Israel develops capabilities, India pays the bill

India's first Phalcon AWACS was delivered by Israel on 25th May 2009. Here it touches down on Indian soil for the first time, at Jamnagar Air Base.

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 9th Feb 09

For many Indian commentators, especially those on the right, Israel provides an inspiring example of how to deal with external threat. One could equally argue that notwithstanding its comfortable position as the regional hegemon, Israel and its citizens remain insecure, xenophobic and afflicted by a disturbing sense of victimhood. It’s a debate that continues, especially in that country.

What Israel unquestionably does illustrate for India --- with this country paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the lesson --- is a well-considered plan for building their defence industry. In becoming India’s biggest defence supplier, Israel has bared a hard-nosed strategy that our policymakers must grasp and emulate.

Since Israel does not market aircraft or ships, its defence companies have focused on the lucrative market for upgrading India’s predominantly Russian weaponry, including MiG-21 fighters; ship-borne missiles; and T-72 tanks. Their first step was to understand Russian technology, for which Israeli defence companies accepted initial contracts at cost price to build their engineers’ capabilities. With that experience gained --- at India’s cost, one must note --- Israeli systems designers progressively graduated up the complexity scale. Today, Israel’s defence industry, with capabilities honed across a generation of Russian platforms, can bid across the globe.

The opportunities for Israel are vast. Some 30,000 T-72 tanks are in service worldwide, including 2500 in India. But Israel, not India or Russia, will feed off that upgrade market. India provided Israel with the tanks, the opportunity and the money for creating that capability. Ironically, the MoD ignored India’s own defence industry; its undeniable competence could have been as easily translated into capability.

Israeli industry garnered another windfall from its offer to build the Phalcon Airborne Warning & Control System (AWACS). This airborne radar mounted on a Russian IL-76 aircraft, allows airborne controllers to monitor and control airspace for hundreds of kilometres around. No Israeli company had ever designed such an AWACS before, but India handed over US $1.1 billion (Rs 5000 crores) to Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Elta. Hundreds of Israeli designers learned on the job, building AWACS capability on Indian money. Israel will now build another three AWACS for India, several for the Israeli Air Force and export more to Chile and Singapore.

Another feeding trough is the ongoing upgrade of Indian Navy ships, especially the technologically challenging system for “net-centric operations”. This digitally interlinks the fleet’s sensors and weapons --- in the air, on the surface and underwater --- into seamless information and command networks. The two Israeli companies bidding for this strategic contract, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems and IAI, began building capabilities while fitting Indian warships with the Barak missile early this decade. With detailed knowledge of the warships’ Russian combat management system, Israeli engineers are now ready to design the net-centric operations system, the crucial nerve centre in war.

In this, as in other upgrade contracts, India’s MoD has ignored the advantages of building indigenous capability. Precision Electronics Ltd, a Delhi-based company that engineers high-tech defence electronics, joined hands with US giant, Raytheon, to bid cheaper than Rafael and IAI. It seemed as if, at last, Indian capabilities would also be built. But, mysteriously, the MoD scrapped that tender last month. There is no way to verify the industry buzz that the Israelis contrived that cancellation; the only thing known for sure is that Rafael and IAI are being investigated by the CBI for corruption in the Barak sale. But it would be safe to bet that, when fresh bidding is ordered, the Israelis will come in with cheaper prices.

The Israeli strategy is: a financial loss is acceptable, to curb Indian defence industrial capability. Each time an Indian company develops capability in a strategically vital domain, foreign companies will be shut out from that realm forever.

Strangling the competition at birth is business, not criminal activity. Israel can be expected to do that. What defies logic, though, is the MoD’s dogged refusal to nurture Indian R&D the way it has Israel’s. This is of a piece with the MoD’s approach to Russia during that country’s troubled 1990s. With Russia’s economy bankrupt and military design bureaus and manufacturing units in dire straits, India placed a string of equipment orders --- Sukhoi-30MKI fighters; Talwar class frigates; and T-90 tanks, amongst others --- providing life support to that dying establishment. China, in contrast, simply bought over a bevy of top Russian design engineers, paying them to live in China and build capabilities within China’s defence industries.

Ashok Kanodia, the MD of Precision Electronics, admires and envies the Israeli companies. Admitting that his own strategy involves bidding at cost price, Kanodia explains, “My gain will be the engineering capability and experience that is created, with the MoD paying the bill. Monetary profits are for later.” But he ruefully admits that, with the MoD apparently unconcerned with developing Indian capabilities, Israeli firms are now unstoppable.

The MoD, it would appear, has failed to understand that the essence of defence indigenisation is about building domestic design capability. All that South Block seems to have is an oft-repeated target: moving from 70% reliance on foreign equipment to 70% supply from Indian companies. But how exactly this will be done, the MoD has never pronounced. Since a target cannot substitute for a strategy, it is time that South Block implements a clear policy that would allow Indian companies --- especially in the private sector --- to build their capabilities with some assurance of business. That might be the best thing that Israel has done for India.

