows, its quest has been beset with many obstacles. As DSI points out, the doors of international cooperation in high technology areas are yet to open fully. As usual we look forward to your suggestions and comments. Write to us at feedback.DSI@mtil.biz. Should you want to subscribe then drop us an email at dsisubscriptions@mtil.biz and our marketing team will do the rest.

Mannika Chopra EDITOR Defence & Security of India

India’s endorsement of nuclear energy is significant in view of the recent disaster at the FukushimaDaiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The nation may be on the path of a comprehensive civil nuclear energy programme but, as this year shows, its quest has been beset with many obstacles.

Contents:contents-feb-R.qxd 02/12/11 3:30 PM Page 2

CONTENTS

DECEMBER 2011

NAVY

DSI

AT UNEASE DEFENCE POLICY

SHOWING SIGNS OF STRAIN COVER STORY

DRIVING FORCE The Army’s ambitious tank inventory is dogged by unfulfilled contractual obligations, erratic ordering and rising costs. Today, all eyes are on the forthcoming trials of the Arjun Main Battle Tank as they will shape the defence establishment’s future approach towards indigenisation.

As the year draws to a close, it is clear that India’s national security challenges have become more complex and its defence management policies remain mired in institutionalised statis.

NUCLEAR

More that six decades after Independence, there is only one shipyard in India which can build destroyers and frigates but at the same time India has the potential to achieve a quantum jump in building warships.

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT 2011 has brought significant setbacks as also some small gains for India on the nuclear front.

REGION

FRINGE BOOTS ON THE BENEFITS Though Post-Abbotabad, the ChinaGROUND Pakistan equation has been

AFSPA

Admist a growing debate, the military is strongly opposing changes in the basic provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. 2

cemented, it goes back to the 1980s when China began helping Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s programme.

Contents:contents-feb-R.qxd 02/12/11 3:30 PM Page 2

CONTENTS

DECEMBER 2011

NAVY

DSI

AT UNEASE DEFENCE POLICY

SHOWING SIGNS OF STRAIN COVER STORY

As the year draws to a close, it is clear that India’s national security challenges have become more complex and its defence management policies remain mired in institutionalised statis.

NUCLEAR

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT 2011 has brought significant setbacks as also some small gains for India on the nuclear front.

REGION

FRINGE BOOTS ON THE BENEFITS Though Post-Abbotabad, the ChinaGROUND Pakistan equation has been

AFSPA

Admist a growing debate, the military is strongly opposing changes in the basic provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. 2

cemented, it goes back to the 1980s when China began helping Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s programme.

Contributors-DEC-11.qxd:contributors-aug.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 4

CONTRIBUTORS

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA DECEMBER 2011 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 3 C. UDAY BHASKAR

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

GURMEET KANWAL

AJAI SHUKLA

PREMVIR DAS

G. PARTHASARATHY

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, currently Director, National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi, retired from the Indian Navy in early 2007 after 37 years of service. He is currently Contributing Editor, South Asia Monitor and a columnist for Reuters. He has contributed over 60 research articles to leading defence publications and edited books on nuclear, maritime and international security related issues.

Siddharth Varadarajan is the editor of The Hindu and a leading commentator on foreign policy and strategic affairs. He has reported extensively from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Bangladesh, the former Yugoslavia as well as Kashmir and the North East. He has edited a book on the Gujarat riots, Gujarat: The Making of aTragedy in 2005. An economist, he has taught at the New York University before returning to India to work as a journalist in 1995.

Gurmeet Kanwal is director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi. He commanded an infantry brigade during Operation Parakram on the Line of Control in 2001-03. A soldier-scholar, he has authored several books including Indian Army:Vision 2020 and Nuclear Defence: Shaping the Arsenal. He is a well-known columnist and TV analyst on national security issues.

Ajai Shukla works in both the visual and the print media. He is consulting editor (strategic affairs) for Business Standard . He was also consulting editor (strategic affairs) for NDTV, a reputed news broadcaster in India, for which he has anchored prime time news and special programmes. He is currently working on a book on Sino-Indian frontier policy.

Premvir Das retired from the Indian Navy in 1998 as Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command. He has been closely associated with the formulation of naval acquisition plans and their implementation. He has served on the Executive Councils of two leading think tanks, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses and the United Service Institute.

G. Parthasarathy is an eminent diplomat and columnist. Presently, he is a visiting professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. His areas of interest are developments in India’s neighbourhood, issues of economic integration and national security and terrorism. He writes prolifically for newspapers and news agencies in India and abroad on foreign policy and national security issues.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Maneesha Dube EDITOR

Mannika Chopra SENIOR SUB-EDITOR

Urmila Marak CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Bipin Kumar DESIGN

Vikas Verma (Sr. Visualiser), Ajay Kumar (Sr Designer), Sujit Singh SENIOR MANAGER INTERNATIONAL MARKETING Vishal Mehta (E-Mail: vishalmehta@mtil.biz) DEPUTY MANAGER MARKETING Tarun Malviya (E-Mail: tarunmalviya@mtil.biz) SALES & MARKETING COORDINATOR Atul Bali (E-Mail: atul@mtil.biz) CIRCULATION & DISTRIBUTION

Sunil Gujral PRODUCTION & PRE-PRESS

Sunil Dubey, Ritesh Roy, Devender Pandey MTC PUBLISHING LIMITED

323, Udyog Vihar, Ph-IV, Gurgaon 122016 Ph: +91 0124-4759500 Fax: +91 0124-4759550 CHAIRMAN

J. S. Uberoi PRESIDENT

Xavier Collaco FINANCIAL CONTROLLER

Puneet Nanda

BHASHYAM KASTURI

RAHUL BEDI

Dr. Bhashyam Kasturi heads the research and publications division at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Starting out as a lecturer at Delhi University, Dr. Kasturi subsequently became a journalist and was later associated with the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. He has authored a book on India’s intelligence service and on Mahatma Gandhi and India’s Partition.

Rahul Bedi is the New Delhi correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly, UK, and contributes to it on a diverse range of security and military related matters. He is also the India correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, London, and the Irish Times.

GLOBAL SALES REPRESENTATIVES Australia Charlton D'Silva, Mass Media Publicitas Tel: (61 2) 9252 3476 Email: cdsilva@publicitas.com France/Spain Stephane de Remusat, REM International Tel: (33) 5 3427 0130 Email: sremusat@aol.com Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Italy/UK Sam Baird, Whitehill Media Tel: (44-1883) 715 697 Mobile: (44-7770) 237 646 E-Mail: sam@whitehillmedia.com Israel Liat Heiblum, Oreet - International Media Tel: (97 2) 3 570 6527 Email: liat@oreet-marcom.com Russia Alla Butova, NOVO-Media Ltd, Tel/Fax : (7 3832) 180 885 Mobile : (7 960) 783 6653 Email :alla@mediatransasia.com Scandinavia/Benelux/South Africa Tony Kingham, KNM Media Tel: (44) 20 8144 5934 Mobile: (44) 7827 297 465 E-Mail: tony.kingham@worldsecurity-index.com South Korea Young Seoh Chinn, Jes Media Inc. Tel: (82-2) 481 3411/13 E-Mail: jesmedia@unitel.co.kr USA (East/South East)/Canada Margie Brown, Margie Brown & Associates. Tel : (+1 540) 341 7581 Email :margiespub@rcn.com USA (West/SouthWest)/Brazil Diane Obright, Blackrock Media Inc. Tel: +1 (858) 759 3557 Email: blackrockmedia@cox.net Defence and Security of India is published and printed by Xavier Collaco on behalf of MTC Publishing Limited. Published at 323, Udyog Vihar, Ph- IV, Gurgaon 122016 and printed at Paras Offset Pvt Ltd, C176, Naraina Industrial Area, Phase I, New Delhi. Entire contents Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. Reproduction and translation in any language in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Requests for permission should be directed to MTC Publishing Limited. Opinions carried in the magazine are those of the writers’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or publishers. While the editors do their utmost to verify information published they do not accept responsibility for its absolute accuracy. The publisher assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited material or for material lost or damaged in transit. All correspondence should be addressed to MTC Publishing Limited. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Defence and Security of India is obtained by subscription. For subscription enquiries, please contact: dsisubscriptions@mtil.biz

www.mediatransasia.in/defence.html http://www.defencesecurityindia.com

Contributors-DEC-11.qxd:contributors-aug.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 4

CONTRIBUTORS

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA DECEMBER 2011 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 3 C. UDAY BHASKAR

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

GURMEET KANWAL

AJAI SHUKLA

PREMVIR DAS

G. PARTHASARATHY

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Maneesha Dube EDITOR

Mannika Chopra SENIOR SUB-EDITOR

Urmila Marak CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Bipin Kumar DESIGN

Sunil Gujral PRODUCTION & PRE-PRESS

Sunil Dubey, Ritesh Roy, Devender Pandey MTC PUBLISHING LIMITED

323, Udyog Vihar, Ph-IV, Gurgaon 122016 Ph: +91 0124-4759500 Fax: +91 0124-4759550 CHAIRMAN

J. S. Uberoi PRESIDENT

Xavier Collaco FINANCIAL CONTROLLER

Puneet Nanda

BHASHYAM KASTURI

RAHUL BEDI

www.mediatransasia.in/defence.html http://www.defencesecurityindia.com

OVERVIEW.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 2

POLICY

DECEMBER 2011

C. UDAY BHASKAR

KEY POINTS Macro-defence and security policy formulation in India has bedevilled successive Governments. n The dissonance between politicians, bureaucracy and the Indian military, in the absence of clear policy outlines, is exacerbating an inadequate national security ethos. n India is a highly vulnerable military power with little indigenous inventory capability. n

Sailors pull a rope from INS Deepak to aircraft carrier INS Viraat off Mumbai’s coast

AFP

ovember 2011 is a particularly appropriate time to review how effective India’s defence policy has been in managing the complex national security (NS) challenges it has been dealing with since August 1947. The short assessment is that the existing higher defence management policies are far from adequate, mired in institutional stasis though occasionally animated by individual brilliance. If indeed India has ‘managed’ its diverse national security challenges – and also come up with some extraordinary military successes such as the Bangladesh war of 1971 – it has been due to that distinctive Indian characteristic, jugaad or innovative improvisation, and the essential resilience of the Indian jawan and citizen.

DSI

Macro-defence and security policy formulation in India is a bleak domain that has bedevilled successive Governments, going back to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru right up to the NDA-UPA continuum. Extrapolating from Winston Churchill’s observation of 1936, it may be averred that, apropos national security, the Indian political apex has chosen to remain, “…in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, allpowerful to be impotent.” Indeed, recent events over the last year, drawn from the wide spectrum national security challenges, illustrate the tenacious Indian penchant to retain the status quo and allow the policy drift to continue. For instance, the collective Indian public memory has little recall of the 1962 war with China – and the current focus is simply on terrorism and its many tentacles.

Third Anniversary The third anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attack observed on November 26, points to one end of the NS spectrum, against a backdrop of the Pakistani right wing party – the Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) spewing venom against India on the streets of Lahore. Coincidentally, just a day earlier on November 25, a cryptic announcement was made by the Ministry of External Affairs that the 15th Round of the India-China border talks between the two Special Representatives, scheduled for November 28, had been postponed. Deemed to be ‘unusual’, the last minute postponement was attributed to scheduling problems. This may be the preferred public posture by both Asian giants – who are geographically contiguous but politically distant – but reliable sources

At a time when India’s national security challenges become more complex its defence policy contours remain inadequate

AFP

SIGNS OFSTRAIN 06

OVERVIEW.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 2

POLICY

DECEMBER 2011

C. UDAY BHASKAR

Sailors pull a rope from INS Deepak to aircraft carrier INS Viraat off Mumbai’s coast

AFP

DSI

At a time when India’s national security challenges become more complex its defence policy contours remain inadequate

AFP

SIGNS OFSTRAIN 06

OVERVIEW.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 4

POLICY Events over the last year, drawn from the wide spectrum national security challenge illustrate the tenacious Indian penchant to retain the status quo and allow the policy drift to continue. The collective Indian public memory has little recall of the 1962 war with China – and the current focus is on terrorism and its many tentacles.

A soldier transports heavy artillery shells in the Drass sector, Kashmir

AFP

attribute this unusual step to the Indian discomfiture over the Chinese position on the status of Jammu and Kashmir. The centrality of the Kashmir issue in the bilateral India-Pakistan relationship and the fact that Pakistan unilaterally ceded part of the disputed J&K territory to China in 1963 have only compounded an already tangled issue. India’s national security challenges may be interrogated at three discrete levels – the upper-end is the prevailing Weapons of Mass Destruction/cyber-space environment wherein India has joined a select few by declaring itself as a de-facto State with Nuclear Weapons (SNW) and a satellite capable entity; the lower end is the Mumbai syndrome – the terrorism challenge stoked assiduously by the Pakistani establishment. The middleground is occupied by traditional challenges including defence of territorial integrity and national sovereignty. The challenges that have been mounted against Indian security interests are almost co-terminus with the attainment of Independence in August 1947. In October of that year, a nascent free India was called upon to ‘defend’ the State of Jammu and Kashmir which was being threatened by Pakistani troops and a horde of tribal irregulars – a pattern that was to be repeated in Kargil in 1999. The challenge was resolutely met – the Indian military improvising with heroic professionalism – but the political handling of a pernicious challenge to the idea of India was far from astute and Mumbai of 2008 is a manifestation of a wound that festers. Did India learn the appropriate lessons and formulate the right national security policies? The answer, alas, is in the negative and consequently the 1962 war with China over contested territoriality turned into a national humiliation, a trauma from which Pandit Nehru never recovered. China is the scar that abides and notwithstanding the rapprochement that began in 1988 under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the last two decades have seen the asymmetry between the two neighbours grow in Beijing’s favour. In the last two decades since the end of the Cold War, there has been a gradual reappraisal of India’s holistic military security capabilities and the need to bolster this strand of national power – but the progress has been halting due to inadequate macro-policy coordination. Thus India exercised its long-held

DECEMBER 2011

nuclear option and acquired nuclear weapons in May 1998. Over a decade later, the texture of the Indian deterrent is uneven. Two clear examples are selfexplanatory. A nuclear weapon state must acquire and exude both credibility and transparency in its command and control of this apocalyptic capability in the pursuit of deterrence and stability. Although it is understood that the designation of an alternate nuclear command authority is mandated by the 2003 Nuclear Doctrine, the Indian political apex has demurred from publicly making this known. Consequently, to the detriment of its credibility, the chain of control over the nuclear deterrent, should we come to lose the Prime Minister – who is in charge – in a first strike, remains unknown to Indians and adversaries alike. The Indian doctrine of No First-Use (NFU) calls for very high levels of operational readiness but an anomalous situation prevails.

Chains of Control Currently, the Indian nuclear deterrent is operationally nurtured by the Commanderin-Chief, a Strategic Force Commander, a three-star officer and at the apex is the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) – a rotational post held by the senior-most service Chief. However, this is a very unsatisfactory macro-policy arrangement as Admiral Arun Prakash – a former Naval Chief and Chairperson, COSC pointed out in an interview: “The Chairperson COSC happens to be a key functionary in the nuclear command chain, and his role will assume further criticality with the induction of weapon systems like the nuclear submarine INS Arihant (which will go on patrol with nuclear-tipped missiles) and the Agni-V Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.” Yet in its wisdom, since May 1998, the Indian political apex has neither found the time nor the inclination to rectify the

anomalous situation that prevails, as regards a nuclear-capable nation that is wedded to NFU. Prakash further adds: “A look at the tenures of eleven Chairpersons of the COSC, who held office between 2000 and 2011, shows some startling statistics. Four of them served for less than six months – one of them, for only 30 days; six served between 6 and 12 months; and only three served for over one year. No Chairperson has got to serve for two years. This clearly demonstrates the low importance the Government of India accords this office. Even more incongruous, for a nuclear weapon State, is [the tendency] to allocate this onerous responsibility to a part-time incumbent on a rotational basis. ” The poverty of effective policy review and re-formulation is even more starkly seen in the continuing Indian grapple with terrorism that has a State-sponsored, nuclear element embedded in it. For India,

”

this malignancy began in the summer of 1990 in J&K; flared up in Mumbai in 1993 and recurred episodically with the Kargil war of May 1999; followed by the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and peaked in the carnage of Mumbai in November 2008.

