Opinion Ex-Navy Chief Arun Prakash writes: Three years after Galwan, defending against Chinese aggression

Russia’s continued reliability as a supplier of defence equipment and spare parts has been cast in serious doubt by two developments. First, its growing friendship and dependence on Beijing will fetter Moscow’s freedom of action. Second, Russia’s military-industrial complex, burdened by the Ukraine war and hobbled by US sanctions, is no longer in a position to support our armed forces. It’s time India explores alternatives.

Under these circumstances, the Indo-US relationship seems to have blossomed at the right time. A fortnight ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, met in New Delhi, to firm up an ambitious roadmap for defence cooperation on an unprecedented scale.

There is much jubilation at the likelihood of an agreement for licenced-production of the General Electric F414 turbofan aero engine in India. This would be a welcome development for our aerospace industry as well as the military, since the uncertain availability of an aero-engine has been an imponderable, dogging India’s indigenous fighter projects. However, euphoria about the overnight attainment of atmanirbharta needs to be tempered by past experience. The two terms most misused by India’s technologists and misinterpreted by its military and politico-bureaucratic establishments are “indigenisation” and “transfer of technology.” This anomaly is best illustrated by India’s aerospace sector.

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), founded by visionary industrialist Seth Walchand in 1940, is today a giant defence PSU (DPSU). Post-independence, HAL delivered the first licence-built British Gnat fighter in 1962, followed by the Soviet MiG-21 in 1973. Over the years, HAL has produced 175 Gnats, more than 800 MiG-21s, 200 Sukhoi-30s and hundreds of other aircraft of Indian and foreign design.

HAL’s Engine Division, which started by producing the British Orpheus jet-engine (for the Gnat and Marut fighters) in the late-1950s, has, since then, manufactured a few thousand British, French, and Soviet jet-engines, of many types, under licence. These seemed commendable achievements for a nation still struggling with the challenges of industrialisation. We deluded ourselves by proudly believing that we were manufacturing “indigenous” hardware for our fighting forces.

The unfortunate truth was that our DPSUs were engaged merely in the assembly of kits or undertaking “licenced production”, while claiming “indigenous production” and “transfer of technology” (ToT). The DPSUs (and DRDO) failed to seek, from the foreign licensors, transfer of “know-how” as well as “know-why” of aircraft and engine design. Our scientists and engineers, therefore, acquired only “screwdriver technology”, and India’s lack of design expertise became painfully manifest in two instances: DRDO’s developmental GTX/Kaveri jet-engine project, which has languished since 1989, and the modernisation of HAL-built MiG-21s, which had to be outsourced to Russia and Israel in 1996.

India’s failure to seek and acquire technology from foreign manufacturers, even after prolonged production runs, was a missed opportunity, with much of the onus falling on the MoD. While successive defence ministers failed to formulate a long-term vision for the nation’s giant defence-industrial complex, MoD bureaucrats lacked the expertise and commitment to energise lethargic DPSUs and ordnance factories. The “stove-pipe” structure of MoD engendered a lack of synergy between the military leadership and the DRDO.

China, starting in 1949 from an industrial baseline similar to India’s, took a different route and is, today, vying with the USA for global technological leadership. This achievement bears analysis. In the early 1950s, the USSR had undertaken a massive transfer of arms to China, but as ideological fissures emerged and the Soviets threatened to stop aid, the Chinese leadership ordered the appropriation of drawings and technological data relating to Soviet weapons. Once the split actually occurred, in the mid-1960s, the Chinese launched a national mission of reverse-engineering (guochanhua) of Soviet weaponry. Its first phase enabled China to establish serial production of Soviet-origin weaponry — tanks, artillery, submarines and jet fighters. Subsequent cycles of guochanhua have helped China acquire the latest military and dual-use technologies through purchase, coercion and, often, via industrial espionage.

In 1986, Chairman Deng Xiaoping ordered the development of an indigenous aeroengine to replace the Soviet-supplied power plants in use by the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). Since the Russians refused to part with key technologies, China chose the Franco-American CFM-56 turbofan as the core technology template for their WS-10 project. After two decades and a few billion dollars, the performance and reliability of the WS-10 prototype was found wanting. There is an object lesson in the way China persevered with this project, and by 2020, the WS-10 was accepted by the PLAAF for powering its frontline fighters.

With China’s belligerence showing no signs of abating, the prospect of a “path-breaking” defence-industrial partnership with the US is welcome. Our decision-makers and negotiators must, however, take a long-term view, bearing two issues in mind. First, no state or corporation parts willingly with precious technology, and we must be prepared to pay a significant price — financial and/or political. Second, unless resolutely negotiated in the minutest detail, it is easy for foreign companies to fob-off “licenced-production” as ToT.

We must ensure that our technical personnel acquire advanced expertise in arcane disciplines, related to diverse fields so that they become future designers and creators — not mere assemblers of knocked-down kits.

The writer is a retired chief of naval staff