Modernisation Plans Need a Major Boost, by Brig Gurmeet
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Modernisation Plans Need a Major Boost Gurmeet Kanwal New procurements have commenced… but we are still lagging by 15 years. — Defence Minister A K Antony Modernisation Dilemma As an ancient civilisation but a young nation that is still in the process of nation building, India faces many threats and challenges to its external and internal security. The foremost among these are the long-festering dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) with Pakistan and the unresolved territorial and boundary dispute with China. Since its independence from the British on August 15, 1947, India has been forced to fight four wars with Pakistan (1947-48, 1965, 1971 and 1999) and one with China (1962). India’s internal security environment has been vitiated by a ‘proxy war’ through which Pakistan has fuelled an uprising in J&K since 1988-89. Various militant movements in India’s northeastern states and the rising tide of Maoist terrorism in large parts of central India have also contributed to internal instability. India’s regional security is marked by instability in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With personnel strength of approximately 1.1 million soldiers, the Indian Army has made a huge contribution towards keeping the nation together, particularly in facing internal security challenges. It is a first-rate army but has been saddled for long with second-rate weapons and equipment, despite heavy operational commitments on border management and in counter-insurgency Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (Retd) is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi. CLAWS Journal l Winter 2010 25 GURMEET KANWAL The slender operations. The modernisation dilemma that conventional edge the Indian Army faces is that the budgetary that the Indian support available for modernisation is grossly Army enjoys over inadequate. It can undertake substantive the Pakistan Army modernisation only by simultaneously will be eroded effecting large-scale downsizing so as to save further as Pakistan on personnel costs – the largest chunk of the is spending army’s annual budget. However, it would not be considerably large prudent to downsize as the army’s operational sums of money commitments on border management, and on its military internal security duties require large numbers modernisation of manpower-heavy infantry battalions. Hence, and is getting it is a Catch 22 situation! weapons and India’s defence budget is pegged at equipment from approximately 2.0 per cent of the country’s the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Of the total at subsidised rates. defence budget of Rs 1, 47,344 crore for Financial Year 2010-11, the army’s share is Rs 74,582 crore. Of this, Rs 58,995 crore is on account of Revenue Expenditure (pay and allowances, rations, fuel, ammunition, etc) and only Rs 15,587 crore (26.42 percent) is available on the Capital Expenditure account for modernisation schemes. Because extremely limited funds are made available for modernisation and a large portion of these is surrendered year after year due to scams and bureaucratic red tape, the Indian Army has almost completely missed the ongoing revolution in military affairs (RMA). If this state of affairs continues much longer, the quantitative military gap with China will soon become a qualitative gap as well, as China is continuing to modernise its armed forces at a rapid rate. China’s defence budget has been growing at a double-digit rate annually for about a decade. Also, the slender conventional edge that the Indian Army enjoys over the Pakistan Army will be eroded further as Pakistan is spending considerably large sums of money on its military modernisation and is getting weapons and equipment from the United States at subsidised rates – ostensibly for fighting the so-called global war on terror. Given the collusive nuclear, missile and military hardware nexus between China and Pakistan, the then Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) had stated at the Army Training Command’s seminar on army doctrine in December 2009 that the army must prepare to fight a war on two fronts. Unless the budgetary support available 26 Claws Journal l Winter 2010 MODERNISATION PLANS NEED A MAJOR BOOST for modernisation increases substantially over It is time to phase the next decade, this will remain an aspirational the obsolescent doctrine. T-55s out of service as they Chinks in the Armour can no longer be On Army Day 2010, the then COAS had admitted either upgraded that a large number of India’s battle tanks are or modernised. “night blind”. The indigenously designed Arjun main battle tank (MBT) had consistently failed to meet the army’s General Staff Qualitative Requirements (GSQR) for an MBT for almost two decades, but now orders have been placed for 124 tanks to