Comprehensive modernisation
An exclusive focus on legacy efforts of military modernisation has done a huge disservice to national security.
When the new defence budget is announced in a few weeks time, we will again witness — to paraphrase Richard Betts — that the sluice gates of military spending have been opened not because it is the appropriate thing to do strategically but because it is something the country can do when something has to be done. Many assume that the modernisation funds of the defence budget are being invested, whenever expended, into fulfilling the nation’s actual security needs. But this might not be entirely true.
Let us look at a few examples from the modernisation programmes of the three defence services. When it comes to the Navy, Rear Admiral (retired) Premvir Das contends that the navy must bring up the numbers of its warships, frigates and submarines by 2020 to 1971 levels. In the Indian Air Force, the debate is all about bringing up the number of fighter squadrons back up to 39.5 by replacing outdated aircrafts. The Army is pushing for its new tanks and artillery modernisation programme to replace the vintage equipment.
Most commentators lament the lack of political will to fulfil these urgent requirements and equate military modernisation with procuring equipment to retain existing capabilities. However they focus on only a part of the problem as there are four distinguishing military modernisation trends: Legacy, Transformational, Adaptive and Ad hoc.
- Legacy efforts carry forward and seek to enhance the pivotal platforms and capabilities of the recent past.
- Transformational efforts seek to achieve dramatic increases in effectiveness or efficiency by employing new technology, techniques and forms of organisation.
- Adaptive efforts correspond to the perceived requirements of new security missions and circumstances.
- Ad hoc efforts respond to unforeseen developments as they unfold – the exigencies of the moment.
Going by the evidence at hand, the debate on military modernisation in India is very sketchily defined and focused only on the Legacy efforts. Notwithstanding the enhanced allocations and outlays for capital expenditure in the defence budget, defence modernisation will always be underdone unless Transformational and Adaptive efforts are also clearly identified and fully integrated via a long-term plan. This modernisation plan will have to be then disciplined in accord with a sustainable, adaptive and cost-effective national security strategy. Given the lack of strategic guidance from the top and institutional effeteness in defence planning, such thought is, and will remain wishful thinking. Alas!
Airforce going back to 39.5 squadrons doesn’t mean it will have the same capability as in 1971. New Airforce aircrafts are way more advanced than what was available in 1971. In fact Sukhoi 30MKI is one of the most advanced fighters in the world. Similarly they have very very potent missiles in form of Brahmos, nag, agni etc. They are going to buy 127 AJTs which will add much more fire power. LCAs(Tejas) is a also going to be added to Airforce’s inventory. It is again a very potent weapon. Do not forget the AWACS and mid flight fueling platforms. These combined will make IAF a major force in the world.
Similarly Navy has been building ships like crazy. They are going to have 3 operational carriers very soon, LCA’s navy variant, an impressive array of missiles, nuclear subs and many more frigates. There are many stealth projects in the Navy’s arsenal we do not know of which make Indian Navy one the most strong navies in the world. Advantage that the navy has is that they are building stuff on their own and hence they are very independent and stealth compared to Army and IAF.
Army on the other hand is a very huge organization. They are also very averse to Indian technology. Be it Arjun, missiles or guns & artilary.They need to be more open in their approach and evolve products of DRDO. Navy is also not afraid of private companies building stuff but Army is not so open about it.
I will give you an example. Navy has these helicopters which work on a russian datalink hardware with opaque protocols. Navy employed bunch of geeks and asked them to reverse engineer that protocol and developed their own comm. platform for these helicopters when Russian firm went bust. Army would have just thrown these helicopters away.
In short, I do not think your analysis is fool-proof when you say they are using all this money to match 1971 levels. Game has changed and quality of hardware is much much more important in this age than quantity.
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