Arms and the man: Unlocking India's weapons procurement

by Ajai Shukla
Business Standard Editorial, 8th Feb 2010

If evidence was needed of how easily defence modernisation is stalled, witness the ongoing Delhi High Court battle between Italian electronics major Selex Systemi Integrati and the Government of India. Selex wants the court to stay the modernisation of 30 defence airfields, most of them in border areas, alleging irregularities in tendering. The airfields languish while the court decides whether the bidding, in which Selex came second by a whisker, was indeed flawed or whether the Italian company (which, significantly, has modernised 75 per cent of China’s airfields) is just a bad loser. Others may follow Selex to the courts since the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has indeed sent out the message that allegations of corruption are a quick way to stymie ongoing purchases. This newspaper has drawn attention to the ministry’s ill-considered blacklisting of arms companies, both foreign and Indian, on mere suspicion of corruption. Blacklisting no longer follows the establishment of guilt, or even the filing of a charge sheet.

In the world of Mr Clean, defence minister AK Antony, the launch of an investigation by a government agency against a company satisfies the burden of proof. While politicians in power incessantly claim that they are innocent of every charge unless doubly proved guilty, defence equipment companies can be damned with just words. With India’s choices sadly depleted by official and unofficial bans on vendors, important purchases stall for want of enough bidders. This procurement logjam sends Indian soldiers into combat with outdated weaponry, even as the MoD returns unspent billions to the exchequer. Since 2006, the MoD has returned successively larger amounts of money to a grateful finance ministry, culminating in a record surrender of more than Rs 7,000 crores last year.

With the MoD unwilling to risk taking the tough decisions involved in competitive tendering, equipment evaluation and choosing a winner, most weapons procurement now follows the single-vendor route. The ministry can conveniently justify single-vendor contracting with Russia, partly because that country provides “strategic systems” that nobody else in the world would part with. When India wants to lease a nuclear submarine, or build its own, New Delhi picks up the phone to Moscow. This government-to-government procurement method has now been inexplicably extended to joint development programmes — including the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft and the Multi-Role Transport Aircraft — even though western countries are eager to partner India. Russia also benefits from single-vendor repeat orders for Russian weaponry that India already uses, e.g., the T-90 tank and the Su-30MKI fighter.

India’s growing purchases from the United States have also followed the single-vendor path, the American Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme providing a convenient shield against allegations of corruption. After choosing a weapons platform through internal rather than competitive processes, the MoD makes a request to the US government, which then nominates an American defence contractor to supply the equipment. The FMS route, while absolving the MoD from the tough decisions of competitive bidding, effectively surrenders the leverage of a buyer. The MoD’s obvious preference for single-vendor purchases conflicts glaringly with the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), which explicitly mandates multi-vendor competition in order to beat down prices. For Indian defence procurement to benefit from competition, the MoD must learn to make and justify the subjective decisions associated with multi-vendor choices. Urgently needed is a functionally specialised acquisition department that can efficiently handle a task that is obviously beyond the capabilities of the current organisation. This has been recommended by a Group of Ministers in the aftermath of the Kargil conflict in 1999, and echoed by the CAG in an excellent performance audit of defence procurement in 2007.

Agni-3 test successful: missile flies 3500 kilometers

A sequence of photographs showing the Agni-3 lifting off from its launch pad at Wheeler's Island today.

DRDO PRESS RELEASE: 7th Feb 10

The Indian long range missile AGNI3 with a range capability of 3500km is flight tested successfully by DRDO at 10:50 am from the Wheeler Island, in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of Odisha. The AGNI-3 Missile tested for the full range, hit the target with pinpoint accuracy and met all the mission objectives. Two down range ships located near the target have tracked and witnessed the Missile reaching the target accurately.

The Marker Pen like AGNI-3 Missile is 17 meters long with 2 metres in diameter. The Missile is a two stage solid propellant system with a pay load capability of 1.5 tons. During the course of flight the Missile reached a peak height of 350 kms and re-entered into the atmosphere successfully tolerating the skin temperatures of nearly 3000 degree Celsius.

The missile is equipped with a state of the art computer system, navigated with a most advanced Navigation system and guided with an innovative guidance scheme. The Navigation system used for guidance is first of its kind. Number of Radars and electro optical tracking systems along the coast of Odisha have monitored the path of the Missile and evaluated all the parameters in realtime.

The launch is part of the pre-induction trial. Indian Army (the user) has carried out the total launch operations guided by the DRDO scientists. Now the Missile system will be fully inducted into the armed forces.