Reactive Policies Regrettably, the long-term policy response has been stubbornly reactive and short-lived. To its credit, the NDA Government, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, instituted the Subrahmanyam Commission which rendered the most comprehensive report on the Kargil failure in particular and the larger issue of higher defence management in general in early-2000. Valuable nonacrimonious recommendations were made seeking a radical review of the existing higher defence lattice – and in an unprecedented initiative, part of this Kargil Review Committee report was placed in the public domain thanks to the perseverance of the late K. Subrahmanyam. The NDA Government swiftly constituted a Group of Ministers to take forward the recommendations into the policy domain as

DSI

derived from four different Task Forces comprising very eminent professionals. But in typical Indian tradition, the truly radical decisions that need political determination and sagacity were postponed. The re-structuring of existing stovepipes between the main Ministries and intelligence agencies and the troubled civilmilitary interface was tinkered with but not boldly re-cast as was recommended. Consequently, the military remained outside the policy loop, internal security remained the turf of the Home Ministry and the appointment of an empowered Chief of Defence Staff was kept on perpetual hold. The Indian political apex proved yet again that they could cross a difficult chasm not in two leaps (as in the nuclear decision) but even three – and remain suspended in mid-air. What have been the deleterious effects of such an inadequate national security policy approach – and who has paid the price for this fidelity to the status quo? The martyrs and injured veterans of the various wars since October 1947 and the growing number of victims of terrorism have paid in blood. At the national level, much needed tangible military capability has been mortgaged to short-term institutional interests and both ineptitude and turpitude have combined to denude comprehensive national strength. Consequently, for all the rhetoric about India’s imposing military profile – India is ranked fourth in the Global Fire Power hierarchy after the USA, Russia and China – the objective truth is far more modest. India is a highly vulnerable military power with little indigenous inventory capability. The Indian achievements in the missile, nuclear and space realms are indeed a case of commendable stoicism and perseverance in the face of very adverse circumstances – but the inability to design and cost-effectively produce major platforms for the military is cause for embarrassment. For example, the much hyped Indian Main Battle Tank, the Arjun, was conceived in 1972 and finally entered service only in March 2011 – and that too in a hesitant manner. The trajectory of the Advanced Jet Trainer and the Light Combat Aircraft for the Air Force are similarly depressing and the onus for such dismal performance in the field of indigenous defence production is not with the scientists and their support base – but the apex that is charged with macro-policy formulation. Techno-

OVERVIEW.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:33 PM Page 4

A soldier transports heavy artillery shells in the Drass sector, Kashmir

AFP

DECEMBER 2011

”

DSI

OVERVIEW.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:34 PM Page 6

POLICY

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

AFP

A member of the National Cadet Corps participates in a march past in Secunderabad

strategic and industrial audits are rarely done in a constructive manner and India’s most expensive policy blunder must be the hasty closing down of the HDW submarine construction in the late 1980s line due to political considerations. Similarly, the baby went out with the bathwater when M/s Bofors of Sweden were blacklisted in a knee-jerk reaction in 1986 and the Indian Army has not been able to induct a new artillery piece since. Is the Government of the day aware of the need for a policy review? Yes, but in an effete manner. The Rama Rao Committee set up by UPA-I to review the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the indigenous defence sector did a stellar job but the report remains shrouded in secrecy and has not received the attention it deserves in the public domain or the appropriate parliamentary forum. Is there a long-term policy for military acquisitions that will contribute to the goal of reasonable indigenous production in the future? Sagacious national security management would recommend such a course of action – but whether it happens is moot. In 2011, the much-awaited decision on the Indian fighter aircraft reached laborious closure, with two European options being

Consequently, for all the rhetoric about India’s imposing military profile – India is ranked fourth in the Global Fire Power hierarchy after the USA, Russia and China – the objective truth is far more modest. India is a highly vulnerable military power with little indigenous inventory capability.

”

short-listed. Given the burden of the BoforsHDW scandals, the political apex opted to go for what is being termed as a decision based on ‘technical’ considerations alone. This may be a politically ‘safe’ decision

but its long-term sagacity and strategic rationale is elusive. The institutional dissonance between the civilian spectrum, represented by the political class and the permanent bureaucracy, and the Indian military, in the absence of a confident and reasonably clear policy under-pinning is only serving to further exacerbate an inadequate national security ethos. The unseemly fracas over the date of birth and tenure of the Army Chief General V.K. Singh and the controversy generated over the AFSPA in J&K are cases in point. Were these omissions due to a policy void – or worse – deliberate policy choices? Many of India’s capabilities, both economic and military are more notional and perceived, than tangible and tested. At a time when India’s national security challenges are becoming more complex and contested, its policy contours remain inadequate. As an analyst, one would identify political pusillanimity and domain diffidence as the two areas that need immediate and objective redress. Absent this determination, the Churchill prognosis may have to be qualified: sadly, Independent India can neither govern itself equitably nor defend itself effectively.

Our business is making the fi nest ballistic protection systems in the industry.

Our mission is saving lives.

DEFENDER速 multi-hit body armor plates are the leading commercial ceramic inserts developed for use by global defense organizations. The proven performance of DEFENDER速 upgrade plate technology provides lifesaving ballistic protection for alliance warfi ghters around the world.

www.ceradyne.com/products/defense MAY TAN PVT. LTD., New Delhi, India

4266-CER_DSI_Body_fullpagebleed~f.indd 1

Telefax: 011-2649333

Email: rmohan19@hotmail.com

8/1/11 1:28 PM

Nuclear Status.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:34 PM Page 2

NUCLEAR

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT This year brought significant setbacks and only small gains for India on the nuclear front

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

KEY POINTS Progress has been slow in India’s quest to be recognised as a nuclear power. n Negotiations with Japan on a nuclear agreement have been stalled and India’s liability law is being unfairly attacked. n NSG’s 2008 decision to lift its embargo on India was not some kind of unilateral concession. It was part of a complex bargain involving reciprocal commitments by both sides. n

AFP

Police officers guard the proposed site of the Nuclear Power Project near Jaitapur, Maharashtra

hen the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) agreed in 2008 to exempt India from its ban on nuclear equipment and fuel sales to countries that do not permit international inspection of all their nuclear facilities, no one imagined this diplomatic triumph for New Delhi would translate easily and quickly into a reactor-led new dawn for the power sector. There were additional details that needed to be worked upon, such as the arrangements and procedures for reprocessing American spent fuel in India; the nature of India’s liability regime for civil nuclear damage as well as enabling cooperation agreements with countries like Japan whose industry provides crucial components for US and French nuclear vendors.

On some of these issues, especially reprocessing, progress was surprisingly smooth with a formal document detailing the manner in which India would treat the spent fuel produced by the U.S.-supplied reactors inked within the period stipulated by the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. 2011 also brought with an unexpected bonus – Australia’s announcement that it was willing to reverse its national ban on uranium sales to India.

Slow Progress In other areas, however, progress has been slow. Negotiations with the Japanese on a nuclear agreement have run aground and India's liability law is being unfairly attacked by its potential partners. Worse still, there has also been a setback for India with the 46-nation NSG adopting new guidelines for the export of sensitive nuclear technology this June – including enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) equipment and technology – that made the sale of these items conditional on the recipient State fulfilling a number of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ conditions. The first of these conditions, namely NPT (Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty) membership and full-scope safeguards, were specifically designed to dilute the 2008 waiver India received and were not needed to ban ENR sales to any of the other three countries outside the NPT (Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) since the NSG’s original guidelines – with their catch-all NPT conditionality for the export of any kind of nuclear equipment – continue to apply to them. Though Washington denies targeting New Delhi and says it has been working to restrict the sale of ENR equipment and technology for many years now, the new guidelines' redundant reference to the NPT

Nuclear Status.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:34 PM Page 2

NUCLEAR

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT This year brought significant setbacks and only small gains for India on the nuclear front

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

AFP

Police officers guard the proposed site of the Nuclear Power Project near Jaitapur, Maharashtra

Nuclear Status.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:35 PM Page 4

NUCLEAR

AFP

US President Barack Obama with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Nuclear Security Summit, Washington, D.C.; (right) South Koreans protest against the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan

Second, the NSG and India were acting on the basis of reciprocity.

The Liability Obstacle Though Indian officials made their anger known almost immediately in offthe-record briefings, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna finally provided the Government's formal response to the new NSG guidelines in a suo moto statement to Parliament in August. Noting the concerns that had been raised by MPs, he made the following “clarifications:” (1) The basis of India's international civil nuclear cooperation remains the special exemption from the NSG guidelines given on September 6, 2008, “which contain reciprocal commitments and actions by both sides.” (2) That exemption accorded “a special status to India” and “was granted

AFP

was introduced in order to fulfill an assurance that Condoleezza Rice, who was US Secretary of State at the time, gave Capitol Hill in 2008. Some Congressmen feared other nuclear suppliers would steal a march on the United States by offering India technologies the US wouldn't. To allay their concerns, the US Administration said it would ensure an NSG-level ban on sensitive nuclear technology exports to India. A draft was circulated in November that year and finally approved in June 2011. The fact that India failed to prevent the adoption of the new guidelines despite knowing they were in the pipeline for more than two years suggests a certain complacency on the Manmohan Singh Government's part. We know from the WikiLeaks cables that the issue was dutifully raised by Indian diplomats in many of their meetings with US officials. But never was the proposed ENR ban projected by the Government as an attempt by Washington to unilaterally rewrite the terms of the nuclear bargain it had struck with India. When the story about the G-8 deciding to implement such a ban in 2009 pending its adoption by the full NSG, first broke, senior Indian ministers took the view that this did not matter. It was only when the Nuclear Suppliers Group finally adopted the new guidelines this June that South Block decided to put on its punching gloves. The fact is that the NSG's 2008 decision to lift its embargo on India was not some kind of unilateral concession. It was part of a complex bargain involving reciprocal commitments by both sides. If the supplier nations agreed to drop their insistence on the NPT and full-scope safeguards and open the door to full civil nuclear cooperation with India, India committed itself to fulfilling several onerous steps, including the difficult and costly separation of its civilian and military nuclear programmes, the placing of its civilian facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, the signing of an Additional Protocol, as well as extending support to a number of nonproliferation and disarmament-related initiatives at the global level. At a fundamental level, the logic of this bargain hinged on two components. First, the NSG was making a judgment about India's status as a responsible country with advanced nuclear capabilities.

DECEMBER 2011

knowing full well that India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”Pursuant to the “clean” exemption, “NSG members had agreed to transfer all technologies which are consistent with their national law” including technologies connected with the nuclear fuel cycle. Mr. Krishna said the only outstanding issue is the “full implementation” of the September 2008 understanding. “This is what we expect and our major partners are committed to.” This understanding contained commitments on both sides. “We expect all NSG members to honour their commitments as reflected in the 2008 NSG Statement and our bilateral cooperation agreements.” The Minister then noted the statements made by the U.S., France and Russia following the NSG's June 2011 meeting in which each country tried to assure India

that the new guidelines would not “detract” from or “affect” the original waiver granted in September 2008. Stating that not every NSG member has the ability to transfer ENR items to other countries, Mr. Krishna added: “We expect that those that do and have committed to do so in bilateral agreements with India, will live up to their legal commitments.” He also held out a carrot – the huge expansion planned for India's civil nuclear industry – and repeated once again in that context that “we expect that our international partners will fully honour their commitments in this regard.” While the three big nuclear suppliers have all said the new guidelines do not “detract” from the grand bargain of 2008, South Block should not set much store by these assurances. The fact is that there has been a setback and a diplomatic effort

The fact that India failed to prevent the adoption of the new guidelines despite knowing they were in the pipeline for more than two years suggests a certain complacency on the part of the Manmohan Singh Government.

”

is needed to recover lost ground and ensure that India is excluded from the purview of the new ENR restrictions imposed by the NSG. The one supplier that has been the most forthcoming so far is France. Indian officials will have taken heart from French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe's public articulation in an interview in Delhi last month that France did not consider itself bound by the new guidelines when it came to nuclear commerce with India. The Minister

DSI

confirmed that notwithstanding the NSG rules, Paris remained free to sell ENR items and technology in a manner consistent with its national law and its bilateral agreement. French diplomatic sources also told this writer that the French delegation at the NSG meeting in June had entered a verbal reservation to the new ENR guidelines, questioning their applicability to India. The French intervention was not challenged and was duly recorded in the minutes, sources said. Of course, the challenge for India will be to hold the French to their word, as and when the requirement for cooperation in the ENR field is required. Though India has its own capabilities in these fields, there is no reason why it should not seek access to the best international components and equipment for the new reprocessing plant it has committed to build. With both France and Russia, India must make it clear that the multi-billion dollar contracts which are on the anvil for the purchase of new reactors will also depend on Paris and Moscow's willingness to follow through on their promises and commitments on full civil nuclear cooperation. The US has not so far committed itself to sell ENR equipment to India. New Delhi can live with that. But not with American efforts to block others from cooperating with it.

The Liability Obstacle The second challenge India must confront is the reluctance of its nuclear partners – especially the US and the French, but also the Russians – to accept the sovereign right of Parliament to frame a law on liability for damages best suited to protecting the longterm interest of Indian citizens. Though liability was not raised as an issue by the American side in the 2005 Indo-US statement which paved the way for the nuclear deal, Washington extracted out of New Delhi in September 2008 a commitment to accede to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC). The CSC is an international convention which seeks drastically to limit the financial exposure of a nuclear exporter to damage claims by limiting liability and channeling all liability arising out of a nuclear accident exclusively onto the operator of a nuclear facility. The CSC, which has yet to enter into force because the required number of countries with a large

Nuclear Status.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:35 PM Page 4

NUCLEAR

AFP

Second, the NSG and India were acting on the basis of reciprocity.

AFP

DECEMBER 2011

”

DSI

Nuclear Status.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:35 PM Page 6

NUCLEAR

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Government is simply not in a position to accommodate the US demand. Some attempt to provide comfort to foreign companies has been made in the implementation Rules for the Liability Law notified by the Union Government in November 2011 but this is unlikely to satisfy Westinghouse and G.E. Ironically, these partial concessions are likely to be challenged politically and legally. The Opposition sees the new rules as ultra vires because they undermine the intent and provisions of the parent Act. At the time of going to press, the Obama Administration’s position was that it was still “studying” India’s liability rules to see if the concerns of American companies had been fully addressed. If it pronounced itself satisfied, the Opposition will see this as proof of the Act’s effective – and illegal – dilution by executive fiat, something that is not permissible in the Indian constitutional scheme of things. And if Washington red flags the new rules, that would place a big question mark over any American reactor sales to India.

