Designs on a secure future

One wonders why HAL did not undertake the design of an AJT (Advanced Jet Trainer) that the IAF has needed badly since 1973 when the Vampire went out of service. Or why HAL has never been tasked to design a transport aircraft although it has been manufacturing three types under licence? HAL, of course, comes under the Department of Defence Production & Supplies, which has a record of the secretaries rarely spending one year in the post making it more a management structure than a policy-making department! The ambitious LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) has been designed by setting up an ad-hoc design bureau, the ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency) under a registered society managed by the DRDO which is part of the Department of R&D in the ministry of defence. The aircraft was to enter service in 1995, but the earliest we could have a nominal force of four squadrons of them in service would be around 2015. Meanwhile, the IAF is forced to number-plate combat squadrons reducing the force level when it should have been building up to cater for future needs. Other major projects of DRDO are in a similar situation. The Arjun Main Battle Tank being developed since 1974, with specifications changing often and under trial since 1988, and “handed over” to the Indian Army a number of times, is now expected to be supplied against the most recent order of 125 tanks during the next three years. In the overall picture, this would be a token induction. Fortunately, naval design and development programmes have done well where the government was able to provide requisite funding. There is obviously a lesson here.

As regards DRDO’s prestige project, the IGMD programme started in 1983, only the short-range liquid-fuelled Prithvi has been operationally inducted after two decades of development. But this was to be expected since we are dealing here with very high-technology complex systems in an environment where technology-denial regimes led by the US have been a major roadblock to any assistance or purchase of even small items. Over-enthusiastic forecasts by DRDO only make the disappointments more depressing. The nuclear deterrent, for it to be sufficiently credible, requires solid-fuel land-based ballistic missiles with a range up to around 5,000-km (although some people would even argue for longer-range missiles) while we are yet to even test a 3,000-km range missile. And it seems that such an Agni-III is running into expected problems. A 5,000-km missile could be another 8-10 years away if the past is any indication. A submarine launched ballistic missile may take another 2-3 decades before becoming a reality.

If we step back and undertake an objective analysis of our design and development record and required capabilities for the future, at least four issues stand out. The first is the urgency to undertake a performance audit of past and present design and development programmes. For example, in 1995, based on the proposal of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the then scientific adviser to the defence minister, the government had approved the scheme of a 10-year “Self Reliance Initiative” which was to ensure that “by 2005 70 per cent of services’ annual acquisition should be made from indigenous development and production as opposed to 30 per cent now.” To provide a boost to these aims, the DRDO closed 618 (out of 989) research projects going on for years which had not reached necessary levels of success. A decade later, where do stand?

Second, we need to concentrate our limited design and development expertise and resources rather than fragment them among different agencies and ministries. Since ADA has been functioning now for fifteen years, it could be designated the central and sole aircraft design and development organisation with the design bureau of HAL focusing on product improvement with help from ADA. Third, concerted effort must be made to outsource R&D to the private sector, especially for components and systems/subsystems well beyond the level achieved so far. US major companies like GE are shifting their R&D infrastructure to India, and there is no reason why our civil R&D cannot be a major support system to defence design and development infrastructure.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the slow absorption of the scientific adviser’s role into the DRDO system has undermined some basic principles of managing R&D. We need to seriously consider restoring the separation of the post and functions of the scientific adviser to the defence minister (with the existing scientific advisers to the service chiefs under him) from the executive post of secretary, DRDO. The scientific adviser then would be in a position to render independent scientific and technological advice on research and development for future defence. This would not only improve policy and decision-making, but also contribute to improving user-DRDO-defence industry confidence.