Mission Director Sri Avinash Chander and Project Director Dr V.G. Sekaran have guided and controlled the complete Missile integration and launch activities. Scientific Advisor to Raksha Mantri and Director General, DRDO Dr V.K. Saraswat has over seen the total launch operations.

Dr V.K. Saraswat and Sri Avinash Chander congratulated all the Scientists and employees of DRDO and the industry partners

A plan for the Arjun!

Just a few clarifications to put my recent three-article series on Indian tanks in context.

1. I think that the conclusion that some visitors are drawing --- that everything Russian is bad --- amounts to overreaction to my articles. As one critic of the articles correctly posted, Russia has provided us systems that nobody else was willing to provide at prices that nobody else could match. Even if that was in the past, and Russia today adopts a far more hard-nosed, where-are-the-dollars approach towards arms sales to India, one would be ill-advised to forget history.

For example, one visitor posted about my article: “Did you read the parts that establish that the T-90 is at worst a piece of junk, or at best as good/bad as the obsolete T-72?” Well, I’d just point out that you are reading more into my account of the T-90 deal than I actually said. I certainly said that the deal was tailored to bypass parliamentary opposition, India ended up getting an under-equipped T-90 tank, important tank systems failed because they could not withstand exposure to the Indian environment, there were problems in transferring technology, and we have not yet managed to get the tank upgraded to the level that it should have been acquired in.

All that is true, yes! But also remember that, compared to the T-72, the T-90 is a much better tank. And, whether you like it or not, the T-90 will be in service with the Indian Army till at least 2040, maybe even 2050.

2. I also think that anyone who argues: scrap all Russian equipment and go Indian is fantasizing. Russian equipment is still the mainstay of our mechanised forces and, even if we adopt a conscious policy of Indianisation, it will be decades before Russian equipment serves out its life. Since we have to live with Russian systems for a long, long time, we need to identify which tanks we could phase out first, in what time frame we could retire them, and what we can upgrade and retain in service for a longer period.

3. A crucial step, in my opinion, will have to be doubling the rate of retirement of the obsolescent T-72s. One replacement stream is the T-90, being produced at the HVF, Avadi. A second stream of Arjuns must supplement this, for which the following broad process must begin:

(a) Increase Arjun tank production on an expanded assembly line, at the rate of 30, 40, and then 50 tanks per year in 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. Task CVRDE to ready the Arjun Mark II by 2013. By 2015 the Arjun production line at HVF MUST roll out 62 Arjun Mark II tanks per year (i.e. one regiment at full scale, including reserve tanks). By 2018, the Arjun Mark III must roll out. Each of these upgrades must have limited and realistic improvements, identified not from glossy magazines but through operational usage by Indian Army regiments.

(b) Alongside the Arjun Improvement Programme (AIP), which will handle the upgrade to Mark II and Mark III standards, work must commence by 2012 on the Future MBT programme. Two consortiums must compete in creating the design: a CVRDE-led consortium that can draw on the Arjun experience. And a private industry-led consortium, which is granted full access to the Arjun design experience, as well as to any other resources that they choose. The private industry consortium must be fully funded by the MoD, their budget in line with what the CVRDE-led consortium is permitted to spend.

(c) As Arjun tanks roll out, T-72M regiments must convert to the Arjun, those with older tanks first. The conversion will serve a two-fold purpose: firstly, the T-72 regiments that first convert to Arjuns, i.e. 4-5 regiments by 2015, need not be upgraded with TIFCS, etc. Secondly, the introduction of Arjuns into service, and the setting up of Arjun instructional cells at the Armoured Corps Centre & School, Ahmednagar, will start spreading an Arjun culture into an army where the opposition to the Arjun is based on an outdated impression of the tank --- on what it was, rather than what it is.

(d) The remaining T-72s need to be upgraded on priority. The ten-year-old process to upgrade them needs to be pushed through, if necessary by a high-voltage, public resignation by whoever the DGMF happens to be. By doing so, that officer will have done more for his arm than any of his recent predecessors; and will be remembered for much more than just “being a good chap”.

(e) By 2015, the DRDO, in collaboration with private industry, must produce and operationalise an Arjun Bridge Layer Tank (BLTs), an Arjun Trawl Tank, and the specialised maintenance vehicles that will be provided to each Arjun regiment. Production lines must cater for adequate scales of these.

(f) The process needs to be set in motion now for creating two Arjun overhaul facilities in the private sector. The first fifteen Arjuns will soon be due for overhaul and the HVF has proved unable to even handle the T-72 overhaul. Just as an RFI has been floated for creating T-72 overhaul facilities, the Arjun overhaul facilities must be kicked off immediately.

The T-90 tank: Piercing the army's armour of deception

Photos of the Indian T-90 tank. The Indian Army will eventually operate 1657 T-90s.