Police personnel detain an activist during a protest against the tabled Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, New Delhi

AFP

Diplomacy Abroad, and at Home

enough nuclear industry have yet to accede, specifies a model national law on nuclear liability that signatories should adopt as part of the accessing process. The Indian law passed last year broadly mirrors this model but deviates from it in two respects. It broadens the scope of the operator’s right of recourse, allowing him to file suit for recovery of money paid to victims of an accident from the supplier of the reactor in the event that the accident was caused by defective equipment. Secondly, it explicitly reiterates the right of citizens affected by a nuclear incident to

take recourse to ordinary provisions of Indian statute – in this case, the law of torts – should they wish to do so. American companies, backed strongly by the Obama Administration, say these provisions of the Indian law will expose them to “unlimited damages” in the event of an accident and are seeking legal protection as a precondition for selling reactors to India. Given the legacy of the Bhopal gas tragedy and now the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan which caused billions of dollars of damage, the Manmohan Singh

The truth is that that would not be the only question mark. For 2011 also has brought to the fore a new and unpredictable element in the Indian nuclear equation: public opinion. Until now, the Indian nuclear energy programme has not attracted anything remotely resembling a sustained popular anti-nuclear movement. But the rural population in and around Jaitapur, Maharashtra – the designated site for the reactor park where AREVA will build two, and possible four, massive EPRs – is vigorously opposing the impending arrival of nuclear power in their backyard. In Tamil Nadu, now, fisherfolk and villagers in Tuticorin, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts have started agitating against the Russian project at Kudankulam, even though it has been in the works for years and one of the VVER-1000 reactors is nearing completion. If reversing the NSG ban on ENR sales and convincing the US and others to live with our liability law calls for deft diplomacy on New Delhi’s part; reaching out immediately to those who have misgivings about reactors being sited near their land is a challenge that the Manmohan Singh Government must embrace even more urgently.

216X276.indd 1

6/13/11 4:00:36 PM

AFSPA.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:36 PM Page 2

ARMED FORCES SPECIAL POWERS ACT

DECEMBER 2011

BOOTSONTHE GROUND The military is strongly opposing changes in the basic provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act

GURMEET KANWAL

KEY POINTS

Political expedience should not come in the way of military operations. n The Army sees the AFSPA as an enabling Act that gives it powers to conduct counter-insurgency operations, without having to wait for civilian magistrates n The Army should make it mandatory for its battalions to take police personnel and village elders along for operations. n

A Central Reserve Police Force soldier, Srinagar

AFP

mar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), unilaterally announced in October, 2011 that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) would be revoked from four districts of the State (Srinagar, Badgam, Jammu and Samba). He based his decision on an assessment that as the security situation had improved in these districts they could be handed over to the police forces. While denying that he was playing politics with national security, the fact is he ignored the Unified Command till he was reminded that such a decision must be

DSI

arrived at only after obtaining a consensus from key stakeholders. Recently, AFSPA has come in for some sharp criticism. Its provisions have been reviewed at the highest levels for almost three years and a decision by the Cabinet Committee on Security over its future is still awaited. While the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Army HQ are said to be opposed to changes in the basic provisions of the Act, the Ministry of Home Affairs is reported to have recommended a major overhaul of the Act to bring it in line with egalitarian human rights practices. Commenting on the demands of some political parties and human rights activists to dilute the provisions of AFSPA, General V. K. Singh, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), said in 2010 that those who demand its dilution, “probably do so for narrow political gains.” More graphically, Lt Gen B.S. Jaswal, former GOC-in-C, Northern Command, and the person responsible for all operations in J&K, has likened the Act to a holy book. “I would like to say that the provisions of AFSPA are very pious to me and I think to the entire Indian Army. We have religious books, in which certain guidelines are given, but all the members of the religion do not follow it [those guidelines]. Does that imply that you remove the religious book?” Clearly, the Army sees AFSPA as an enabling Act that gives it powers necessary to conduct counter-insurgency operations efficiently, without having to wait for civilian magistrates to arrive on the scene of action. The Act also provides its personnel with Constitutional safeguards against malicious, vindictive and frivolous prosecution. The Army considers its provisions mandatory for conducting active counter-insurgency operations. If it is repealed or diluted, the Army’s leadership is of the view that the performance of its battalions in counterinsurgency operations will be adversely affected and the terrorists or insurgents will seize the initiative. Insurgent groups establish their operating bases in areas in which the deployment of security forces has thinned out. Also, it takes a long period of time to establish a counter-insurgency grid if it becomes necessary. If the Army is removed from certain areas, it will be unable to protect its convoyssuch as those operating on the Srinagar-Kargil-Leh highway – from attack.

AFSPA.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:36 PM Page 2

ARMED FORCES SPECIAL POWERS ACT

DECEMBER 2011

BOOTSONTHE GROUND The military is strongly opposing changes in the basic provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act

GURMEET KANWAL

KEY POINTS

A Central Reserve Police Force soldier, Srinagar

AFP

DSI

AFSPA.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:36 PM Page 4

ARMED FORCES SPECIAL POWERS ACT Some sections of civil society view AFSPA as a draconian piece of legislation, believing it that violates fundamental rights granted by the Constitution to all the citizens of the country. It has even been called “license to kill” by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a hard-line separatist Kashmiri leader who, it is believed, is close to Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). The Act has been opposed in India’s northeastern States as well. Even before Manorma Devi, a member of the outlawed People’s Liberation Army, was allegedly raped and murdered by soldiers from a battalion of the Assam Rifles in 2004 – allegations which were found to be false, activists in the Northeast was demanding repeal of the Act. Irom Sharmila, a Manipuri civil rights activist, has been on a political fast unto death since November 2000 to force the Government to repeal AFSPA from Manipur and other States in the North East. For eleven years she is being force-fed through the nose in a hospital in Imphal. Explaining his position, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said: “The perception of the average resident of J&K is that the AFSPA is abused while there is a sense that it is indispensable for the security forces. The need is to address both views.” Mehbooba Mufti, President of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has demanded immediate revocation of the AFSPA and the withdrawal of the Army from J&K several times. In her view, the situation does not justify further operations by the Army. Various other Kashmiri leaders have also made demands for the repeal of the AFSPA. These leaders forget that if the Act is lifted from some areas, political pressure to do so in other areas will inevitably follow. Also, the demands run counter to the fact that infiltration has increased substantially in the summer months of 2011; there is still a sense of tension in Kashmir Valley; and let’s not forget that the Army had to be called out to enforce a curfew after 15 Kashmiri youth had died in a firing by the Central Reserve Police Force in 2010.

Contested Provisions The Act was promulgated in 1958 in Assam and Manipur and in 1990 in Jammu and Kashmir. The main criticism of the Act is directed against the provisions of Section 4. Human rights activists object to the Act on

Human rights activists object to the Act on the grounds that its provisions give the security forces unbridled powers to arrest, search, seize and even shoot to kill. They accuse the security forces of having destroyed homes and entire villages merely on the suspicion that insurgents were hiding there.

be opened only in self-defence and that too when the source of terrorist or militant fire can be clearly identified. If soldiers were allowed to fire indiscriminately, there would have been hundreds of more civilian casualties and thousands of refugees would have deserted their home and hearth in Kashmir over the last 22 years of unbridled militancy and terrorism. A committee headed by Justice Jeevan Reddy was appointed in 2004 to review the provisions of the AFSPA. Though the committee found that the powers conferred under the Act are not absolute, it nevertheless concluded that the Act should be repealed. However, it recommended that essential provisions of the Act be inserted into the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) of 1967. The Second Administrative Reform Commission headed by Veerappa Moily, now the Union Law Minister, also recommended that the AFSPA should be repealed and its essential provisions should be incorporated in the UAPA. If this course of action is adopted, it would be a retrograde step that will substantially harm the national cause.

”

the grounds that its provisions give the security forces unbridled powers to arrest, search, seize and even shoot to kill. They accuse the security forces of having destroyed homes and entire villages merely on the suspicion that insurgents were hiding there. They also point out that Section 4 empowers the armed forces to arrest citizens without warrant and keep them in custody for several days. They also object to Section 6, which protects the security forces personnel from prosecution except with the prior sanction of the Central Government. Critics say this provision has on many occasions led to even non-commissioned officers brazenly opening fire on crowds without having to justify their action. The criticism is mostly ill-informed and baseless. Critics forget that Section 5 of the Act mandates arrested civilians must be handed over to the nearest police station ‘with the least possible delay’ along with a report of ‘circumstances occasioning the arrest’. Army HQ have laid down that all suspects who are arrested will be handed over to civilian authorities within 24 hours. This instruction is strictly adhered to. As for firing on civilians, the internal instructions of the Army state that fire may

Track Record

Kashmiris look at a damaged house after a gun battle between suspected militants and Indian troops in Maloora, Srinagar

AFP

Demands for Repeal

DECEMBER 2011

In over 40 years of counter-insurgency operations in various parts of India, the image of the Indian Army has not been tarnished with the equivalent of a My Lai massacre where an entire village was razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants were tortured and killed in cold blood by an American Lieutenant’s platoon that had gone berserk in Vietnam. The Indian Army has never had a prison like Guantanamo Bay or an interrogation facility like Abu Gharaib. While there have been some individual excesses, committed by soldiers in the heat of the moment – and these have been swiftly punished – the Army as an organisation has maintained an exemplary record, in keeping with its professional ethos and venerable traditions. It is useful to remember that the IA fights with one hand tied behind its back. Its iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove counterinsurgency doctrine emphasises the use of minimum force, people friendly operations and simultaneous development work to win hearts and minds. Unlike the scenes from Afghanistan and Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), seen on television screens almost

DSI

every day, heavy weapons like fighter aircraft and artillery are not used for counter-insurgency operations in India. Even a rocket launcher can be fired only with the permission of a senior officer, who invariably assesses the situation personally before giving such permission. Additionally, the Army follows a zero tolerance policy towards human rights violations. The Army’s determination to bring individual violators of human rights to justice is without parallel. Since 1990, the security forces have been accused of 1,511 cases of human rights abuse. All of these were thoroughly investigated, including by the National Human Rights Commission. 1,473 cases were found to be completely false and had been possibly instigated by terrorist organisations. Where culpability was established, 104 soldiers, including 40 officers, have been punished in 35 cases so far. Extraordinary situations require special handling. As the Army does not have any police powers under the Constitution, it is in the national interest to give it special powers for operational purposes when it is called upon to undertake counterinsurgency operations. The promulgation of the AFSPA along with the Disturbed Areas Act is inescapable for providing legal protection to Army personnel. Army personnel must be given immunity for any act done in good faith. However, such immunity cannot be absolute, nor is it so under the present AFSPA. The Central Government can and has sanctioned prosecution where prima facie cases existed. Without these powers, commanding officers and young company commanders are likely to follow a waitand-watch approach rather than go after terrorists and militants with zeal and enthusiasm and then risk prosecution. On its part, the Army must make it mandatory for its battalions to take police personnel and village elders along for operations which involve search of civilian homes and the seizure of property. The practical problems encountered in ensuring transparency in counterinsurgency operations must be overcome by innovative measures. The Army must be completely transparent in investigating human rights allegations and bringing violators to speedy justice, with exemplary punishment being meted out where the charges are proved.

AFSPA.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:36 PM Page 4

”

Track Record

Kashmiris look at a damaged house after a gun battle between suspected militants and Indian troops in Maloora, Srinagar

AFP

Demands for Repeal

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

ROE7 new.qxd:contributors-aug.qxd 05/12/11 2:08 PM Page 2

RUSSIA SHIPS FIRST MI-17V-5 HELOS TO STRATEGIC PARTNER

Su-30 MKI

Be-200

Mi-17V-5

osoboronexport has supplied the first batch of Mi-17V-5 multirole utility helicopters to India as part of the contract signed in 2008. The aircraft were assembled at the Kazan helicopter factory. The contract is another proof to the fact that the RW aircraft sector is emerging rapidly as a priority for the Russia’s defense exporter. Indeed, helicopter sales are rising annually, with the latest modifications of the Mi-17 family accounting for a significant part of them. In fact, Mi-17 has evolved to become a symbol of the Russian air industry. The neverending demand for this aircraft is explained by its integrating most cutting edge technologies, combat proven in all military and peacekeeping operations in the second half of the 20th century. The up-to-date helos are powered by new engines and feature innovative avionics, while also inheriting the key features of the family – outstanding reliability and maintainability. Placed among the best in its class, the chopper is equally effective in most adverse climates and terrains including sea, desert, mountains and jungles of Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Now the Mi-17V-5 helicopters are entering the Indian Armed Forces. One of the leaders on the emerging market of the Asia-Pacific region, India has been Russia’s strategic partner, including in defence sphere, ever since 1961 – for exactly fifty years – when the

IL-76

IL-78-МK90

first Mi-4 helicopter was shipped to the country. The trend that is traced back then, continues today: both nations attach paramount importance to this cooperation. Nowadays it is exactly the area, where the most large-scale bilateral projects in aircraft making were launched recently. The one most frequently mentioned is the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft, which was given go-ahead in December 2010, during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to India. Now both parties are largely involved in the development of

DSI Marketing Promotion

the new generation fighter jet. Yet another promising project is the Multirole Transport Aircraft to be commissioned for service with the Air Forces of Russia and India. The plane is to be employed both in military and commercial roles. The Su-30MKI offset deal with HAL is a positive example of technology transfer coupled with equipment sales. The fighters do a very good job, protecting India’s air borders, their upgrade in plans for the near future. The scale of joint programs, technology

transfer and licenses for aircraft production are the manifestation of a really strategic level of partnership between the two nations. JSC Rosoboronexport seeks to intensify this cooperation, investing in future bilateral deals and defense technologies. Simultaneously Rosoboronexport is offering

a long range of state-of-the-art aircraft. Very positive shifts are in store in this sector, as the Indian Armed Forces voiced a need for more advanced weapons. For example, the Indian military pays attention to the Il-76/78 transport and tanker planes, which have earned a good

reputation in the country. Rosoboronexport has offered upgrades of these multirole aircraft, including new avionics and more economical PS-90A-76 engines that meet ICAO noise and emission requirements. A sheer advantage of the plane is that it can take off and land on unpaved airfields, not to mention that India has got a vast infrastructure and a wealth of experience to work with them. Indian specialists were fascinated by the Be-200 amphibian, which can be equipped with present-day open architecture surveillance and acquisition devices for maritime patrol, SAR, transport and medevac roles. Be-200 is really a unique aircraft that proved outstandingly efficient in fire fighting in service with Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. Rosoboronexport is also offering up-todate training aids and extensive upgrade programs for earlier delivered helicopters, which are set to bring dramatic improvements to their performance. Company’s specialists react promptly to meet the desires of the Indian clients, doing their utmost to expand a transparent, fruitful and mutually-beneficial cooperation.