be manufactured to equip two regiments. While Pakistan has acquired 320 T-80 UD tanks and is on course to add the Al Khalid tanks that it has co-developed with China to its armour fleet, vintage T-55 tanks continue in the Indian Army’s inventory despite their obsolescence. Consequently, 310 T-90S MBTs had to be imported from Russia. Since the lack of progress on the Arjun MBT had significantly slowed down the pace of armour modernisation, in the year 2000 India signed a deal with Russia to acquire 310 T-90S tanks and assemble 1,000 in India. In December 2007, a contract was signed for 347 additional T-90S tanks to be assembled in India. The first Indian assembled T-90S (Bhishma) rolled off the production line on January 8, 2004. Meanwhile, a programme has been launched to modernise the T-72 M1 Ajeya MBTs that have been the mainstay of the army’s strike corps and their armoured divisions since the 1980s. The programme seeks to upgrade the night fighting capabilities and fire control system of the tank, among other modifications. Approximately 1,700 T-72 M1s have been manufactured under licence at the Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF), Avadi. The BMP-1 and the BMP-2 infantry combat vehicles (ICVs), which have been the mainstay of the mechanised infantry battalions for long, are now ageing and replacements need to be found soon. The replacement vehicles must be capable of being deployed for internal security (IS) duties and counter-insurgency (CI) operations in addition to their primary role in conventional conflicts. It is time to phase the obsolescent T-55s out of service as they can no longer be either upgraded or modernised. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has commenced the conceptual stage development of the future main battle tank (FMBT) and future infantry combat vehicle (FICV) for the 2020-25 time-frames. The T-90S Russian tanks have provided new teeth to India’s strike formations in the plains and corrected the imbalance CLAWS Journal l Winter 2010 27 GURMEET KANWAL that had resulted from Pakistan’s acquisition of T-80 UD from Ukraine and the Al Khalid tanks jointly designed with China. Hence, armour modernisation is proceeding apace but cannot yet be classified as a success story. Obsolescent Artillery and Air Defence Despite the lessons learnt during the Kargil conflict of 1999, where artillery firepower had undeniably paved the way for victory, modernisation of the artillery continues to lag behind. The last major acquisition of towed gun-howitzers was that of about 400 pieces of 39-calibre 155 mm FH-77B howitzers from Bofors of Sweden in the mid-1980s. New tenders have been floated for 155mm/ 39-calibre light weight howitzers for the mountains and 155mm/52-calibre long-range howitzers for the plains, as well as for self-propelled guns for the desert terrain. As re-trials have not yet commenced, it will take almost five years more for the first of the new guns to enter service. It has been reported recently that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is in the process of acquiring 145 155mm/ 39-calibre M777 howitzers for the mountains through the foreign military sales (FMS) route from the US in a government-to-government deal. The M777 howitzer is undergoing desert trials at the time of writing. The artillery also needs large quantities of precision guided munitions (PGMs) for more accurate targeting in future battles. The present stocking levels of PGMs are rather low. A contract for the acquisition of two regiments of the 12-tube, 300 mm Smerch multi-barrel rocket launcher (MBRL) system with 90 km range was signed with Russia’s Rosoboronexport in early-2006. If this weapon system had been available during the Kargil conflict, Pakistan’s Brigade Headquarters (HQ) and forward airfield at Skardu and other targets deep inside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) could have been hit with impunity. The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile (Mach 2.8 to 3.0), with a precision strike capability, very high kill energy and maximum range of 290 km, was inducted into the army in July 2007. These terrain hugging missiles are virtually immune to counter-measures due to their high speed and very low radar cross-section. A contract worth Rs 5,000 crore has also been signed for the serial production of the Pinaka MBRL weapon system, another DRDO project plagued by time delays and completed with help from Larsen and Toubro and the Tatas. The Pinaka rockets will have an approximate range of 37 km. These three weapon systems together will provide a major boost to the artillery’s ability to destroy key targets at long ranges. It is also time to now consider the induction of unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), armed with air-to-surface missiles, 28 Claws Journal l Winter 2010 MODERNISATION PLANS NEED A MAJOR BOOST into service for air-to-ground precision attacks.