China remains an enigma and it is extremely difficult to predict its behaviour. The recently concluded G-20 summit was not attended by the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the overall attitude remains hostile to India. The bilateral between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi Jinping on 23 August 2023 at Johannesburg was a meeting where India’s concern on the unresolved issues along the Line of Actual (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh, underlining that maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas was essential for normalisation of India China ties. The Chinese President stressed that improving China India relations serves the common interests of the two countries and peoples. It is also conducive to peace, stability and development of the world and the region. He opined that the two sides should bear in mind the overall interests of their bilateral relations and handle properly the boundary question so as to jointly safeguard peace and tranquility in the border areas. These were friendly statements, unfortunately nothing of it has percolated to the lower level.
It is in this context that we have to go back to 01 August 2023 when Xi Jinping at the 96th Anniversary of the PLA told China’s Armed Forces to speed up modernisation. In no uncertain terms, Xi said the military must broaden its combat capability to undertake diversified military tasks. Though China’s White Papers always state their attitude of being peaceful and defensive, the intents appear to be deceptive. About 10 years ago a Hong Kong based daily Wen Wei Po had stated about the ‘Six Wars’ which China would have to fight in the next 50 years to achieve its goal. These are as elucidated as:-
The current internal situation in China is grim. There is political uncertainty, economic problems and climatic challenges which create a situation similar to 1962 when Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ had failed. History teaches when a great power has internal problems, it turns to external conflicts. Keeping this aspect under consideration, to a great extent these timelines make sense and it is definitely a wake-up Call to the entire Indo-Pacific region to modernise with speed and military precision. As far as India is concerned, we have 15 years to modernise our Armed Forces to counter China’s offensive designs.
The Indian Armed Forces have often been described as a first-rate military that needs modernisation. The process of modernisation started after the Kargil conflict in 1999. It has been continuing through a deliberate procurement process initiated by the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DPP). India remained the world’s largest importer of arms for the five-year period between 2018-22 even though according to the Swedish think tank the Stockholm international Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), its arms imports dropped by 11 percent between 2013-17and 2018-22. Russia was the largest supplier of arms to India during both 2013-2017 and 2018-2022, but its share of total arms fell from 64 percent to 45 percent while France emerged as the second largest supplier. Over the last four to five years, India has implemented a variety of steps to increase defence self-reliance.
It is now 21 years since the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) was promulgated to enhance self-reliance in defence manufacturing. The current step was the introduction of Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020. With the aim of making India a global defence manufacturing hub, the DAP was released by the Raksha Mantri on 28 September 2020. In comparison to the preceding DPP of 2016, the DAP 2020 lays down the procedure for improving the indigenous content of defence products. Further, the next aspect pertains to the Long Term Integrated Perspective Planning (LTIPP) which has been renamed as Integrated Capability Defence Plan (ICDP) which would cover a period of 10 years instead of 15 years. In addition, the Offset Policy was modified to ensure that transfer of technology and trials are rationalised to physical evaluation of the core operational parameters.
In order to develop India into global manufacturing hub, provisions have been incorporated to a new Category of ‘Buy (Global - Manufactured in India)’ option to encourage companies from abroad to set up manufacturing through subsidiaries in India. To promote India’s cause and make it Atmanirbhar, categories like ‘Buy (Indian, Indigenously Developed and Manufactured-IDDM) would be open only for Indian vendors with not more than 49 percent Foreign Direct Investment.
To promote indigenous defence production, the Ministry of Defence is notifying, from time to time, lists of equipment under import ban. Steps have been taken to promote manufacture of parts in India by establishment of co-production facilities through Inter Government Agreements. There have been four lists announced so far. The first was in December 2021, the second in March 2022, the third one in August 2022 and the latest one in May 2023. The first three lists comprise 1238 items and the latest list contains 928 items. The lists include line-replacement units, sub-systems and spares. Public Sector Units will undertake indigenisation through different routes under the ‘Make Category’ and in-house developments.