ROE7 new.qxd:contributors-aug.qxd 05/12/11 2:08 PM Page 2

RUSSIA SHIPS FIRST MI-17V-5 HELOS TO STRATEGIC PARTNER

Su-30 MKI

Be-200

Mi-17V-5

IL-76

IL-78-МK90

DSI Marketing Promotion

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:37 PM Page 2

ARMOURED VEHICLES

DECEMBER 2011

The Army’s ambitious tank inventory is dogged by unfulfilled obligations, erratic ordering and rising costs

DRIVINGFORCE

AJAI SHUKLA

KEY POINTS

The rationale behind this massive force of over 3,500 tanks is the felt need for a credible conventional deterrent against Pakistan. n The Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi, can build India’s entire requirements of tanks with the potential to deliver some 340-350 tanks each year. n Erratic indenting by the Army may result in the shutting down of production lines. n

AJAI SHUKLA

T-90S assembly line Avadi, Chennai

DSI

f India has a capital for battle tanks, it is Avadi. So central is this Chennai suburb to the country’s programme for building an indigenous tank fleet that local legend has it that Avadi is actually an acronym for Armoured Vehicles and Ammunition Depot of India. The inference is probably apocryphal. But in a similar vein, the cantonment of Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, which houses several of the Army’s major training centres, is purportedly an acronym for Military Headquarters of War. Either way, Avadi – home of the Central Vehicles Research & Development Establishment (CVRDE); the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF); and the Engine Factory – is India’s lone major hub for tank production. This is where the Vijayanta tank was built; then the T-72 Ajeya; and now the T-90 Bhishma. Avadi is also where the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) was designed and developed, and is now manufactured. Getting permission to visit these closely guarded establishments is not easy: the Ministry of Defence (MoD) took a month to green signal a visit. At the massive HVF complex, a rigorous security check precedes any entry. This is after all the

flagship of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), a MoD-owned agglomeration of 39 factories sprawled across India which have the stated aim of manufacturing, ‘State of the Art Battle Field Equipment (sic)’ for the military. Of the OFB’s total turnover last year of `11,300 crore, HVF alone generated `2,500 crore. HVF comes under the Armoured Vehicles Division, one of the OFB’s five constituent divisions. According to R.K. Jain, the Additional DG who heads the Armoured Vehicles Division: “The total turnover of our division, which has some 12,000 employees, was `3,500 crore last year. We are investing `3,000 crore to augment our capacity; of this, the Government has already sanctioned `2,000 crore for the production of the T-90S, spares and overhaul. Another `1,000 crore will augment our capacity to build BMP-II infantry combat vehicles (ICVs) at the Ordnance Factory in Medak.” Jain estimates that his division’s turnover is set to cross `10,000 crore per annum. This may be credible, given that HVF will build India’s entire requirements of tanks, while its sister factory at Medak is poised to get an Army order for 1,800 BMP-II ICVs. HVF currently builds 100 T-90S tanks per year, a capacity which is to be expanded to 140 annually. HVF also builds 30-50 Arjun MBTs each year; some 50 T-72 variants like bridge layer tanks (BLTs) and trawls; and it overhauls 120 T-72s annually. In all, HVF can deliver some 340-350 tanks each year. Feeding off this capacity is the Indian Army’s (IA) enormous MBT inventory, consisting of 59-60 tank regiments (a battalion-level force that brings 45 tanks into combat). The rationale behind this massive force of over 3,500 tanks is the felt need for a credible conventional deterrent against Pakistan; this currently comprises three armoured divisions and another 9-10 independent armoured brigades. This tank force is planned to be equipped, going into the 2020s with 1,657 T-90S tanks; 248 Arjuns; and almost 2,000 refurbished T-72 tanks that most experts agree will have long passed their sell-by dates. A

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:37 PM Page 2

ARMOURED VEHICLES

DECEMBER 2011

The Army’s ambitious tank inventory is dogged by unfulfilled obligations, erratic ordering and rising costs

DRIVINGFORCE

AJAI SHUKLA

KEY POINTS

AJAI SHUKLA

T-90S assembly line Avadi, Chennai

DSI

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 4

ARMOURED VEHICLES

Erratic Indenting Given this appetite for manufacturing tanks, HVF’s assembly lines ought to be buzzing with optimism. Instead, there is uncertainty and frustration. Of the 1,000 T-90S tanks that the Army plans to build in HVF — and for which it has, in fact, already paid Russia licence fees — HVF has only received an order for 300 tanks. With half that number already delivered — 24 tanks in 2009-10; 51 in 2010-11; 25 so far this year; and an annual production which is likely to hit 100 next year — the remaining tanks will need to be delivered by mid-2013. Just as the production line will be hitting its stride, say OFB officials, the absence of more orders from the Army will force the line to shut down completely. Given the 30-month lead-time that HVF says it needs for ordering and obtaining the sub-assemblies and components that go into each T-90S the lack of further orders from the Army means that, in mid-2013, the production of the T-90S tanks will grind to a halt. “We are in touch with Army HQ and the MoD for the follow-on orders of the T-90S tanks. The lead-time for positioning of materials and components is about 30 months. [This covers] ordering, getting the material, manufacturing and assembly and delivery. We are progressing the case with the Vice-Chief of Army Staff and have requested the MoD to pursue the matter. If we don’t have continuity in production, skilled manpower gets distributed to other works. And to reassemble them creates its own set of problems,” details Jain. Such situations, where ill-considered indenting by the three Services causes production breaks, are common across India’s defence industrial complex, including its defence shipyards and public sector behemoths like Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and Bharat Electronics Ltd. Erratic indenting hinders the smooth planning of production cycles, economic utilisation of skilled manpower and the provision of lead times needed for out-sourcing materials and assemblies from external vendors. The military’s proclivity for placing piecemeal orders

The Heavy Vehicles Factory currently builds 100 T-90S tanks per year, with that capacity planned to be expanded to 140 annually. HVF also builds 30-50 Arjun MBTs each year; some 50 T-72 variants like bridge layer tanks and trawls; and it overhauls 120 T-72s annually.

”

also blocks potential economies of scale, something that India’s vast armed forces are actually better placed to exploit than most other countries. This is evident from the T-90S’ rising cost. The T-90S tanks that came ready built from Russia cost `11 crore each; and the knocked down tanks from Russia that were assembled in Avadi cost `12 crore each, the Minister of State for Defence, Rao Inderjit Singh, informed the Lok Sabha on November 30, 2006. But the tanks that are built in Avadi now cost `18.1 crore, according to the OFB. Asked how much this price could be whittled down through timely bulk orders from the Army, HVF officials estimate a potential cost saving of 25-30 percent. Spurning this opportunity forces the Army to pay `3,800 crore extra for the 700 more T-90S tanks that HVF will eventually build. The indent for those should have been placed on OFB in early2011, that is 30 months before the current production run ends in mid-2013. But the Army is holding back, insisting that it needs to be satisfied that the T-90S tanks already built are free of production glitches. “The Army wants indigenous T-90S to be observed and user confidence built up [before placing a fresh indent]. So far, the users have run only the first batch of 24 tanks, delivered in 2009-10, to the

Improved Arjun Mark-I being readied for trials, Avadi

extent where they can properly evaluate their performance. The 51 tanks that we delivered in 2010-11 have yet to be adequately exploited,” points out Jain. Asked why a supplementary indent for more T-90S tanks had not yet been placed on HVF, the MoD did not respond.

Russian Game-Plan It was in the late 1990s, that the proposed purchase of the T-90S tanks – billed as a high-tech battle-winner for an affordable price – was touted as a model of growing Russia-India partnership. With Russia providing full transfer of technology (ToT), HVF was to capitalise on its experience of building the T-72M1 which was then the mainstay of the Army’s strike formations. Today, that expectation seems grimly ironic, perhaps even a sign of Indian naiveté in the face of Russian duplicity. The T-90S contract, signed on January 15, 2001, for `3,625 crore, committed Russia to supply 310 tanks to the Indian Army and to licence the building of another

AJAI SHUKLA

greater acceptance of the Arjun Mark-II, and the successful development of the Army’s planned Future Main Battle Tank (FMBT) will considerably reduce the dependence on the obsolescent T-72s.

DECEMBER 2011

1,000 in HVF Avadi. The 310 T-90S tanks that were built by the Russian facility, UralVagonZavod, began to flow in quickly: 124 in fully built condition; 86 in semiknocked down kits (SKD); and 100 in completely knocked down kits (CKD). But the transfer of technology and the supply of assemblies for building the 1,000 tanks in India quickly hit a Russian stonewall. First, Russia took one-and-a half years to transfer the ToT documents that were the essential first steps towards building the T-90S in India. When those tonnes of documents finally arrived, they were in Russian; translating them into English took another one-and-a-half years. Worse was to follow. HVF officials discovered that Russia had withheld key details of the T-90S technology without valid reason. The documents for crucial components – including the tank’s main gun and a key frontal section of the turret armour – were not provided. When asked for those technologies to be transferred in

accordance with the contract, Russian officials blandly responded that they were secret. To this day, Russia has not transferred full technology for building the T-90S in India. It should be added that the Embassy of Russia in New Delhi has ignored an email asking for their comments on this issue. When asked how the T-90S was being built without these technologies, M.S.N. Rao, General Manager of HVF Avadi admits: “Eventually we developed the tank gun indigenously in Central Ordnance Depot, Kanpur, and the turret armour component in CVRDE, Avadi. This is still a sticking point between India and Russia,” said Rao. Clearly, this remains a serious irritant between New Delhi and Moscow, evident even in the careful language of MoD press releases. On October 5, 2011, the day after Defence Minister A.K. Antony met his Russian counterpart, A.E. Serdyukov in Moscow as a part of the apex Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission on

DSI

Military-Technical Cooperation (IRIGCMTC), the MoD release noted that “Shri Antony drew the attention of the Russian side to the vexing issue of delayed export clearances for vital repair equipment for already contracted weapons systems. This has been affecting supplies of defence equipment and spares.” For Indian officers in Avadi, this was not just a political hot potato but also a matter that was holding up their flagship production line. By the end of 2007, Russia’s refusal to provide the contracted technologies, and also key aggregates (components and sub-systems) that the HVF needs for building T-90S tanks in Avadi, has blocked indigenous production for almost seven years. The Russian game-plan was evidently to leave India with no choice but to order more fully built T-90S tanks from the UralVagonZavod plant which was lying idle because the Russian military was placing no orders. And India duly capitulated, ordering 347 more T-90S tanks from UralVagonZavod in November 2007 for ` 4,900 crore. Of these, 124 were to be fully built, while 223 would come in semi-knocked down condition. An IA officer who expressed his frustration to his Russian counterparts recalls the taunting Russian response: “Starting T-72 production took you ten years. How can you imagine that you will produce the T-90 in just six or seven years?” It may be recalled, that this was also the period when Russia demanded an extra USD 1.5 billion from India for refitting the aircraft carrier, Admiral Gorshkov, now INS Vikramaditya. Immediately after India purchased the additional 347 T-90S tanks, Russia began supplying the components needed for building the T-90S in HVF. Jain recalls wryly how the logjam was broken: “In 2006, when the Defence Minister went to Russia, he took up the issue. Then help started flowing in and we could start the production of T-90S in 2008.” Apart from having to deal with Russia’s blockage of key technologies and aggregates, the Army received another shock. It discovered to its horror, in the midst of Operation Parakram, the nearwar face-off with Pakistan in 2002, that the newly inducted T-90S fleet was not battleworthy. The Thales-Optronika thermal imaging (TI) night sights supplied with the

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 4

ARMOURED VEHICLES

”

Improved Arjun Mark-I being readied for trials, Avadi

AJAI SHUKLA

greater acceptance of the Arjun Mark-II, and the successful development of the Army’s planned Future Main Battle Tank (FMBT) will considerably reduce the dependence on the obsolescent T-72s.

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 6

ARMOURED VEHICLES

Continuing Fiasco Even more alarmingly, the Army discovered that the T-90S’ sights were not calibrated for firing Indian made tank ammunition which was noticed to be falling well short of the targets. Even as a panicked MoD appealed to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and other research institutions to re-orient the T-90S’ fire control computer to Indian ammunition tank rounds were hastily shipped in from Russia at great cost. The fiasco continues; more than a decade later, India has eventually built just 150 T-90S tanks. But Moscow seems unconcerned about any damage to its status as India’s premier arms supplier. The Russian arms’ industry no longer has the breadth to beat off competition from the

Everyone in HVF and CVRDE has a simple suggestion for the Army on how to reduce the cost of the Arjun: increase the size of the order. For an Army with more than 3,500 tanks, many of them obsolete T-72s that are crying out for replacement, an order for just 124 Arjun Mark-IIs seems pitifully low.

A soldier sits on a T-55 tank as he participates in an exercise at Kunwar Bet in the Rann of Kutch, Ahmedabad

AFP

HVF T-90S — essential for firing tank weapons accurately at night — quickly stopped functioning in the blistering hot desert summers in which Indian tank regiments routinely exercise and fight. For years, while the Army considered alternatives, the indigenous building of T90S tanks went onto the backburner; only in November 2004, almost four years after the T-90S contract, did the Army indent for 300 tanks to be built by HVF. To this day, the problem of the ThalesOptronika night sight remains a bugbear. By the time the second contract was signed for 347 T-90S tanks, refinements to the electronics did improve the night sight’s tolerance to high temperatures. Most tank soldiers find the idea of airconditioning galling. They believe that a tank must fight ‘opened up’, with the commander half-outside his turret to remain oriented to the battlefield. But HVF officials believe airconditioning can be effective even if the turret remains open. “Even if we manage to reduce the temperature by ten degrees, the performance of the electronics will be greatly improved,” says Sudhakar K., Joint General Manager, General Assembly. Equally worrisome were problems with the barrel-fired Invar missile, a weapon that was considered a clinching factor in buying the T-90S in the first place. And indeed with India poised for war with Pakistan the Invar missiles received from Russia were found to be unusable. They were quietly sent back to Russia.

DECEMBER 2011

US, France, Israel, UK and also indigenous advances in multiple areas that were once its exclusive stamping ground. Moscow might well have reconciled to the conclusion that the T-90S will be the last tank that India buys from Russia. The emergence of the Arjun as a serious heavy Main Battle Tank has already begun shutting out the Russians from the desert border and the successful development of the FMBT programme will fully establish India as a country that no longer needs to import tanks. That the IA has some distance to cover in supporting this aim becomes evident from a visit to the Arjun assembly line in Avadi. Housed in a giant prefabricated structure in one corner of the HVF, this was set up in 2000 when the Army indented for 124 Arjuns. Now, with a second indent having been approved by the MoD’s apex Defence Acquisition Council for 124 Arjun Mark-II tanks, the capacity of the Arjun line is being expanded from 30 tanks per year to 50 tanks.

The `100 crore that the MoD has allocated for this upgrade will be split two ways: Ordnance Factory Medak, in Andhra Pradesh, where the Arjun’s hulls and turrets are built, will get ` 65 crore; while HVF Avadi, where the tank is finally assembled, will get ` 35 crore. Presently, though, there is little activity on the Arjun line. Of the 124 tanks that the Army ordered, 110 have already been delivered and the remaining 14 almost completed. Starting from July 2008, when the Army finally cleared the Arjun Mark-I for induction, the production line worked feverishly to equip two tank regiments with the Arjun: 43 Armoured Regiment in 2009 and the 75 Armoured Regiment in 2010. But once the last 14 tanks are delivered, the production line will fall silent. The manager of the Arjun production line says his skilled workers will be farmed out elsewhere. “We can send our workers to HVF’s other lines. But what can we do about the dislocation of our sub-contractors, many of them small enterprises around

Chennai, who supply thousands of Arjun components like fuel pipes and bearings. They will seek other work because they know they will get no orders until an indent is placed for the Arjun Mark-II. And, when we need them again, they might not be available,” says Ashutosh Kumar, Works Manager at HVF. A year from now is the earliest that the Army will indent for the Arjun Mark-II. And that will only happen if the Central Vehicles R&D Organisation, the DRDO laboratory that has developed the Arjun, can satisfy the Directorate-General of Mechanised Forces (DGMF) in crucial trials next summer that the new, improved Arjun is ready for operational service. S.Sundaresh, DRDO’s Chief Controller for Armament and Combat Engineering (CC ACE), explains that the Army and the DRDO have agreed upon 18 major and 70 minor improvements that will upgrade the Arjun Mark-I to the Mark-II level. CVRDE is currently upgrading two Arjuns; if these pass Army trials that are planned for

”

January and June 2012, the HVF will get an indent for 124 Arjun Mark-II tanks. But for now the production line will lie idle. “Our worry now is: what will the Arjun line do? We are asking the DGMF to place the indent now so that the procurement of long lead items can begin. For example, the steel factory at Rourkela takes 12-18 months to deliver the steel plates for tanks. Placing the indent now will allow that fabrication to start and the steel plates and structures will be received in 2013. Even if the indent is placed today, there will be a one-year lull in production,” says Sundaresh. “We will deliver the first Arjun Mark-II about 30 months after the specifications are finalised and a go-ahead given. We need 30 months to order and deliver,” says Jain. But Army and CVRDE officers are sceptical; they see a 30-month time line as unreasonably ambitious. At the CVRDE’s Arjun facility, a hive of activity, work on the Arjun is on. Two key leaders of the Arjun Project, V. Balamurugan and G.K. Kumaravel, show how two modified Mark-1 Arjuns, one of which underwent gruelling Army trials over summer to evaluate the 45 modifications that were already completed. The biggest success during these trials was to demonstrate that the

DSI

modified Arjun, which will weigh at least 65-66 tonnes, is as mobile as the Arjun Mark-I, which is three tonnes lighter. “Thanks to a major modification in the transmission system, the Arjun remains as mobile as it was. We ran it for 1,300km, loading dead weight until it was 65.5 tonnes. The tank’s performance, acceleration, torque, working temperature and fuel consumption was actually better than in the Arjun Mark-I,” claims Balamurugan.

