Bangalore. Indian Defence Minister A K Antony, a stickler to rules, while addressing a seminar held in Bangalore in February 2009 as part of the Aero India 2009 expo, had expressed his unhappiness over the painfully slow pace of the development of indigenous technologies for developing hardware and fighting machines required by the Indian defence forces.

In a forthright assessment of the state of defence research and development in India, he pointed out that it was really sad that a country with the fourth largest pool of scientific manpower in the world continued to depend on imports to meet 70 per cent of its defence requirements. Even after six decades of independence, India could barely produce 30 per cent of its requirements indigenously.

“The country is far, far away from Nehru’s dream of achieving self reliance in the defence sector.”

Without mincing words, he told the delegates: This is not suitable for us. I feel sorry and guilty that the growth in defence self reliance is very slow in spite of our capacity to develop, test and make aircraft.”

Mr Antony was however appreciative of the achievements of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) but asked the state-owned Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to step up efforts aimed at turning India self reliant in meeting the needs of the defence forces.

In recent years, India has emerged as a lucrative market for global defence and aerospace vendors for the simple reason that most of the equipment with the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force is of Soviet origin, outdated, and needs replacement. Tanks, Artillery Guns, Anti-aircraft Guns, Ships, Submarines, Aircraft, their sensors, radars and weapons, India needs them all, particularly as India’s own indigenous programmes like that of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) are delayed.

Against this backdrop, defence analysts in India have expressed surprise as to why India, which has already made spectacular advances in space exploration as exemplified by the successful launch and operationalisation of Chandrayaan-1 mission to moon, has failed to repeat the space success story in its defence sector.

In fact, the Indian space programme, which took off in 1963, has succeeded in developing cutting edge technologies for engineering a variety of satellites and launch vehicles without “outside assistance” and is now working towards realizing India’s first manned flight slated for 2015 along with proposals for planetary missions.

But then, as pointed out by Mr M Natarajan, Scientific Adviser to the Indian Defence Minister and DRDO chief, his organization alone cannot be held responsible for what has gone wrong with defence research and development.

For as defence analysts have pointed out, DRDO is subject to pulls and pressures from a variety of sources including the Indian defence establishment and the fact that sometimes, it even has to manufacture nuts and bolts due to their unavailability from either open sources or specific reasons.

There has also been a glaring lack of coordination and cooperation between DRDO and the end users. DRDO blames them sometimes for revising the requirements while the latter say that once a project is late, the requirements in contemporary terms also change and DRDO has to develop not only the new, but newer generation systems.

For instance, DRDO has opposed the changes for higher thrust in LCA engines but the Indian Air Force (IAF) says that there is no choice but to bring in better current and futuristic technologies.

Worldwide, most systems are now capable of periodic technology insertions.

The Bangalore-based Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) has introduced the Mark II version of the LCA for instance, which would be in position to accommodate a power plant of higher thrust rate.

The question is: Should the buyer organizations accept a product even if it is delivered much later than the stipulated time, or ask for contemporary upgrades?

The question is relevant as Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Controller of Research and Development (R&D) at DRDO has stated that over the next five years, the thrust of the Indian defence would be on scaling up the indigenous content of country’s military arsenal to bring down India’s dependence on the import of critical components.

India’s Arjun MBT, designed by the Combat Vehicle Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) and produced by the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) at Avadi near Chennai, also reflects the poor coordination and cooperation between the producer and the user. It has been marred by inordinate delay.

Though it was announced that the prototype of the tank was ready for field trials in the first half of 1980s, the tank was publicly unveiled for the first time in 1995. In that year, the Ministry of Defence also disclosed its intention to export it to friendly countries by displaying it at the International Defence Exhibition, IDEX’95.

Due to the persistent delay, the Indian Army signed a contract for 310 T-90 tanks in 2001 with Russia and followed it up with another order for 347 tanks in 2008.

Meanwhile, HVF has delivered 45 of the 124 Arjun MBTSs so far ordered by the Army. The DRDO though is asking the government to tell the Army for 500 Arjuns so as to stabilize its production line, and develop its futuristic version with augmented features.

It may be noted that the DRDO chief, Mr Natarajan, himself was the project director for Arjun in the mid-90s.

Some experts say that the Arjun is in no way inferior to the T-90, and allege that the Indian Army is simply fascinated with the Russian MBTs. Each tank would be an improvement upon its predecessor, and DRDO should be given an appropriate chance.

Like many other Indo-Russian defence deals, the contract for the supply of 310 T-90 tanks had its fair share of controversy. To begin with, as part of the technology transfer agreement, Russia had failed to provide critical technologies and vital components for the production of the tank in India. On the top of this, the fire control system of T-90 had failed to perform as per specifications during the field trails in the sandy stretches of Rajasthan.

What was the most galling part of the whole exercise was that the air conditioning system supplied by Russia could not prevent the fainting of the tank driver, thanks to the high temperature in Indian deserts. Later of course, appropriate improvements have been made and new anti-tank missiles also fitted under Transfer of Technology (ToT).

It is planned to subject T-90 and Arjun to comparative field trials sometime in August this year. The outcome of this field trial will determine the future of Arjun MBT.

Meanwhile, DRDO is working on introducing a host of new technologies to improve the performance of Arjun.

In particular, Arjun will be equipped with a Laser Warning Control System (LWCS) and mobile camouflaging system (MCS). The MCS, being codeveloped by DRDO along with an Indian private sector firm, will help reduce the tank’s signature, and thereby also reduce any threat from hostile fire and smart munitions.

Israel’s Elbit Systems is helping develop this.

CVRDE claims that the firing accuracy of the Arjun is far superior to that of the Russian-made T-90. It has a second generation thermal imager and can comfortably engage targets at a distance of more than 2,500- metres. Its 1,400-hp MTU engine makes for smooth mobility and has the capacity to fire Laser Homing Invar Anti Tank Missile. Arjun also features a gas-based suspension, a high performance “Kanchan” reactive composite armour capable of withstanding hits from tanks and kinetic energy projectiles.

DRDO on its part maintains that the Indian Army’s complaint of Arjun failing crucial trials does not reflect the ground reality and that “the time, effort and money spent on developing indigenous fighting equipment including Arjun should not be squandered away in pursuit of glitzy imported hardware.”

The Army has a simple reply: What we need is for today and tomorrow, to fight potential battles, and any system must match these requirements.