Media is agog with the reports that India faces severe ammunition shortages and with present holdings can fight a war for only 20 days. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) also busted the myth of the indigenous Tejas fighter by stating that this aircraft was dependent on foreign sources for important components like engine, multi-mode radar, radar dome, flight control system actuators, multi-functional display system and the like.

In a report tabled in Parliament, CAG has stated that the Tejas Mark-I jet is just about 35 per cent indigenous and falling short on as many as 53 technical requirements, greatly reducing its capabilities and survivability in combat. The irony is that despite taking over 30 years, the Tejas fighter aircraft is nowhere near combat ready yet. That its induction, operationalisation and employment in conflict situations will remain dependent on some 65 per cent imported components is obvious. The question is how long will our successive governments put up with a directionless, unaccountable and corrupt governmental defence-industrial complex, Tejas being just one example among scores of them. The façade of stamping a defence product as indigenous despite small indigenous contribution must stop some day.

Take the only information system fielded in the Army; the Artillery Command Control and Communication (ACCS) System which is 95 per cent Elbit of Israel but hyped as indigenous by BEL India by contributing just five per cent of the product. Not that we don’ have the expertise in India. It is always the private sector that is optimised in foreign countries for a dynamic defence sector, but that remains misnomer in India by design; everything by and large is ‘through’ the DRDO-DPSUs-OF.

While this CAG report findings are in media, the previous five years CAG and CGDA audit reports bring out the rampant corruption prevalent in the government defence-industrial complex. Reports reveal the unethical and corrupt practices that have been going on: DRDO has been developing equipment which is either substandard or have extended deadlines and additional budgets; many projects have no government approval; CAG says corruption and nepotism exists in the upper echelons and there is an exodus of qualified scientists; CGDA audit findings raise serious questions about capabilities of DRDO – in several cases bought equipment from other companies ‘after’ spending crores of rupees on R&D. When commercialoff- the-shelf (COTS) equipment is available, DRDO still spends crores of rupees for reinventing the wheel; older, foreign technology is being imported under the guise of joint development. These are but few examples. The military as the user often has to put up with substandard products despite protracted time delays. Many products are not anywhere close to their foreign counterparts. Post the cross-border violations and firing by Pakistan earlier this year and Indian retaliation, media had reported that India did not have enough ammunition to undertake a full-blown war involving intense fighting for even 20 days.

Citing these reports, media now says six months down the line, the situation on the ground has not changed much. But what six months are we talking about? Have we forgotten the leaked letter from General V.K. Singh, then Army Chief (now MoS in the External Affairs) to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2012 of the tremendous ammunition shortages, including tank ammunition? Post the leak of this document, it was assessed that the ammunition and vital weapons and equipment of the Army alone stood at Rs. 1,25,000 crore. It can be safely assumed that only a small of this void would have been completed. Now media quotes government officials stating the Modi Government is ‘fully cognizant’ of the ‘shocking state of affairs’ and ‘urgent steps’ are being taken, it will take time to build up the war wastage reserves (WWR) due to the ‘long-winded’ arms procurement procedures as well as the sluggish performance of the 39 factories under the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).

But here the unanswered questions are why are the arms procurement procedures still long-winded and why is the performance of the OFB sluggish when the government has been in saddle for one year, the OFB is under MoD and joint secretary level officers of DoDP of MoD are on all boards of the DRDO-DPSUs-OF? A recent Reuters report cites Anil Ambani being asked by Prime Minister if he knew India didn’t make tear gas shells. But while Army Air Defence (AAD) continues to have fair share of World War II vintage L 70 guns, we continue to import their ammunition from Belgium to date. The bottomline is that the defence of India cannot be righted without military professionals in higher defence organisations, MoD and the governmental defence-industrial complex, in which respect the government has yet to make any move.