Chandigarh: For Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan, to censure the government’s ‘slow’ defence equipment procurement process, as he did earlier this week, is akin to an Inuit carping at the Arctic cold.Being India’s senior-most military officer and secretary of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), the CDS is a vital and pivotal component of the very system he was reproaching, much like the Inuit carping at the obviously freezing temperatures around him.“We have problems like our procurement procedures are so slow, that it is difficult to imbibe technology at the rate the armed forces would want to,” said General Chauhan in questionable syntax on Wednesday at the recently concluded Raisina Dialogue.Procuring military hardware can take years under India’s weapon-buying rules, the CDS grumbled, adding that India needed to induct more technologies at a faster rate in order to narrow the technological gap with its adversaries.In response, a cross-section of military veterans expressed wry astonishment at the CDS’s remarks, stating that he should not be ‘complaining helplessly’, but displaying ‘masterfulness’ instead in keeping with his rank and station, by spearheading reforms in the acquisition process and rendering it resiliently amenable to technology absorption.“General Chauhan made no great revelation by stating the obvious,” said a two-star Indian Army (IA) veteran. The CDS should not be carping at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of which he is now an integral part, but presenting solutions in its place, he declared, declining to be named for fear of repercussions.CDS’s complaints come even as he is secretary of the DMAOther officers and analysts maintained that for decades, India’s military establishment had cried foul at being excluded from the MoD’s ‘higher echelons’ of decision-making by not officially being appointed secretaries, additional secretaries and joint secretaries in it.But they said the situation had changed drastically since late 2019 after India’s first CDS, General Bipin Rawat, was appointed secretary of the DMA and other service officers were appointed additional and joint secretaries, counteracting the military’s lament over being powerless in formulating policy.The CDS’s responsibilities, as enumerated when the post was created after decades of deliberation, included providing military advice to the defence minister and as permanent chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, he was designated primus inter pares – or first amongst equals – in respect to the other service chiefs.Besides being secretary of the DMA and adviser to the tri-service Nuclear Command Authority and serving on multiple advisory MoD and associated bodies, committees and councils, the CDS was also responsible for prioritising and effecting materiel procurements and defining military and security policies.So, for General Chauhan to carp at the slow pace of defence equipment procurements and technology absorption was somewhat paradoxical.However, 24 hours after General Chauhan’s comments, the MoD on Thursday announced that the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), headed by defence minister Rajnath Singh, had approved “guidelines for reducing the timelines at various stages of the capital acquisition process [of materiel] to make it faster, more effective and efficient”, but declined to elaborate.This was in furtherance to its January 1 declaration designating 2025 as the ‘Year of Reforms’, aimed at transforming the armed forces into a technologically advanced combat-ready force capable of multi-domain integrated operations, but obviously not to General Chauhan’s satisfaction.This MoD announcement via the Press Information Bureau further renders General Chauhan’s grouse somewhat inexplicable, for as the DMA’s head he would have been directly involved in devising recommendations for revising equipment procurement timelines.Alongside, as DAC member he would also have been party to these aforementioned guidelines when he voiced his criticisms at the Raisina Dialogue.But that being said, what exactly are the MoD’s procurement procedures?Convoluted, rigid and inexplicableIt’s well known in military commercial circles that the MoD remains adept at resorting to the fabled Indian rope trick by frequently announcing approvals towards acquiring materiel to augment force modernisation, via its periodic DAC meetings, which cleverly blur the chasm between perception and reality.But, little beknown to most, all that the DAC, headed by the defence minister of the day, does is to merely accord Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to materiel procurements and defence-related projects.Translated, it means that the concerned acquisition or program has ‘in principle’ been accepted by the government. Nothing more.“The AoN is a mere formality, albeit one mandated by the MoD, to pave the way for the tendering process to begin,” said Amit Cowshish, former defence ministry financial adviser on acquisitions.The real accident-prone adventurous journey begins thereafter, as the acquisition or project tender can fall through for innumerable reasons, he added.Most, however, assume that after AoN approval that is grandly publicised by the media in all instances, the concerned equipment has either been acquired, or the project concluded or at least nearing fruition, and the service’s modernisation continuing at a furious pace.But nothing could be further from reality, as it is only afterward that the heavy lifting, spread over some 11 complex stages, begins, with each one having the potential to interminably delay or derail the entire project.Consequently, the entire procurement process can, and often does, take twice, or at times even three times as long as the 74-118 weeks mandated in successive defence procurement manuals to complete once the AoN has been granted.