Defensive at Defence

The same is true of those who support them in the Department of Defense, where also flexibilities are needed to respond to the continuing changes in the security environment. Rumsfeld’s bottomline is that, today, the US does not have that kind of agility and that, ultimately, transformation of military capabilities would depend on transformation in the way the Defense Department operates.

Reading these thoughts, one would imagine that these flow from introspections arising out of a string of failures or lost battles or even half-won victories.

But the fact is that they come on the heels of a series of military successes which have added immensely to America’s capabilities and prowess — from the 1991 Gulf War, to Kosovo, to Afghanistan and now, Iraq. All these have, progressively and incrementally, established the unchallenged, overwhelming and awesome superiority of the US military in the modern world. And yet, Rumsfeld says that this is not good enough and that there is need for transformation.

On a different plane stands India. Here, change is the last thing that one needs. We are happy parroting inanities like ‘‘We won at Kargil, did we not?’’, or ‘‘How about that victory in 1971 or even in 1965?’’. The argument is that things have worked well so what is the need to tinker with a system that has ‘‘performed’’.

It is a different matter that September 8, 1965, is celebrated as a day of military achievement in Pakistan and not in India. In 1971, we did exploit the conditions in then East Pakistan to achieve significant political and military goals, but the history of that conflict, which we are still unable to publish officially, reveals numerous instances of lack of coordination and other military inadequacies. Our 1987-90 IPKF experience highlighted several deficiencies in the higher management of joint and unified operations but the studies and lessons highlighted remain unimplemented.

Now, we have a documented report on the failures in Kargil. There were, no doubt, inadequacies in intelligence but, even more so, those in collation, analyses, dissemination, coordination and response, all responsibilities resting with the higher direction of war.

The report also highlighted weaknesses in political direction and interfaces between the Ministry of Defence and armed forces. Faced with these serious criticisms, the Government did well to constitute a Group of Ministers (GOM) under the Home Minister to report upon the entire spectrum of national security including higher management of defence. It is to the credit of the GOM that it finished its work in less than eight months and made several far-reaching recommendations for change.

In its report, the GOM highlighted several shortcomings in almost every area of the functioning of the Ministry of Defence. To begin with, there was no political guidance on goals and objectives to be achieved through defence preparation.

There was no identification of financial resources, with the targets sought to be achieved. There was a noticeable lack of synergy between several agencies of the Ministry of Defence and, indeed, between the Ministry and the armed forces headquarters. There was general lack of responsibility or accountability resulting from this loose and unsynergised arrangement. Even in the military, the Chiefs of Staff Committee was unable to perform meaningfully in formulating joint and integrated plans and doctrines, and the military advice coming to the political authority was varied.

Looking at this report anyway, one would expect that far-reaching and comprehensive changes were called for and would be made. On the contrary, two years down the line, our ‘reforms’ seem to have run aground and all but disappeared from view.

Our progress, or the lack of it, in transforming defence would be laughable were it not such a serious matter. A Defence Acquisition Council was created under the chairmanship of the Defence Minister himself, supported by a quite comprehensive and dedicated Procurement Board under an officer of Secretary rank.

One is told that ‘fast track’ procedures have been put in place to process urgent schemes. Yet, we manage to surrender Rs 9,000 crore provided for modernisation in the year just ended, following another Rs 6,000 crore surrendered last year and Rs 3,000 crore the year before. If this is change, then we are better off disbanding these institutions and these methods.

There is no visible move to restructure the DRDO and defence-production interfaces. The former is unwilling to concentrate on core and critical technologies, shedding its more production-related research and development competencies to the production agencies. The result is that the DRDO is more involved in production than it should be while the producers are woefully short of research inputs which would help them upgrade their products continuously.

In the armed forces, an integrated staff has been put together comprising dozens of senior officers, but this exercise has not produced results commensurate with the investment since the political will to appoint its head, a Chief of Defence Staff, has not been found.

In the Ministry of Defence there is both apathy and smugness. This is sad because the GOM report, the first of its kind in fifty years, had set out a roadmap which, for all practical purposes, is now nearly dead.

So, on one plane, we have the USA where a constant and continuing reflection on what is not right is underway and changes are sought to be made. On the other side is India, where there is a constant and continuing fascination with the ‘status quo’ and with the misplaced perception that all is well.

This is the story of transforming defence, the Indian way. The time has come for renewed and ruthless intervention by the political leadership which is exactly what Rumsfeld is providing in the USA. Civil or military bureaucracies, left to themselves, will always be the biggest obstacles to transforming defence.

(The author served as member of the Task Force on Higher Defence Management constituted by the GOM)