While 'Make in India' may be the administration’s new poster child, defense indigenization is an old story. Achieving self-sufficiency in the defense sector has been an aspiration of the Indian defense establishment for many years. As early as 2004, the UPA Government set up the Kelkar Committee to recommend changes in acquisition procedures to enable greater participation of the private sector in defense production. The Kelkar Committee Report – “Towards Self-Reliance in Defence Preparedness” – was submitted in April 2005 and was the first to propose a direct offsets policy to bring technology and investments into the Indian defense sector. Although attempts to put in place structures and procedures for defense indigenization have been evident for well over a decade, the establishment’s long-cherished target of 70 percent self-reliance through in-house development has remained elusive. In the meanwhile, the downturn in foreign acquisitions and the absence of indigenous alternatives have affected armed forces preparedness.
The administration’s decision to encourage domestic industry, in line with its Make in India policy, is a major fillip for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program. Over the years, the Indian Airforce Force (IAF) has remained unconvinced about the LCA’s capabilities and has been reticent to guarantee orders for the Tejas fighter aircraft, as it is informally known. The renewed emphasis in the program has come by virtue of the new administration, which is unable to fiscally sanction large numbers of the Dassault Rafael aircraft and was thus forced to look into alternatives. Over the course of its development the LCA program has gone through many ups and downs, all well documented by the media. However, what has flown under the radar – and is now the remit of this article – has been the cost to human life by way of aircraft failures of other platforms that were pressed into service on account of delays to the LCA program.
India’s failure to develop a substantive defense industrial base comes at a time when Soviet era machinery across all three services are lapsing into obsolescence. Not only has this created critical security gaps, it has also adversely impacted the safety record of the armed forces. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the aerospace sector. Consider the Indian government’s LCA program: The project was first conceived in 1969 in the wake of the Subramaniam Committee’s recommendation that Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) should design and develop an advanced technology fighter aircraft. The LCA program was approved in July 1983 after the completion of design studies and allocated an initial budget of $85 million. It was believed back then that the LCA program would achieve across-the-board advancement of the domestic aerospace industry and replace India’s aging fleet of Mig-21 fighters, which would be approaching the end of their life-cycle by the mid-1990s. Yet 32 years later, despite pouring $2.6 billion into the LCA vortex, the IAF still doesn’t have a fully functional fighter. Dubbed Tejas early on by the IAF, the LCA is still awaiting Final Operational Clearance (FOC), after which it can enter operational service.
17/11/15 Jayant Singh/The Diplomat
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The administration’s decision to encourage domestic industry, in line with its Make in India policy, is a major fillip for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program. Over the years, the Indian Airforce Force (IAF) has remained unconvinced about the LCA’s capabilities and has been reticent to guarantee orders for the Tejas fighter aircraft, as it is informally known. The renewed emphasis in the program has come by virtue of the new administration, which is unable to fiscally sanction large numbers of the Dassault Rafael aircraft and was thus forced to look into alternatives. Over the course of its development the LCA program has gone through many ups and downs, all well documented by the media. However, what has flown under the radar – and is now the remit of this article – has been the cost to human life by way of aircraft failures of other platforms that were pressed into service on account of delays to the LCA program.
India’s failure to develop a substantive defense industrial base comes at a time when Soviet era machinery across all three services are lapsing into obsolescence. Not only has this created critical security gaps, it has also adversely impacted the safety record of the armed forces. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the aerospace sector. Consider the Indian government’s LCA program: The project was first conceived in 1969 in the wake of the Subramaniam Committee’s recommendation that Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) should design and develop an advanced technology fighter aircraft. The LCA program was approved in July 1983 after the completion of design studies and allocated an initial budget of $85 million. It was believed back then that the LCA program would achieve across-the-board advancement of the domestic aerospace industry and replace India’s aging fleet of Mig-21 fighters, which would be approaching the end of their life-cycle by the mid-1990s. Yet 32 years later, despite pouring $2.6 billion into the LCA vortex, the IAF still doesn’t have a fully functional fighter. Dubbed Tejas early on by the IAF, the LCA is still awaiting Final Operational Clearance (FOC), after which it can enter operational service.
17/11/15 Jayant Singh/The Diplomat
