In major defence reforms, govt pushes for desi arms

NEW DELHI: The soldiers will now need to willy-nilly shed their penchant for exorbitant foreign weapon systems and platforms, unless they will be made in India through joint ventures with global armament and aviation majors. This was the unequivocal message within the announcement of some long-pending defence reforms by the govt on Saturday, which ranged from banning the import of certain weapons through a progressively-expanding negative list to significantly hiking the FDI limit to 74% from the prevailing 49% within the defence production sector through the automated clearance route. Several global arms majors have for long been demanding the hike within the FDI limit on the bottom that they have “more management control” of the JVs to intensify investments and supply top-notch military technologies to India. India has attracted a paltry Rs 1,834 crore as FDI within the defence and aerospace sectors since 2014. within the same timeframe, the country has inked over 120 “capital procurement” contracts roughly worth around Rs 2 lakh crore with foreign armamentcompanies. India, with an annual defence budget of about $70 billion, is behind only the US ($732 billion) and China ($261 billion) in terms of military expenditure round the globe. it's also the second-largest buyer of foreign weaponry after Saudi Arabia within the world, accounting for 9.2% of the entire global arms imports during 2015-2019. This will not do, declared minister of finance Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, though some cutting-edge weapons will still be imported. India will stop importing arms which will be made indigenously to scale back the “huge defence import bill”, with a thrust also on domestically manufacturing even the expensive spares of the imported weapons. A separate capital budget, in turn, also will be created to shop for indigenously-produced weapons, she said.

"We will notify an inventory of weapons and platforms for ban on their imports and fix deadlines to try to to it,” she said. The negative list, to be prepared in coordination with the newly-created department of military affairs led by chief of defence staff General Bipin Rawat, are going to be expanded per annum as domestic production capacities grow. Among the primary lot of weapon systems to be included during this list are likely be artillery guns and a few sorts of helicopters, said sources. A clear indication of those big-bang reforms, with the renewed thrust on “Make in India”, had are available the exclusive interview of Gen Rawat published within the May 10 edition of TOI. The 15-lakh strong Indian soldiers , which don't have an “expeditionary” role, need to get obviate their overwhelming dependence on foreign arms and refrain from framing “unrealistic” technical parameters or GSQRs (general staff qualitative requirements) for weapon systems that DRDO-domestic industry cannot deliver in specified timeframes, Gen Rawat had told TOI. Sitharaman, on her part, said there would be a time-bound defence procurement process, with “faster decision-making” through the setting of a “project management unit” to support contract management, “realistic” framing of GSQRs and overhauling of the cumbersome trial and testing procedures. Unrealistic GSQRs often end in a lengthy look for weapons and cause single-vendor situations that are against the principles , she said. The 41 factories under the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which with an annual turnover of around Rs 19,000 crore is that the main source of supply of arms and ammunition for the military , also will be “corporatized” to enhance its “autonomy, accountability and efficiency”, she said, stressing that it didn't mean “privatization” in any way. The Army had last year sounded the alarm over the unacceptably high number of accidents and casualties happening within the field thanks to the poor and defective quality of ammunition being supplied for tanks, artillery, air defence and other guns by the OFB, as was then reported by TOI. The long-pending draft note for the cupboard Committee on Security on corporatizationof the OFB says it might help increase the state-owned entity’s turnover to Rs 30,000 crore by 2024-25, enhance its exports to 25% of the turnover, and increase self-reliance in technology from the prevailing 20% to 75% by 2028-29.