Modifications While this modification increased the battlefield mobility of the Arjun, the tradeoff has been in maximum speed. The Arjun Mark-II can do a maximum of 60 kmph, compared with the 70 kmph top speed of the Arjun Mark-I. The Army has accepted this lower speed, since tanks seldom go at top speed in the cross-country conditions of the battlefield. Another major modification is a new hydro-pneumatic suspension for the heavier Arjun Mark-II. Capable of handling a 70-tonne load, this incorporates the latest technologies to overcome occasional problems that the Arjun Mark-I has observed over the last two decades: grease leakage, track shedding. The CVRDE chief, Dr P. Sivakumar, an awardwinning specialist in suspension systems, has masterminded the brand new suspension. The new version of the Arjun will also feature an all-new TI night sight for the tank commander, replacing the dayonly sight that featured in earlier Arjuns. This would allow the Arjun to function in ‘hunter-killer’ mode – the commander as ‘hunter;’ and the gunner as ‘killer’ — both by day and night. In this, the commander scans the battlefield through his TI sight; spotting a target, he electronically allocates it to the gunner to fire at and destroy, while he gets back to hunting for more enemy targets. “The new commander’s sight is as accurate and detailed as the gunner’s sight. It allows the commander to fire at the target if he wants, but we recommend that the gunner engage the target since he usually has better firing skills than the commander. But if the gunner is incapacitated, the commander can fire as well,” says Sundaresh. The Arjun Mark-II is also fitted with a driver’s night vision device based on ‘un-

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 6

ARMOURED VEHICLES

A soldier sits on a T-55 tank as he participates in an exercise at Kunwar Bet in the Rann of Kutch, Ahmedabad

AFP

DECEMBER 2011

”

DSI

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 8

ARMOURED VEHICLES

Make or Break Trials These new systems and capabilities, which aim to make the Arjun Mark-II a worldclass tank will be evaluated during makeor-break trials next summer. Only a single crucial system will come in later, perhaps next October: a laser warning counter measure system. This senses the laser of an incoming missile, which means that the missile is just 10-15 seconds away. Automatically, the system launches smoke grenades, which creates a smokescreen around one’s own tank blinding the incoming missile. The development of the Arjun Mark- II is closely tracked by the Arjun Core Committee, which meets every month in Chennai. CVRDE says that, if proof is needed of the Army’s new acceptance of the Arjun, it is can be seen by the smoothness with which the committee operates. Chaired by the CVRDE director and attended by brigadier-level representatives from every concerned Army branch – the

The emergence of the Arjun Mark-II as a serious heavy Main Battle Tank has already begun shutting out the Russians from the desert border; and the successful development of the Future Main Battle Tank programme will fully establish India as a country that no longer needs to import tanks.

DSI

Indian armoured vehicles take part in a ceremonial parade in Kolkata

”

directorates of mechanised forces; weapons & equipment (DGWE); electrical and mechanical engineers (DGEME); quality assurance (DGQA); and also agencies like HVF – this committee monitors every step of the development process. In the event of a developmental roadblock, the committee immediately, and consultatively, arrives at an alternative. The head of the Arjun Core Committee, Dr P. Sivakumar, believes that this new cooperation will be key to the Arjun’s success: “For years, one of the reasons for the Arjun’s slow development was that stakeholders were not cooperating. I don’t want to comment on whether it was the DRDO’s fault or the Army’s. But today we are all working in unison.” However, an emerging problem in the Arjun programme could be the prohibitive cost of the Arjun Mark-II. On August 29, Defence Minister A.K. Antony announced in Parliament: “The likely estimated cost of each MBT Arjun Mark-II with all major/minor improvements will be approximately `37 crore.” This is twice the Arjun Mark-I’s price of `18 crore and within touching distance of the M1 Abrams, the US-manufactured MBT that is regarded as the global

AFP

cooled thermal imaging,’ which allows the driver to see 300-500 metres even on a pitch-dark night. This is far better than the Mark-I, in which the driver’s ‘image intensifier’ required some ambient light. A DRDO laboratory, Instrument R&D Establishment, Dehradun, has also developed the new driver’s sight. “We have also developed an ‘ammunition containerisation system’. If the tank is hit, and the on-board ammunition ignites, it will explode outwards saving the crew. A metallic box with ‘blow-off panels’ directs the explosion outwards,” says Kumaravel. “These four major modifications – the commander’s night sight; the driver’s night vision device, ammunition containerisation; and the mobility performance at 65 tonnes – have been tried out successfully in summer,” says Sundaresh with satisfaction. Due for trials in January is another new capability: missile firing through the Arjun Mark-II’s main gun. While the firing of Israeli LAHAT missiles was demonstrated, the sighting and firing systems need integration into the gunner’s main sight by its vendors, OIP Sensor Systems (Belgium) and SAGEM (France). “We plan to fire 18 LAHAT missile during the January trials and evaluate the hit probability of the missile. The LAHAT’s manufacturer, Israeli Aircraft Industries, claims a hit probability of 90 percent,” says Sundaresh.

DECEMBER 2011

benchmark. The cost of the M1 Abrams – going by the July notification to the US Congress of the sale of 125 Abrams to Egypt for USD 1.3 billion — is USD 10.4 million, or ` 52 crore, per tank. Both HVF and CVRDE say that the Army has no problem with such a high cost; it has asked for high technology and is willing to pay the price. The Mark-II, they say, is technologically far superior to the Mark-I; and that advantage comes with financial implications. “In the Arjun Mark-1 we had a commander’s panoramic sight, which the DRDO built and we paid for in rupees. But the Mark-II’s commander’s TI sight has many new features and costs twice as much. You want to fire a missile — that capability costs. The new transmission costs. You [the Army] wants an advanced

air defence gun and explosive reactive armour with most; the cost rises further. Meanwhile, the value of the rupee is down… a Euro is `70 today. “Half the price of the Arjun goes on just three imported systems: the power pack, which we buy from Renk in Germany; the gunner’s main sight from OIP Systems, Belgium; and the gun control equipment from Bosch, Germany,” explains Kumar at HVF. Everyone in HVF and CVRDE has a simple suggestion for the Army on how to reduce the cost of the Arjun: increase the size of the order. For an Army with more than 3,500 tanks, many of them obsolete sT-72s that are crying out for replacement, an order for just 124 Arjun Mark-IIs seems pitifully low. “The numbers make a big difference to pricing. All the Arjun’s major aggregates

are outsourced, and if the Army’s indent is limited to 124 tanks, the vendors charge higher prices. Besides, the amortisation of jigs, tools and equipment is reduced over a larger order. HVF and CVRDE have been jointly requesting the Army to confirm an order of at least 250 Arjun Mark-IIs so that we can negotiate from a stronger position,” says Jain. “If you are talking just 124 tanks, there is a problem. Bring an order for 500 tanks. We will go for ToT for the foreign parts. The cost of labour in Germany is the highest in the world. We will build 70 percent cheaper in India. If we buy the power pack of the Arjun for ` 7.5 crore today; I will produce it in India for just `5 crore,” an impassioned Sivakumar claims. But the problem is that the Army

has little stakes in reducing costs. Senior officers do not rule out the ordering of more Arjuns but they are content to place the orders piecemeal. That notwithstanding, the DRDO is optimistic about the tank that they have nurtured through the most difficult of development processes. “Once we demonstrate the missile firing capability in January, and the other improvements next summer, we expect the Army to increase the numbers by another 124 more to 256 before the production commences,” says Sundaresh. It is an expectation that comes with a massive goal. Today, all eyes are on the forthcoming trials because as India’s defence establishment knows, the performance of the Arjun Mark-II will be crucial in shaping the Army’s future approach towards indigenisation.

Tanks.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:38 PM Page 8

ARMOURED VEHICLES

DSI

Indian armoured vehicles take part in a ceremonial parade in Kolkata

”

AFP

DECEMBER 2011

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:41 PM Page 2

NAVY

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Sailors on board Indian Navy’s aircraft carrier INS Viraat off Mumbai’s coast

AFP

PREMVIR DAS

AT UNEASE More that six decades after Independence, there is only one shipyard in India which can build destroyers and frigates but India has the potential to achieve a quantum jump in building warships 32

KEY POINTS The Navy must have at least 25 destroyers/frigates and 20 submarines by 2020. n Recently, orders for a few low profile ships have been given to some private sector companies. n The first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, was launched last year but given the complexities that are involved, may not be delivered before 2014. n

avies build ships; they do not buy them goes the weatherbeaten naval axiom attributed to a famous English admiral of yester-years. Independent India’s Navy learnt this lesson quickly. While a secondhand aircraft carrier and 19 major surface warships had to be purchased from the United Kingdom soon after Independence, plans to build major surface warships in the country had begun to crystallise very early and took root in 1968 when the keel of the INS Nilgiri was laid at Mazagon Docks Ltd (MDL), a shipyard acquired by

the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as a Defence Public Sector Undertaking (DPSU). This first modern Indian-built warship was commissioned in 1972. Since then, 14 frigates/destroyers built at this yard have been commissioned into the Navy and four more are in various stages of construction. With their delivery, which should be completed by 2020, MDL will have built 18 major surface warships since 1972. The first ship was built entirely with design and equipment purchased from the United Kingdom. In the next three ships, several British sensors were replaced with

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:41 PM Page 2

NAVY

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Sailors on board Indian Navy’s aircraft carrier INS Viraat off Mumbai’s coast

AFP

PREMVIR DAS

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:42 PM Page 4

NAVY

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

the delay; also contributing for low production was the stressful industrial climate in Kolkata and slow growth of skills in the DPSU. This notwithstanding, it was a good stepping stone but the Navy, unhappy with the time delays, was shortsighted and committed a serious blunder by discontinuing frigate production at GRSE.

AFP

Current Status

Dutch equivalents, their interfacing with the retained items being undertaken by the fledgling Indian naval design team. In the fifth and sixth vessels, changes to the hull design itself were made by this group which enhanced capabilities considerably. The design bureau, having gained in confidence, went to the next stage of designing an entire ship using equipment and systems from diverse sources, no easy task. This resulted in the much larger and operationally capable Godavari-class frigates which were built by MDL between 1983 and 1987. Then things took a turn for the worse.

AFP

Naval tankers INS Aditya and INS Gomti off the Goa coast; (right) INS Shivalik

With the collapse of the USSR in 1990 and the resultant chaos, supply of weapon and sensor systems from that source was disrupted; financial resources also became a serious constraint. In the event, the next ship from MDL, the destroyer, INS Delhi, could be delivered only in 1997. Two more of this type came thereafter in five years and boasted capabilities much above their predecessors. Since then, two Shivalik-class frigates have been commissioned and a third followed by three ships of a project termed 15A (Delhi-class follow-on) are in the pipeline.

Ground Reality The useful life of a frigate/destroyer is around 25 years. So, if the starting strength is 25, all would need to be phased out in this period and an equal number built to replace them with no addition to the force level. This means that MDL will have to deliver a ship every year which it has been unable to do. Faced with this ground reality, five ships have been purchased from the USSR in the 1980s and, at the same time, the Navy has decided to start a second frigate production line at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and

Engineers (GRSE), another DPSU, and has placed orders for three ships. Until then, this yard has been building relatively simple vessels required for hydrographic survey and assorted small craft and construction of complex warships like frigates. This is expected to be a slow and learning process which would yield dividends later. The first of the three ships, the INS Brahmaputra, could be delivered only in the late 1990s with the other two coming in some years later. Once again, chaos in the USSR was partly responsible for

Despite having purchased 8 ships in the last 40 years and having built another 17, the Navy still has only 21 major surface warships, about the same as it deployed in 1971. On the basis of orders presently under execution, the strength of major surface warships is unlikely to exceed 20 in 2020. As for submarines, it will be a miracle if the force level crosses 14 a decade hence.

â&#x20AC;?

The net result is that more that six decades after Independence, MDL is the only shipyard in India which can build destroyers and frigates, about one every 18 months or so, and imports have had to be made to prevent force level from dwindling. On the positive side there has been the growing competence of the naval design bureau. Every one of the ships, starting with the INS Godavari, has been entirely designed by this group. In addition to frigates and destroyers, smaller ships, most notably, corvettes of about 1500 tonnes have been designed and a dozen of them, most built at GRSE are now operational. A large replenishment tanker and some amphibious ships have also been built there apart from a continuing line of hydrographic ships. All of them have been designed in-house. Recognising the need for yet another facility where lower profile platforms, like offshore patrol vessels for the Navy and the Coast Guard could be built, the Ministry of Defence acquired the Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL). This facility has now delivered over a dozen of the larger vessels and several smaller ones and has even built some of the small fast missile vessels that the Navy needed. More recently, the MoD has acquired a fourth DPSU, the Hindustan Shipyard Ltd. (HSL) at Vishakhapatnam, primarily for construction of submarines. These facilities have created a good base for indigenous warship construction. The indigenous building of submarines was, correctly, delayed until sufficient expertise was built up in construction of surface warships. In 1983, a contract was signed for the purchase of two boats of German design (HDW) followed by building two at MDL with equipment packages supplied by the parent company. Submarines are required to operate at great depths and safety standards are far more stringent. Enhanced construction skills are needed and MDL-trained a sizeable team of workers in Germany. The two locally built

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:42 PM Page 4

NAVY

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

AFP

Current Status

AFP

Naval tankers INS Aditya and INS Gomti off the Goa coast; (right) INS Shivalik

â&#x20AC;?

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:42 PM Page 6

NAVY submarines were delivered by the mid1990s. It was envisaged that the line would be continued with increased indigenous design and equipment content but a spate of allegations of bribes having been paid led to termination of dealings with HDW in 1987. Consequently, several MDL workers, trained at great cost, migrated elsewhere. It took nearly two decades before fresh negotiations for the French Scorpene class boats could be concluded and a project involving construction of six submarines of this design and equipment package is now in motion at MDL. It is expected that the first boat will be commissioned in 2013-14 and the remaining five may take another eight years.

DECEMBER 2011

Given the emerging security scenario, the Navy must have at least 25 destroyers/frigates and 20 submarines by 2020 and a larger number of both by 2025. Since this is clearly well beyond the capabilities of DPSUs, we must either import or expand building capacities, in fact, both.

Warship INS Chennai before its launch at the Mazgaon Dock, Mumbai

Fresh Purchases

”

AFP

Recognising the seriously dwindling submarine force levels following the selfinflicted HDW fiasco, the MoD is now contemplating fresh purchase of two vessels followed by building of five more in India, possibly at HSL. Finalisation of this project is nowhere in sight. As highlighted, sustaining a force level is no easy matter as ships get phased out continuously. This is why despite having purchased eight ships in the last 40 years and built another 17, the Navy still has only 21 major surface warships, about the same as it deployed in 1971. On the basis of orders presently under execution, the strength of major surface warships is unlikely to exceed 20 in 2020. As for submarines, it will be a miracle if the force level crosses 14 a decade hence, much less than the 20 that were operational fifteen years ago. While every effort must be made to improve productivity and to modernise facilities in the DPSUs, it is abundantly clear that other Indian entities must be inducted into the warship construction business. Given the emerging security scenario, the Indian Navy must have at least 25 destroyers/frigates and 20 submarines by 2020 and a larger number of both by 2025. Since this is clearly well beyond the capabilities of DPSUs, we must either import or expand building capacities, in fact, both. In recent months, orders for a few low profile ships have been given to some private sector companies and this is a step in the right direction. Major warships, jammed with weapons and sensors are complex platforms, and

chosen private sector yards must be allowed to enter into collaboration with suitable foreign manufacturers to gain the required expertise. Transparency in going about this enhancement is critical as allegations and counter-allegations of illegal transactions by competing interests can only act to the detriment of the objective. Nothing is more illustrative of this ever present danger than recent reports that acceptance of a private shipyard as its subsidiary by MDL has got the MoD to freeze that action and to review the matter afresh. There are three to four private shipbuilders who have the potential to meet the Navy’s needs if they are nurtured and

they should be treated on par with the DPSUs rather than inducted through apparent subterfuge. Mention needs to be made of two ambitious projects involving the building of an aircraft carrier and nuclear submarines. Construction of the aircraft carrier, sanctioned ten years ago, is being undertaken at a public sector shipyard in Kochi and facing many teething problems; it may take another three to four years before this ship becomes operational. The first nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, was launched last year but given the complexities that are involved in making the reactor operational and

proving its other components, may not be delivered before 2014. The MoD has been farsighted in authorising the building of two more of these boats and L&T, a major private sector company, has been associated in building their hulls. This same sagacity has to be shown by ordering a follow-on aircraft carrier even now. Such ships take several years to build and long term decisions are essential.