“A large proportion of AoNs routinely fade into oblivion, with just a handful being subsequently revived,” said a three-star Indian Air Force (IAF) officer.Securing AoNs, he added, was no more than a “bureaucratic manoeuvre” by the MoD to show its intent. Moreover, an AoN’s validity was for six to 12 months, depending on the category of procurement, and was subject to renewal – often employed – if a request for proposal (RfP) or tender had not been issued in the intervening period.Also read: Not Just the MoD, the Military’s QR Overreach Is Also Culpable For Impeding ModernisationThe MoD, for its part, too is disingenuous, doing little or nothing to dispel this myth of instant gratification with regard to AoNs.In fact, by its purposeful silence, it appears to perpetuate the fable of military modernisation, when in reality the proposals – before and after AoN – continue meandering through numerous military and civil departments, tangled in complex bureaucratic procedures.Over years, these processes have earned exasperating and legendary notoriety in the global arms bazaar for their convolution, rigidity and above all, inexplicability.Even the run-up to the AoN is not without hurdles and time-consuming obstacles, fabricated collectively over decades by the three services themselves.The services kickstart the acquisition processes by issuing either a domestic or global request for information or RfI to elicit the information required for formulating the eventual qualitative requirements (QRs) or specs for the concerned equipment or project.Though seemingly straightforward, this too takes an age, as in their bid to demonstrate diligence, service officers collate all available literature and information on the proposed kit, to include as many features as possible, irrespective of either their practicality or, at times, even their necessity in India’s operational environment.The draft then travels up the chain of military command, gathering supplementary parameters; each officer concerned feels compelled to suggest additional accompaniments in an endeavour at displaying industry.The ball remains in play till the QRs are approved by the service-specific equipment policy committees, headed by the respective deputy or vice chiefs of staff after an inordinate amount of time.Rarely were deletions ever made to QR specifications and in many instances, what eventually emerged was a ‘well-complied wish list of utopian dimensions’.A retired one-star IA officer previously associated with QR formulation confessed that poorly conceived, formulated and drafted QRs ended up creating confusion, resulting in the entire acquisition being either delayed or aborted, or in some cases even both.Several reports by successive parliamentary committees and the Comptroller and Auditor General had castigated the withdrawal or termination of diverse tenders due to implausible QRs.Even late defence minister Manohar Parrikar had mocked the services at a public function in Delhi in 2015 for fashioning fanciful and implausible QRs, which he claimed were based on ‘Marvel comic books’.Once the QRs have been finalised and the RfP based on them issued, technical evaluation of the vendor’s responses follows by the concerned service.This is succeeded by field evaluation trials of the equipment on a ‘no cost no commitment basis’, in which rival sellers invariably end up spending vast sums to transport their equipment and personnel accompanying it to and within India, often to different locations, where the trials are executed by a multi-disciplinary team.The six competitors, for instance, who fielded their platforms for the IAF’s tender for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft in 2007-8 are believed to have spent upwards of $300 million each for trials across varied terrain lasting almost two years, during which the platforms were tested on some 600-odd operational parameters. The tender was later scrapped.All equipment trials by the Indian military are lengthy, at times taking several years. This is especially so for the army that tests most of its kit like small arms and howitzers in assorted terrain and environments like the northern Punjab plains, western Rajasthan desert regions and in Himalayan heights in Sikkim, Kashmir and Ladakh.Staff evaluation by the respective services comes next, after which, in select cases, the technical oversight committee presents its report to ensure that all equipment parameters align with the stipulated QRs.This too is arduous and can take long, as the scope for ‘subjective’ evaluation is vast, said industry officials. It also elicits a flurry of objections from rival contenders, with complaints over ‘unduly favouring’ rival systems.Once the equipment has cleared all these hurdles, a Contract Negotiation Committee or CNC is constituted to discuss the cost and delivery schedules, after which the proposal has to be approved by the ‘competent financial authority’ or CFA which, depending on its value, could either be the respective service deputy or vice chiefs, the defence minister or the finance minister.All purchases exceeding Rs 3,000 crore, however, have to be cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security headed by the prime minister.It is only then that the contract is finally inked.Surely the weighty brass on General Chauhan’s shoulders and his heft as CDS can help him streamline such byzantine procurement procedures?