In addition to the DAP 2020, there are three other initiatives on improving domestic defence production. First is the ‘Innovations for Defence Excellence (IDEX)’. Taking the IDEX initiative further, a ‘Defence India Startup Challenge’ has been launched by the Defence Ministry in partnership with ‘Atal Innovation Mission’ which is aimed at supporting Startups and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSEME) in creating prototypes. This initiative is being scaled up to engage with 300 more Startups and develop 60 new protypes by 2025. Then there is the ‘Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy (DPEPP 2020)’ to enhance defence production and improve defence exports to Rs 35,000 crore by 2025. The third one is the ‘Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti’, launched in the year 2018 by the Ministry of Defence with the objective of creating Intellectual Properties (IP) in the defence production eco-system, that would lead to higher number of patents registered by the Public Sector Units.
While by the push given by the Government, all out efforts are being made to modernise our Armed Forces, it is important to look holistically at the success achieved so far. Details are as under; items listed are a mix bag of foreign and indigenous equipment:-
The obvious observation is that we are on our way forward. Yet, a lot needs to be done. It is pertinent to note that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) issued its findings in a report in June 2023. As per the report, China leads in 19 of 23 key categories including some that play major roles in its push for military prominence in the Indo–Pacific and beyond. China has a commanding lead in many of the military capabilities over the US - in hypersonics, electronic warfare and key undersea capabilities. The leads are so emphatic that they pose a significant risk of China dominating the future technological break throughs in these areas. In the field of hypersonics, China claims more than 73 percent of all high impact research on hypersonics. There are also the areas where US has an edge. These are the Autonomous Systems, Quantum Computing, certain areas of Artificial Intelligence and protective Cyber Security. However, there are also the conflicting reports which put China ahead of the US in many more areas.
Under the present circumstances, we are doing our best with regards to defence technology, but we still remain at the ‘catch-up’ stage. We have not yet moved into the ‘innovative stage’ into which China has confidently entered. We can prevent China from its offensive affliction only by developing own military capabilities and so improve our deterrence, both by denial and punishment. That would be possible only through accelerated military modernisation.
Possible method to undertake such accelerated modernisation is possible by undertaking certain measures as enumerated below:-
The obvious issue that strikes is that do we have examples we can follow or improve upon? There are a few as elucidated below:-
As would be observed, all these projects are collaboratively driven by the private sector. Similarly, if aircraft manufacturer HAL shares its orders for fighter jets and helicopters with the Tatas or other private players, these would be better and timely met. In the field of ship-building, the L&T has collaborated in construction of submarines and other war ships.
Two other aspects of extreme importance are the Cyber and Artificial Intelligence. There are many private players who are experts in these fields and would be able to meet our requirements with speed and alacrity. Right now, our focus is on Cyber Defence and to attain effective deterrence we need to employ people from the private sector.
The Ministry of Defence needs to get the DMA to constitute a Task Force to undertake these tasks. It is recommended that it could be headed by a two-star flag officer with representatives from the three Services and the DRDO. These representatives could be termed the ‘Sherpas’ of procurement. They representatives must have direct access to the CDS, Defence Secretary and Raksha Mantri. That might clear all hurdles to work in a seamless manner with the Services, DRDO, PSUs and the private sector. That would also be able to innovate and accelerate our defence procurements. The details can be worked out at the DMA.
The Chinese threat is a wake-up call for the nation to modernise its Armed Forces at the earliest. Modernisation being a complex process, it needs innovative processes to accelerate. The methods suggested should enable us to speed up our system.
(The paper is the author’s individual scholastic articulation. The author certifies that the article/paper is original in content, unpublished and it has not been submitted for publication/web upload elsewhere, and that the facts and figures quoted are duly referenced, as needed, and are believed to be correct). (The paper does not necessarily represent the organisational stance... More >>
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