Unsatisfactory Position Some issues relevant in the immediate time frame need to be noted. As highlighted earlier, based on existing force levels, orders

under execution and wastages, the Navy will, at best, be able to deploy an oceangoing fleet of 2 aircraft carriers, 2 nuclear submarines, 20 frigates/destroyers and 14 conventional submarines in 2020. There are plans to build seven frigates under license, four in MDL and three in GRSE but there is no possibility of their being delivered in the next nine years. The collaborating firm has still to be finalised, MDL has its hands full with orders already in hand and GRSE will take time to get ready for the complexities of the task. However, with maritime security becoming more worrisome, the MoD must seriously consider buying at least 2 ships, preferable 3 outright and concurrently build the rest in the country so that a minimum of 25 major surface warships are available in our inventory by 2020. As far as conventional submarines are concerned, the present position is very unsatisfactory as the numbers operable in 2020 are going to be well below those that the Navy could deploy in the 1990s. There are plans to build six such boats indigenously under license but prudent decision makers will know that even with the best intentions, this will not happen in the 2020 time-frame. Outright purchase of three submarines and concurrent production of the remaining, at HSL, is needed. Our objective should be to have three production lines for

DSI

frigates/destroyers in place so that the desired force levels can be put in place by 2025. With the MDL already engaged in that activity and GRSE earmarked to do the same, the need for a third shipyard, in the private sector, deserves serious attention. Collaboration with a foreign shipyard will be easier and the facility will become functional sooner. As far as submarines are concerned, two production lines at MDL and HSL should suffice for the moment. Increasing use should be made of the several private yards in the country for lower profile ships. The construction of aircraft carriers is best kept at the Kochi PSU but expertise already created at L&T for hulls of nuclear submarines can be exploited for larger amphibious and replenishment ships. All this may sound logical but not so easily done. The MoD, or rather its Department of Defence Production, long used to monopoly of naval shipbuilding is resistant to the ingress of private sector companies in its sphere of activity. Strong leadership is required to counter this opposition. Another difficulty is the reluctance to import ships on the argument that it will hinder self-reliance. While indigenisation is, no doubt, desirable it should be viewed objectively while matching deliverables with operational needs. In some cases, judicious ‘buy-andmake’ decisions can, actually, expedite the objective of self-reliance as transfer of technology reduces the learning process and facilitates progressive improvement of the product. Finally, availability of human resources with the Navy can also be a constraint. Each and every project of ship building, whichever the shipyard, requires the buyer-the Navy-to monitor construction activity on a continuous basis and to intervene and get corrections made as necessary. The work is multi-disciplinary and people of the required experience and numbers are not easy to find. To the credit of the Navy it has played a stellar role in getting indigenous warship production to the level that it has reached. A platform has been reached which, if suitably exploited, can result in a quantum jump in warship building in the years ahead. We have come a long way but there are still many miles to go.

Warships.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:42 PM Page 6

DECEMBER 2011

Warship INS Chennai before its launch at the Mazgaon Dock, Mumbai

Fresh Purchases

”

AFP

Unsatisfactory Position Some issues relevant in the immediate time frame need to be noted. As highlighted earlier, based on existing force levels, orders

DSI

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 2

REGION

DECEMBER 2011

FRINGE BENEFITS Though post-Abbotabad the China-Pakistan equation has been cemented, it goes back to the 1980s when China began helping Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s programme

G.PARTHASARTHY

KEY POINTS

There is evidence that China has been supplying Pakistan with a range of nuclear weapons designs. n The US has remained silent even though China has been providing unsafeguarded plutonium reactors and reprocessing plants to Pakistan n China has shown remarkable insensitivity to Indian concerns about the activities of Pakistanbased millitant groups. n

DSI

he epicentre of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile development is now located in the triangle connecting three towns in Central Punjab – Chashma, Fatehjang and Khushab. This is also the area into which China’s entire assistance to Pakistan for the development of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and ballistic and cruise missiles is funneled. Additionally, Chinese supplied nuclear power plants are located in Chashma. While Dr A.Q. Khan is often described as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile programmes, the real leader in its missile and nuclear weapons development is a scientist by the name of Dr Samar Mubarak Mand, who supervised the Chagai nuclear tests in May 1998. While. Khan’s main claim to fame, apart from his notoriety in proliferation of nuclear weapons designs and knowhow, was his purloining of nuclear enrichment knowhow from the Netherlands, the serious work on warheads and missiles was under Mand’s supervision. Dr Samar Mubarak Mand has been the head of Pakistan’s National Development Complex (NDC) since its inception in 1990. The NDC is designated as an aerospace agency and has played a crucial role in the development of the solid-fuelled Shaheen-1 (range 750km) and Shaheen-2 (range 2,500km) Ballistic Missiles. The Shaheen-1 is a clone of the Chinese DF 15/M-9 missile, while the Shaheen-2 appears to be a variant of the Chinese DF-21. The entire missile programme, including the Babur (range 500km) and Ra’ad (range 250-300km), both subsonic cruise missiles, has been codenamed the Integrated Missile Research and Development Programme (IMRDR). The integration of warheads with missiles is also reported to be an important function of the NDC. The development of cruise missiles comes in the wake of India’s determination to develop strong and robust anti-missile defences after the 1998 nuclear weapons tests.

Active Assistance

AFP

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani (right) and China's Premier Wen Jiabao inspect a guard of honour at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Recognising that Pakistan required lighter plutonium warheads for the miniaturisation and fitment on missiles of Chinese origin, China provided active assistance to Pakistan in the development of plutonium reactors and reprocessing plants. Plutonium weapons are lighter,

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 2

REGION

DECEMBER 2011

FRINGE BENEFITS Though post-Abbotabad the China-Pakistan equation has been cemented, it goes back to the 1980s when China began helping Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s programme

G.PARTHASARTHY

KEY POINTS

DSI

Active Assistance

AFP

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani (right) and China's Premier Wen Jiabao inspect a guard of honour at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 4

REGION

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

and have a higher explosive yield than weapons based on enriched uranium, and they form the mainstay of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, since its inception in the 1970s. Plutonium weapons can also be fitted on Pakistan’s cruise missiles. They have a higher yield of 50 to 100 kilotons and can develop even thermonuclear capabilities. China’s assistance for Pakistan’s efforts to build plutonium weapons capabilities commenced in the 1990s. Pakistan today has one operational plutonium reactor in Khushab, whose capacity is estimated to be between 40-50 MW. The construction of two other plutonium reactors, estimated to have similar capacity and which were inspected by Prime Minister Gilani in February 2010, is believed to be nearing

completion. The plutonium reprocessing facilities are located or under construction in Khushab and Chashma. Pakistan’s plutonium reactors can each produce an estimated 22 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually. It is estimated that once the three reactors are fully operational, Pakistan will have the capacity to produce ten high-yield plutonium weapons annually. It is not surprising that most analysts regard Pakistan’s programme as the fastest growing nuclear weapons programme in the world. Interestingly, while China has provided the unsafeguarded plutonium reactors and reprocessing plants over the past two decades to Pakistan, the Americans, who go ballistic on alleged proliferation by

countries like Iran, have remained noticeably silent on China’s actions which constitute gross violations of its commitments under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Under US law, China should have been subject to stringent sanctions for these actions. But, being a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, with a nuclear weapons programme sanctified by the NPT, it has been left untouched.

Extensive Documentation China’s assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear programme is extensively documented. Recently, the Director of the Wisconsin Project of Arms Control Gary Milhollin commented: “If you subtract China’s help

Recognising that Pakistan required lighter plutonium warheads for the miniaturisation and fitment on missiles of Chinese origin, China has provided active assistance to Pakistan.

”

AFP

(Left) Former Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Chairperson of China Atomic Energy Authority Sun Qin (right) inaugurate a nuclear power project at Chashma; Pakistan’s Shaheen-2 missile being test fired from an undisclosed location

from the Pakistani nuclear programme, there is no Pakistani nuclear programme”. There is evidence, including hints from Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali’s Bhutto’s prison memoirs, that suggests that China formally agreed to help Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons when Bhutto, then Prime Minister, visited China in 1976. It is now acknowledged that by 1983 China supplied Pakistan with enough enriched for around two weapons and the designs for a 25 kiloton bomb. Chinese support for the Pakistan programme is believed to have included a quid pro quo in the form of Pakistan providing China the designs of centrifuge enrichment plants. China’s assistance to Pakistan continued even after it acceded to the NPT. When Pakistan’s enrichment programme faced

problems in 1995, China supplied Pakistan 5,000 ring magnets. It was around this time that China’s assistance to Pakistan to develop plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme picked up momentum. There is evidence to establish that China has supplied Pakistan with a range of nuclear weapons designs, commencing in the early 1980s. While the nuclear weapons designs supplied by Khan to Libya were of a Chinese warhead tested in the 1960s, the nuclear warheads tested by Pakistan in 1998 were of a more modern design. While some work for the development of Pakistan’s plutonium nuclear warheads may be carried out at Mubarak Mand’s National Development Complex, the nexus between this complex and China’s nuclear establishments has been so close that India

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 4

REGION

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Recognising that Pakistan required lighter plutonium warheads for the miniaturisation and fitment on missiles of Chinese origin, China has provided active assistance to Pakistan.

”

AFP

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 6

REGION

Post-Abbotobad Equation Is China likely to be more restrained in its nuclear collaboration with Pakistan after the Abbotabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden? These weapons could, after all, fall into the hands of jihadi non-State actors, or even into the hands of extremist elements linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda, which have, supported Uighur separatists in China’s Xinjiang Region for a long time. A Chinese official accompanying the Xinjiang Governor was recently asked if the involvement of extremists trained along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had caused any strains, or misgivings in the Pakistan-China relationship. The Chinese official made it clear that the relationship was strong enough to withstand the impact of such events. During the recent Istanbul Conference on Afghanistan, China joined Pakistan asking for a complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan after 2014. Moreover, China kept its links with the Taliban open even during the period of Taliban rule. It has also kept in touch with the members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-backed Hizb e Islami, led by Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. It is not without significance that while India’s experts involved in economic development projects and its diplomatic and consular premises have been attacked by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Chinese have remained immune to such attacks. China has also shown remarkable insensitivity to Indian concerns about the activities of Pakistan-based India-centric terrorist groups like the Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish e Mohammed. For over three years, China blocked efforts in the UN Security Council to get the Jamat ud Dawa (the parent organisation of the LeT) declared as an international terrorist organisation. It relented only after American nationals were also killed during the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist outrage. The former Director-General of the

The supply to and efforts for assembly in Pakistan of JF-17 fighters continues. There is also a distinct possibility of China supplying J-10 fighters, designed by the Israelis, to Pakistan, together with reports that Pakistan’s fleet being augmented with China providing AWACs aircraft to its ‘all-weather friend’ Pakistan.

DSI

Chinese J-10 fighter jets at the Yangcun Air Force base, Beijing

”

ISI, Lt. General Javed Ashraf Qazi, acknowledged publicly in March 2004 that the Jaish e Mohammed, led by Maulana Masood Azhar, had carried out the December 2001 attack on India’s Parliament. But, prodded by the ISI, the Chinese even today continue to block efforts by the UN Security Council to declare the Jaish e Mohamed an international terrorist organisation. This would suggest that even after the Abbotabad raid, the Chinese remain very sensitive to and supportive of the strategies of the ISI, to ‘bleed’ India. There has also been no let up in China’s support to Pakistan, through supplies of weapons and equipment for Pakistan’s armed forces. The supply to and efforts for assembly in Pakistan, of JF-17 fighters continues. The same is the case with regard to the supply of frigates for Pakistan’s Navy. There is also a distinct possibility of China supplying J-10 fighters designed by the Israelis, to Pakistan, together with reports that Pakistan’s fleet of AWACs being augmented with China providing AWACs aircraft to its ‘all weather friend’ Pakistan.

AFP

has to be prepared for the fact that Pakistan is on the way to developing boosted fission and even thermonuclear warheads, with Chinese assistance. Having violated its commitments under the NPT, China is now hardly likely to hold back in enhancing the lethality of Pakistan’s Plutonium-based weapons.

DECEMBER 2011

Additionally, the Chinese involvement in the construction of roads in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Jammu and Kashmir continues unabated. A large portion of these construction activities close to the Line of Control is carried out by members of the China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), evoking justifiable Indian concerns. There is also reasoned speculation in India that the frenetic activity of constructing tunnels by China

in the mountainous Gilgit-Baluchistan Region may well include the construction of nuclear weapons silos, which can be located in manner that they are immune to missile and air strikes. This is an option, which is becoming increasingly important for Pakistan, as the control of the Pakistan State over large parts of the Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces is progressively becoming more and more fragile and tenuous.

There was some speculation that China’s refusal to bail out Pakistan economically by direct foreign exchange support and the provision of untied soft loans may be indicative of waning Chinese support for an economically dysfunctional ’all weather-friend’. This is not entirely correct. China rarely, if ever, provides nonproject assistance. And, its project assistance is invariably tied to the supply

of Chinese machinery and equipment and the provision of Chinese experts and construction crews. Moreover, like the US and the IMF, the Chinese appear to have concluded that direct foreign exchange support would be meaningless, until Pakistan sets its economic house in order. India will have to be prepared for the fact that Pakistan will remain the key player in the Chinese policy of ‘containment,’ directed at it.

china-pakistan.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:43 PM Page 6

REGION

DSI

Chinese J-10 fighter jets at the Yangcun Air Force base, Beijing

”

AFP

DECEMBER 2011

IM.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:44 PM Page 2

INTELLIGENCE

DECEMBER 2011

jihad against the infidels (non-Muslims), and establishing “God’s Government” according to Quranic tenets. It was way back in November 2007 that the IM came into the open for the first time when simultaneous bomb blasts targetted lawyers in the court premises of three cities of Uttar Pradesh – Varanasi, Faizabad (Ayodhya) and Lucknow. The IM described the attacks as “Islamic raids” and justified them as revenge against lawyers who had allegedly assaulted a couple of Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist suspects. The IM also claimed that the lawyers had refused to take cases involving other alleged terrorists, including suspected HuJI leader and Phulpur-based Islamic cleric, Muhammad Waliullah, apparently the mastermind of the March 2006 Sankatmochan Temple blasts in Varanasi. Given this background, it would not be surprising if the Delhi attacks were actually linked to the death sentence awarded to Afzal Guru involved in the 2001 December, Parliament attack case.

THE

INSIDE STORY

Origins of the Group

Known for its multiple, coordinated bombings targetting civilians, the Indian Mujahideen is the new face of terror in India

KEY POINTS One theory traces the Indian Mujahideen’s (IM) lineage to the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahideen while another says its an offshoot of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India. n Though IM recruits tend to be lower and middle-class Muslims it also has IT professionals as its cadres. n The IM has clearly endorsed the goals of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda and its linkages to Pakistan. n

A roadside vendor sells newspapers a day after a terrorist attack in the Delhi High Court

lane leading to the Delhi High Court – reportedly the handiwork of the IM. The device that exploded in early September was in all probability a remote controlled Improvised Explosive Device (IED) with shrapnel packed around the explosive for maximum effect. IEDs with shrapnel are military weapons used normally in insurgency-prone areas like Jammu and Kashmir. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP)

AFP

BHASHYAM KASTURI

he bomb blast at the Delhi High Court on September 7, 2011 took a toll of 15 lives and three months later there does not appear to be any concrete information of who was responsible and how the attack took place. The name being floated around by intelligence agencies is that of the Indian Mujahideen (IM), a militant organisation which has been held responsible for many similar blasts in the past. As the year draws to a close perhaps this an appropriate time to outline the intents and origins of this little-known terror group Two groups claimed responsibility for the Delhi High Court bomb blasts. Initially, the Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HuJI) claimed ‘credit’, followed soon by the Indian Mujahideen. For the country’s intelligence establishment the IM seems to be the more obvious perpetrator as on May 25 this year, a similar, though lowintensity, blast took place in the service

DSI

terrorists in Kashmir this year are laying greater emphasis on IEDs and grenade attacks in order to avoid direct contact with security forces and consequent loss of their own cadres. In fact, the website has recorded 36 such explosions in 2010 as against 13 in 2009. E-mails sent before the blasts suggests that it was the Indian Mujahideen who carried out the September operation.

Typically, in terror strikes carried out by the IM, e-mail messages are sent out to the media prior to the attacks, describing the group’s views on issues such as the Babri mosque demolition, the Mumbai riots and the communal violence in Gujarat. IM cites these incidents as reasons for their Islamic jihad. The IM’s email-manifestos always shed light on its objectives: The group calls for spreading Islam in India and waging

What and who are the IM? According to Wikipedia the word mujahideen means mujahid in Arabic. Nominative plural, mujahideen, translates to ‘strugglers’ or ‘people doing jihad’ – Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The addition of the word, Indian, merely indicates that this group has its origins on Indian soil and operates there. With this, terrorists perhaps want to try and de-link the source of attacks from Pakistan making IM an indigenous entity. So even though it is well known that groups like the Lashkar-eTaiba (LeT) are funding and providing weaponry to the IM, the blame shifts to a ‘local’ factor when an attack takes place. There are many theories about the origins of the IM. One traces its lineage to the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahideen (ISF-IM) 2000-2001 in Assam. ISF-IM claimed to have carried out the bomb attack in Guwahati in 2008. This organisation is supposed have been formed in Lower Assam’s Bodo-dominated areas ‘to counter’ the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland militants in 2000. It is most likely that this force was created by the HuJI in Bangladesh with the help of the Directorate-General of Field Intelligence

IM.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:44 PM Page 2

INTELLIGENCE

DECEMBER 2011

THE

INSIDE STORY

Origins of the Group

Known for its multiple, coordinated bombings targetting civilians, the Indian Mujahideen is the new face of terror in India

A roadside vendor sells newspapers a day after a terrorist attack in the Delhi High Court

AFP

BHASHYAM KASTURI

DSI

IM.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:44 PM Page 4

INTELLIGENCE

DECEMBER 2011

(DGFI) and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In addition, it has been reported that the cadres of the Muslim Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA) and Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA) moved to the IM, indicating that the IM is emerging as the nerve centre of a pan-India terrorist network with the capacity to carry out attacks anywhere on Indian soil. If that is the case then how did the ISFIM transform itself into the IM? The name Indian Mujahideen was reportedly conceived at a terrorist conclave attended by top leaders of the LeT and HuJI in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir in early May 2008. That was Pakistan’s ISI’s way of fashioning an Indian identity for the IM so that its transnational linkages could be hidden behind the façade. This leads us to a second theory

AFP

Kashmir University students protest against the death sentence of Mohammad Afzal Guru

about the origins of the IM. It is also said to be an offshoot of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). This organisation was founded in 1977 and it was banned in 2001 by the Central Government. It was around then SIMI witnessed internal tensions between its radical and moderate factions, creating an internal crisis which came to a head following the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. The radical wing of SIMI was led by Safdar Nagori. He oversaw the ISI’s operation in India and the LeT-supported founding of IM by Amir Reza Khan, Riyaz Shahbandri and Abdul Subhan Qureshi (aka Tauqeer). Indeed, SATP considers IM to be a SIMI-front group, while others say that the IM is actually SIMI’s militant wing, but now a separate splinter group, founded in part by former SIMI members. However, another source states that the

DSI

credit of founding the IM goes to Sadiq Israr Sheikh of Azamgarh – a former SIMI member and an electronics engineer by profession. Another theory is that the Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF), created with the help of HuJI in 2001, converted itself into the IM in 2002 after the death of Asif Reza Khan, one of its founders. ARCF was a small Sunni militant group that was only active in late-2001 and early-2002. The organisation was created in the Malda District of West Bengal sometime in the third week of December 2001. In October 2001, while the group was still being formed, Asif Reza Khan was killed by Indian security forces while attempting to escape prison thus giving the group its name. Reportedly, some HuJI leaders crossed over into Malda from Bangladesh in December 2001 to meet certain maulvis (priests) and cadres of the proscribed SIMI to create an affiliate of the HuJI. The HuJI is also reported to have lent some of its experienced cadres to the ARCF. It is possible that at this stage it was decided to form the ISF-IM as an Indian offshoot of HuJI. There is however no confirmation of this. The ARCF had three primary leaders: Aftab Ansari and two brothers, Asif and Amir Reza Khan. After Aftab Ansari was arrested by the police, Amir Reza Khan is thought to have contacted Pakistani outfits and sought to reinvent the organisation. He was approached by the LeT to organise attacks in India. Amir Reza Khan is also reported to have met Riyaz Bhatkal, alias Roshan Khan, who is alleged to be one of the co-founders of the IM. If the IM was indeed founded by former members of SIMI, like Subhan Qureshi, the group’s leaders are likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of modernist Islamic revivalist, Maulana Sayyid Abu’l-A’la Mawdudi, as well. Inspired by the ideology for Islamic revival movements launched by the Darul Uloom Deoband and Maulana Maudoodi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, SIMI stands for radical change in the socio-political character of Muslims in India, supports the jihadi interpretation of Islamic scriptures and has assisted various Islamist terrorist groups to destabilise the country. But the fact is that Deobandism is a movement of the Ulema and that

Subscription-Dec-2011:cover-feb3.qxd 12/12/11 1:44 PM Page 1

DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA

ial Spec iption scr Sub ffer O

DSI n

b3.qxd

08/02/10

3:47 PM

Page 1

DEFENCE POLICY

MODERN

THE CHALION LENGE TO CH

ANGE

NEEDED : PERSPE CTIVE PL ANNING

Twelve years dow work in progress n, the office of the NSA I SIDDARTH FEBRUAR is still a VARADAR Y 2010 AJAN

DEFENCE and SE CURITY of IND IA

DS VOLUME

COVER

ISSUE

STO

CAMO RY MANO UFLAGED The cou EUVRES ntries dow

India’s only magazine on national security, strategic affairs & policy matters.

India's defence management cannot deal with national and international security challenges I C. UDAY BHASKAR NUCLEAR

A YEAR OF COLD COMFORT

2011 brings few gains to India's quest for a nuclear energy programme I SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN DECEMBER 2011

Rs 250

BEDI

Focuses on defence & security issues through insightful & analytical articles on defence policy, procurement, terrorism, insurgency & border management

DSI Cover final

4.8.qxp:cover-feb3.qxd

INDIA-UK DEFENCE

PM Page 1 05/08/11 12:21

RELATIONS

REACHING OUT partner for an irresistible strategic

POLICIN

India has become I Ajai Shukla the United Kindgdom REGION

GROWING APART tensions in n of Osama Bin Laden,

G THE S

EAS

With the eliminatio are growing I G. Parathasarathy US-Pakistan relations Des AUGUST 2011

URITY DEFENCE and SEC INDIA

DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA

DSI VOLUME 4

CHALLENGES

may play n thei military r strategic and is India’slinks but today arms’ supsecond largestIsrael plier I RAH UL

AHEAD

ISSUE 3

` 250

THE MILITARY'S AMBITIOUS PROGRAMME FOR INDIGENOUS ARMOURED VEHICLES MAY BE HAMPERED BY BAD PLANNING AND RISING COSTS I AJAI SHUKLA

DSI VOLUME 4

ISSUE 1

` 250

pite sea, the attacks by terr remains focus on mar orists from the itim inadequ ate I C. e security UDAY BHA

SIGNS OF STRAIN

ISAT

The arm ed their com forces need cost bat edge I AIR CHIE effective solu SECURIT tions F MARSHA Y L FALI H. to enhance MAJOR

SKAR

High quality strategic affairs magazine with South Asian perspective covering region’s linkages with China, Indian Ocean region, near Middle East & South Central Asia.

CAN INDIA EVER STOP A TERROR ? ATTACKGES

Reaches to decision makers in Armed & Para-Military Forces, policy makers in Govt., strategic analysts, security agencies, domestic & international defence manufacturers who are looking at India as a potential market.

1:49 PM 29/09/11 b3.qxd xp:cover-fe 2nd time.q NEW.qxp_ r final_ DSI Cove

Page 1

SMEN – BUSINinES business l Bedi S AND arie s are Rahu OFFICER n milit golf courses I th Asia to

REGION

Many Sou ls to bakeries from hote

inues ia WINGSdue to accidentIAFs cont I V.K. Bhat tion BROKEN the ern for etime attri

AVIATION

High peac ter of great conc mat to be a

MAJOR CHAN ARE URGENTLY NEEDED IN THE NATION’S

CE CURITY INTELLIGEN and SE IA APPARATUS BUT of IND NOTHING WILL EVER DEFENCE

DS 4 VOLUME

2 ISSUE

` 250

R 2011 OCTOBE

For more details about the magazine refer to our website: www.mediatransasia.in/defence.html www.defencesecurityindia.com

SAVE UP TO 50% S CHANGE

IN THE

AIR?

Subscribe Now

E OSPAC CUSP OF ING AER RARCH TOR IS ON THE AN OVE TITUTE THAT THE SEC W E TO INS IT IS TIM MMISSION NO SHUKLA CO MAY BE AJAI OLOGY CHANGES I HN TEC CHING FAR REA

ORDER FORM Yes, I would like to subscribe DEFENCE and SECURITY of INDIA for * * :

NATIONAL PRICE 2 Years 1 Year

No. of Issues 12 6

Annual Cover Price (Rs.) 3,000 1,500

US$ 40

INTERNATIONAL PRICE 1 Year

You Pay (Rs.) 1,500 800

Discounts 50% 46%

International price (Inc. Airmail Postage)

Please deliver to the following address: Name :............................................................................................................... Position / Rank :.................................................................. Organization / Unit :....................................................................................................................................................................................... Address:......................................................................................................................................................................................................... City :............................................................. Pin :......................................................... Country :.................................................................. Tel :........................................ Fax :........................................ Mobile :...................................... Email :......................................................... Mode of Payment : Cheque / DD no:................................................................. For Rs./US$............................................. (In favour of “ MTC Publishing Limited” ) Please charge Rs./US$.................. to my : Card Number :.................................................Card Expiry Date :......................Date :..........................

Signature:.......................................

You can also offer subscription opportunities to your friends / colleagues Name :................................................................ Job Title :................................................ Contact Number:................................................. To subscribe sent this form to : MTC Publishing Limited (a subsidiary of Media Transasia Group) 323, Udyog Vihar, Phase-IV, Gurgaon, Haryana 122016, India. Tel: + 91 124 4759 616/617, Fax : +91 124 4759 550 Email: dsisubscriptions@mtil.biz Condition apply* *MTC will take 4-6 weeks to start the subscription. All disputes are subject to competent courts in the jurisdiction of Delhi court only. MTC is not responsible for any postal delay.

IM.qxp:INDO-PAK.qxd 02/12/11 3:44 PM Page 6

INTELLIGENCE

SIMI activists protest against US imperialism, Mumbai

In November 2007, the IM came into the open for the first time when simultaneous bomb blasts targetted lawyers in the court premises of three Uttar Pradesh cities – Varanasi, Faizabad (Ayodhya) and Lucknow. The IM described the attacks as ‘Islamic raids.’

”

Pan-Indian Network Clearly, the IM has an all-India spread. The arrest of IM cadres from different locations demonstrates the geographical spread of a terror network that now spans the length and breadth of India – possibly even extending into neighboring countries. One aspect of the growth of IM in India is its southern link. Recent media reports suggest the recruitment of people from Kerala for undertaking terrorist activities in Kashmir. And it is well known that SIMI has a

very strong base in Kerala. According to SATP, SIMI operates under 12 cover organisations in Kerala. So it is possible that the IM has a base in that State with links to Pakistan and Dubai. Mentioned earlier, Riyaz Bhatkal (aka Ismail Shahbandri), is reportedly the commander of IM’s southern region. According to police sources, Iqbal

AFP

should place it in conflict with Mawdudi’s anti-clericalism, proposes Christine Fair in her seminal work on the SIMI and IM, suggesting that the IM ascribes to a more generic form of Islamism that accommodates these two competing ideologies. There are many plausible reasons for former SIMI members forming the IM. First, could be their personal experiences during the Gujarat riot of 2002. The other reason could be the abundant availability of funds for such activities through an underground network of terror financiers. Young men, especially from Uttar Pradesh, are known tobe tempted by these activities because of the money. Pursuing terror activities does not require high education or even knowledge of the English language, yet the monetary benefit can be tremendous. In fact, most of the arrested IM cadres have been badly versed in English yet fluent in Hindi or Urdu. There is yet another theory about IM. According to one researcher based in the US, the credit of founding the IM goes to Mohammed Sadiq Israr Sheikh of Azamgarh. A former SIMI member and an electronics engineer by profession, Sheikh has been identified as the co-founder and leader of the IM. Sheikh is alleged to have contacts with the LeT in Pakistan through his brother-in-law, Mujahid Salim. The anti-terrorism squad of the Maharashtra police has been interrogating Sheikh for his role in the July 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai. Sheikh has described how the group planted seven pressure cookers filled with explosives on the train before getting off well before the blasts took place. Sheikh’s confession also indicates the IM’s hand in the March 2006 attack on the Sankat Mochan Temple in Varanasi.

DECEMBER 2011

DSI

Bhatkal, Riyaz’s brother, holds a senior position in the IM hierarchy. Riyaz Bhatkal was previously involved in organised crime in Mumbai when he was part of the infamous Fazlu Rehman gang. Interrogation of arrested IM members has revealed that Bhatkal was a key LeT operative located in south India who had planned the Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and New Delhi serial blasts. Abdul Subhan Qureshi, still on the run, is reportedly the IM’s second-in-command for the southern region. Though IM recruits tend to be lower and middle-class Muslims who are disaffected by Hindu nationalism, as well as those offended by Western values and polytheism, IM also claims leaders and cadres from this professional backgrounds, especially from the IT sector. SIMI and the IM have long-standing ties to global Islamist organisations, including LeT and HuJI and the mafia, as well as Pakistani intelligence agencies and other criminal and militant organisations beyond India. A greater connection, given the origins of the IM as the Islamic Security Force-IM in Assam, is the active links that it has with insurgent groups in the Northeast and it might even have training camps there. Consider the fact that when the US Government designated the IM as a foreign terrorist organisation in September 2011 it was described as: the “Indian Mujahedeen, also known as the Indian Mujahidin, also known as Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahideen (ISF-IM).” If the argument holds that IM is the militant wing of SIMI, as the latter is a banned organisation, the question is what stops SIMI from carrying out terrorist activities it wants to? Evidence does suggest that the ISF-IM is a creation of the Pakistan-ISI created jihadi network and somewhere along the way, SIMI was tagged along to make it look more ‘domestic.’ So what of the future? Terrorist bomb blasts in shopping malls, courts, markets or some other places? A mail allegedly sent by the IM soon after the Delhi High Court blast claiming that it would target shopping malls next was perhaps a red herring. But for security forces nothing can be ruled out. Clearly, Indian intelligence agencies have to prepare themselves for a new level of alert as far as new non-State actors are concerned. It will involve some element of risk-taking and some focussed tasking.

216X276.indd 1

9/21/11 5:16:23 PM

Defence.qxd:DSI Defence Talk-May09.qxd 02/12/11 3:45 PM Page 2

DEFENCE BUZZ

DSI

Chief of Air Staff Norman Anil Kumar Browne inspects a guard of honour during Air Force Day parade, Ghaziabad

a n

u p d a t e

o n

d e f e n c e

AFP

c o m m e r c i a l

n e w s

defencebuzz

RAHUL BEDI

DECEMBER 2011

Modernising the Force The Indian Air Force (IAF) has embarked on an ambitious procurement drive, estimated at over a staggering USD 50 billion over the next 15 years, to become a strategic force capable of extended, outof-area operations to protect national interests. Outlining the force’s imminent modernisation, dependent entirely on imports, Air Chief Marshal (ACM) Norman Anil K. Browne recently said this expansion included acquiring 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), likely to increase to 220, and around 214 Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), expected to go up to around 250 or even 300 and 22 attack and 15 Heavy Lift helicopters. The IAF wants MMRCA inductions to begin by 2015-16 and the FGFA, developed jointly by Russia and India, a year or so later. Both fighter types will augment the IAF’s depleting fighter squadrons down to around 31 from 39.5 a decade ago as its Soviet and Russian platforms have reached collective obsolescence and need replacing. ACM Browne has said that he wants the IAF to permanently maintain a holding force of 34 front-line fighter squadrons to meet emerging challenges in the neighbourhood, a euphemism for nuclear rivals Pakistan and China. Additionally, the IAF is acquiring 75 Pilatus PC-7s, selected from amongst seven competing models in ‘fly away’ condition, and licence-build an additional 106 in a deal estimated at over USD 1 billion, 20 more BAE Systems’ Hawk Mk.

132 jet trainers for its Surya Kiran Aerobatics Team, six additional C-130Js specially configured for use by India’s Special Forces and ten Boeing C-17 Globemaster III Heavy Lift Transport Aircraft for USD 4.1 billion. Consequently, by 2016, the IAF will operate 106 Hawk 132s: Twenty-four of them were procured in ‘fly away’ condition seven years ago and the remaining are to be built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bengaluru. The PC-7s, on the other hand, will replace the fleet of 180-200 locally-constructed Hindustan Piston Trainer (HPT)-32 initial trainers inducted into IAF service in the mid-1980s and grounded in July 2009 following a series of fatal accidents in which 23 pilots died. As of late September, the IAF has begun taking delivery of the first lot of 80 Russian Mi-17V-5 weaponised helicopters acquired in December 2008 for USD 1.345 billion that will be completed by 2013-14. Alongside, advanced negotiations are on to acquire an additional 59 Mi17V-5s that, like the ones previously handed over, will have a 6km operational ceiling for deployment on special heli-borne operations, transportation of troops and materiel, search and rescue missions, casualty evacuation and possibly even anti-insurgent operations. Replacing obsolete air defence capability and high-altitude radar and upgrading long, disused advanced landing grounds along the inhospitable Chinese frontier to enable the IAF to deploy

216X276.indd 1

02/12/11 4:49 PM

Defence.qxd:DSI Defence Talk-May09.qxd 02/12/11 3:45 PM Page 4

DEFENCE BUZZ

DECEMBER 2011

Su-30MKI fighters, C-130Js and C-17 transporters in response to a steady military buildup by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Tibet also include the IAF’s modernisation plans.

DSI

Eurofighter Typhoon

By the time this column appears the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will be closer to deciding which of the two Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) – Eurofighter’s Typhoon or Dassault’s Rafale – it will procure in support of the Indian Air Force’s requirement for 126 fighters. The rival bids by the two European vendors were opened at the MoD headquarters in South Block on November 4, in the presence of their representatives by the Contract Negotiation Committee (CNC): considering the complexity of the procurement the winner will only be announced early next year, the MoD has said. Though the MoD has declined to elaborate on the bid amounts, official sources have indicated that the price difference between the two fighters was ‘competitive’. They have also hinted that ‘political and strategic calculations’ can influence the eventual choice, an assessment borne out by the flurry of high profile visits by senior European and French diplomats, politicians and military personnel. Industry sources also point out that the estimated USD 11 billion deal for 126 MMRCA can double to around USD 20 billion taking into account mounting inflation, decline in the value of the Indian rupee and ‘benchmarking’ the respective fighters' cost by the MoD against their global market sale price. The MMRCA numbers too can rise to 200 or even 220 fighters, appreciably pushing up the eventual contract value. The CNC, comprising senior MoD officials and the financial adviser to the IAF, will evaluate the MMRCA bids on their life-cycle cost based on 40 years or 6,000 hours of squadron service before the lowest bidder, designated L1, is selected. It will also appraise the bid documentation running into thousands of pages to determine the basic cost of the platform, on-board weaponry, transfer of technology for local licensed manufacture, warranty and offset proposals – mandated at 50 percent of the eventual contract

AFP

Let the Bidding Begin

value, up from the usual 30 percent in all materiel purchases over ` 300 crore. Technician and pilot training, establishing Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s (HAL) manufacturing facilities at Bengaluru, spares and initial operating costs will also be taken into consideration whilst determining the winning fighter model. The MoD has shortlisted the Rafale and Typhoon in April from six vendors following trials by the IAF that evaluated all aircraft on 643 technical aspects in desert, coastal and high-altitude conditions across the country. Assorted weaponry and other advanced systems have been evaluated in the respective vendors' countries and the trials were completed in a record 12 months. Prompted largely by the IAF, the MoD has managed to fast forward procedures in selecting the MMRCA in a record four years after the tender was issued in August 2007 some six years after the ministry issued the Request for Information (RfI) for the fighters. It is worth recalling that it took the MoD nearly two decades of negotiation to acquire 66 Hawk 132 trainers for the IAF in 2004 but the IAF, eager to begin MMRCA inductions by 2015-16 to keep pace with fleet modernisation by Pakistan and China, is optimistic over the outcome. Eighteen MMRCA are to be delivered in ‘fly away’ condition within 36 months of the deal being signed and the remaining 108 built by HAL through major technology transfers.

A New Low Clearly, indigenously developed Indian Air Force (IAF) platforms are not doing well. The long-postponed Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme is suffering from yet another setback with its initial operational clearance (IOC), granted provisionally in January 2011, being postponed to late 2012. “There was a primary IOC for the LCA in January 2011 and we were supposed to get the final IOC 12 months later. As we see, there is a delay of almost a year,” Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne admitted ahead of the Indian Air Force’s 79th anniversary in October, but declined to elaborate. The delayed IOC will, in turn, reschedule the LCA’s final operational clearance expected earlier by 2012 after which two squadrons of 40 aircraft were to be inducted at the IAF’s Sulur base in Tamil Nadu. Delays in securing Tejas’ IOC has further meant that the LCA’s induction will only begin around 2014 – three decades after the LCA programme was launched –and be completed two-three years later provided, no further hitches occurred. Overall, the IAF plans on raising seven LCA squadrons or 140 aircraft. Official sources say that the IOC postponement has been due to the ‘haste’ exhibited by the state-run Aeronautical Developmental Agency (ADA) in Bengaluru responsible for developing the LCA in ‘managing’ the primary IOC in January 2011 ostensibly to blunt mounting criticism over delays. Of the 3,000 ‘test points’ or operational and

Defence.qxd:DSI Defence Talk-May09.qxd 02/12/11 3:46 PM Page 6

DEFENCE BUZZ

DECEMBER 2011

AFP

Air Force personnel work on LCA Tejas at Yelhanka Air Force station, Bengaluru

50 percent of the LCA’s components – other than its power pack – like the Israeli EL/M2025 mutli-mode radar, range of weaponry and avionics systems even as the MoD repeats the mantra of self-sufficiency in developing indigenous military equipment.

Calling the Big Guns The constantly postponed modernisation of the Indian Army’s artillery assets has once again triggered the proposal to locally build Field Howitzer FH77/B 155mm/39 calibre towed howitzers. The Army acquired 410 of this artillery in 1987 accompanied by the technology to locally build them, but never did. The State-run Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), to which Sweden’s AB Bofors, later SWS Defense AB Bofors, transferred the

FH77/B blueprints and other technical details never undertook their manufacture as the howitzer deal was mired in a corruption scandal allegedly involving senior politicians, military and defence officials. The Bofors corruption case, which led to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress Party administration being voted out of office in 1989, still awaits legal closure even though many of the accused in the case had died. Plagued by repeated setbacks over the past decade in acquiring new howitzers, an anxious Army has recently approached the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with a proposal to get the OFB to begin constructing the FH77/B howitzers at its Vehicles Factory unit in Jabalpur. It wants the OFB to build six prototypes – two FH77/B 155mm/39 cal guns, two similar models but with upgraded on-board computers and two upgraded 155mm/45 cal howitzers within 24 months. The OFB, on its part, maintains that its Jabalpur unit is capable of making the FH77/Bs having earlier built 105mm field guns and more recently, in collaboration with Soltam of Israel, has upgraded 180 Soviet-era M-46 130mm guns to 155mm/39 cal. But industry and military sources have cautioned that the FH77/B proposal could well be ‘jeopardised’ by ‘the prevailing political sensitivity’ over the lingering Bofors issue as well as by the ongoing arbitration over India’s unpaid dues to the artillery manufacturer. Earlier attempts in 2009 to upgrade the FH77/Bs to 155mm/45 calibre were abandoned primarily due to the ‘over ambitious’ qualitative requirements (QRs) drawn up by

Soldiers climb up a mountain in Kargil to proceed towards the Line of Control

AFP

technical parametres which the LCA was required to fulfill for the IOC, like its weaponisation, radar functioning and agility, only around 1,200 have so far been accomplished. The remaining ones are still being worked on. A special technical committee too was constituted to make recommendations towards reducing the LCA’s excess weight which was limiting its maneuverability and weapons load, something that remains largely unresolved with little scope for modification. Experts, however, caution that the LCA’s weight issue will impact adversely on the LCA when its General Electric F404-GE-IN20 after-burner engine is replaced with the heavier General Electric GE F414 power pack after the first 40 fighters are series produced by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. The IAF has opted for the General Electric GE F414 power pack with a 90-100 kilonewton (KN) thrust compared to the 8085 KN thrust provided by the GE F404-IN20 engine that has compromised Tejas’ weapons load and angle of attack. The follow-on 100-105 LCA Mk-IIs, including twin-seat trainer models and naval variants for carrier-based operations, after the first 40 for the IAF will be powered by the GE F414 engine-selected over rival Eurojet’s EJ200 power pack. But its fitment will require re-engineering and that can lead to to more delays. IAF officers are also concerned over the high import dependency of around

DSI

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION

2012

LAND DEFENCE & SECURITY The most comprehensive answer An opportunity to meet all actors of the Security-Defence Continuum

Under the patronage of

11 - 15 JUNE 2012 / PARIS www.eurosatory.com

Presided over by

Defence.qxd:DSI Defence Talk-May09.qxd 02/12/11 3:46 PM Page 8

DEFENCE BUZZ (PLA) is improving its logistics capability to amass military assets across the disputed Line of Actual Control in the autonomous Tibetan region. So critical is the Army’s artillery profile that in 2009 it even considered acquiring additional Soviet-designed 130mm M-46 field guns, developed in the 1950s, from surplus stocks lying with the former Soviet Republics to augment its severely depleted fire power. India was the largest export customer for the M-46 guns with an estimated 800 purchased late-1960 onwards and successfully employed in the 1971 war with Pakistan. Artillery officers say that under the ‘most optimistic scenario’ it will take between six and nine years to begin executing the Army’s artillery requirement till which time it will remain largely dependent on the FH77/B Bofors guns, many of which had been cannibalised to keep the rest operational.

DSI

Comparative trials were conducted late last year in the respective countries by an Indian Army team led by a twostar officer and additional orders were anticipated to augment India’s antiinsurgency operations led not only by the Army but also the Paramilitaries. Sig Sauer, however, under a special dispensation, carried out firing trials at the Infantry School in Mhow in April. Alongside, the purchase of 1,200-1,300 9mm submachine guns (SMG) for select Ghatak infantry commando platoons and 1.3 million rounds of ammunition initiated two years ago also under FTP procedures, too awaits closure. Switzerland’s Brugger & Thomet, IWI and Germany’s Heklar and Koch are vying for the contract, estimated at around `20 crore; trials for this fire power were conducted months ago in all three countries. The MoD also recently initiated emergency measures to import some 66,000

Sniper rifle 7.62 mm being checked at Defence Expo, New Delhi

Coming Up Short The Ministry of Defence and the Army are beset by inordinate delays in procuring varied materiel like sniper rifles, 9mm submachine guns and 125mm ordnance for T-72M1 Main Battle Tanks via the special Fast Track Procurement (FTP) route. The deadline under the FTP to finalise the import of 900-1,000 sniper rifles for the Special Forces (SF) ended last December with Finland’s bolt-action SAKO TRG22/24, Israel Weapon Industries (IWIs) semi-automatic Galil 7.62x54mm sniper model and Sig Sauer of USA’s SSG 3000 bolt-action, magazine-fed rifle, vying for the USD 10-12 million contract.

AFP

the artillery directorate for the retrofit. The howitzer upgrade which by raising its calibre will enhance range will also include replacing the gun barrel, breech block, strengtheni the under carriage and fit it with a modern sighting system allowing it to fire heavier ordnance to register greater damage at extended distances. The Army has doggedly declined to either revise or modify the QRs even though many in the artillery directorate conceded that they are unrealistic. A similar RfP in 2006 that required competing vendors like BAE Systems that now owns Bofors AB – the FH77/B howitzers’ original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – private defence contractors Tatas of Mumbai and the OFB to develop an upgraded prototype howitzer within a year, lapsed unfulfilled. BAE Systems, despite being the OEM, reportedly politely declined to respond to the Army’s ‘QR overreach.” And though Tatas, despite its lack of technical expertise in building howitzers, was the only one to respond to the tender, declaring that it planned on executing the upgrade by collaborating with the OFB nothing came of the project and it was abandoned. Under its interminably delayed Field Artillery Rationalisation Plan, the Army proposes to configure its artillery profile around a mix of some 3,600 howitzers for its 220 artillery regiments estimated at between USD 10-12 billion. The majority of these will be 155mm/52 cal howitzers in addition to the upgraded FH77/B 155mm/45 cal guns and 180 130mm Russian M-46 field guns retrofitted to 155mm/39 cal. But repeated inconclusive trials since 2001 by competing howitzer vendors and issuing, cancelling and re-issuing of tenders by the MoD has seriously imperiled all artillery procurements Even the acquisition of 145 BAE Systems M777 155mm/39 calibre howitzers with SELEX Laser Inertial Pointing Systems for around USD 647 million via the US’ Foreign Military Sales programme that was cleared by the MoD last year has run into domestic legal problems further postponing their procurement. The M777s are to arm two new Mountain Divisions presently under raising for deployment along India’s disputed Northeast frontier with China. Their delayed procurement will adversely impact operational effectiveness in the region at a time when the People’s Liberation Army

DECEMBER 2011

125 mm armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds from Russia for its T-72M1 Main Battle Tanks on grounds of ‘operational necessity’. This followed the recent intimation by the Army that its war wastage reserves of 125mm rounds for its T-72M1s that form the backbone of its 60-odd armour regiments had fallen below ‘critical levels’. MoD sources have said the emergency procurement, reportedly at ‘inflated prices,’ also obliged it to waive the offset obligation of 30 percent mandated for all Indian military purchases over `300 crore in violation of successive editions of the Defence Procurement Procedures.

1181DefenceSi276x216raptorJan.indd 1

11/16/11 4:45 PM

216X276.indd 1

02/12/11 4:47 PM