Vital facts on the Russian T-90 tank deal were suppressed and its performance on the field has been poor.

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 4th Feb, 2010

On August 24 last year, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) dressed up failure as achievement when — almost nine years after India bought the T-90 tank from Russia — the first 10 built-in-India T-90s were ceremonially rolled out of the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) near Chennai.

No reasons were given for that delay. Nor did the Ministry of Defence (MoD) reveal the T-90’s ballooning cost, now a whopping Rs 17.5 crore. On November 30, 2006, the MoD told the Lok Sabha that the T-90 tank cost Rs 12 crore apiece. Parliament does not yet know about the 50 per cent rise in cost.

The story of the T-90 has been coloured by deception and obfuscation from even before the tank was procured. Business Standard has pieced together, from internal documents and multiple interviews with MoD sources, an account of how the Indian Army has saddled itself with an underperforming, yet overpriced, version of the Russian T-90.

The deception stemmed from the army’s determination to push through the T-90 contract despite vocal opposition from sections of Parliament. Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda argued — allegedly because a close associate had a commercial interest in continuing with T-72 production — that fitting the T-72 with modern fire control systems and night vision devices would be cheaper than buying the T-90. Deve Gowda correctly pointed out that even Russia’s army had spurned the T-90.

To bypass his opposition, the MoD and the army reached an understanding with Rosvoorouzhenie, Russia’s arms export agency. The T-90 would be priced only marginally higher than the T-72 by removing key T-90 systems; India would procure those through supplementary contracts after the T-90 entered service. Excluded from India’s T-90s was the Shtora active protection system, which protects the T-90 from incoming enemy missiles. This was done knowing well that Pakistan’s anti-tank defences are based heavily on missiles.

Other important systems were also pared. The MoD opted to buy reduced numbers of the INVAR missile, which the T-90 fires. Maintenance vehicles, which are vital to keep the T-90s running, were not included in the contract. All this allowed the government to declare before Parliament that the Russian T-90s cost just Rs 11 crore, while the assembled-in-India T-90s were Rs 12 crore apiece.

The MoD did not mention that these prices would rise when the supplementary contracts were negotiated. Nor did it reveal that India’s pared-down T-90s barely matched the performance of the Pakistan Army’s recently acquired T-80 UD tank, which India had cited as the threat that demanded the T-90.

Worse was to follow when the initial batch of 310 T-90s entered service (124 bought off-the-shelf and 186 as knocked-down kits). It quickly became evident — and that too during Operation Parakram, with India poised for battle against Pakistan — that the T-90s were not battleworthy. The T-90’s thermal imaging (TI) sights, through which the tank aims its 125mm gun, proved unable to function in Indian summer temperatures. And, the INVAR missiles assembled in India simply didn’t work. Since nobody knew why, they were sent back to Russia.

Even more alarmingly, the army discovered that the T-90 sighting systems could not fire Indian tank ammunition, which was falling short of the targets. So, even as a panicked MoD appealed to the DRDO and other research institutions to re-orient the T-90’s fire control computer for firing Indian ammunition, Russian ammunition was bought.

With Russia playing hardball, none of the supplementary contracts have yet gone through. The TI sights remain a problem. The army has decided to fit each T-90 with an Environment Control System, to cool the delicate electronics with a stream of chilled air. None of the world’s current tanks, other than France’s LeClerc, has such a system. The American Abrams and the British Challenger tanks fought in the Iraq desert without air-conditioning. India’s Arjun tank, too, has “hardened” electronics that function perfectly even in the Rajasthan summer.

Nor has the MoD managed to procure the Shtora anti-missile system. The Directorate General of Mechanised Forces now plans to equip India’s eventual 1,657-tank T-90 fleet with the advanced ARENA active protection system, for which it has budgeted Rs 2,500 crore in the Army Acquisition Plan for 2009-11.

The greatest concern arose when Russia held back on its contractual obligation to transfer the technology needed to build 1,000 T-90s in India. But, instead of pressuring Russia, the MoD rewarded it in 2007 with a contract for 347 more T-90s. In an astonishing Catch-22, the MoD argued that the new purchase was needed because indigenous production had not begun.

Next month, when the T-90 is measured against the Arjun in comparative trials, the T-90s’ drawbacks will not be evident. But, as officers who have operated the T-90 admit, these could be crucial handicaps in battle.

“It is for these reasons that I have consistently argued for supporting the Indian Arjun tank,” says General Shankar Roy Chowdhury, former army chief and himself a tankman. “Another country can hold India hostage in many ways. We need to place an order for several hundred Arjun tanks so that economies of scale can kick in and we can bring down the price even further.”

If the Arjun performs strongly in next month’s comparative trials around Suratgarh and Pokhran, that order could be in the offing.

FRAUD ON THE NATION?

* Key operational systems were kept out to bring the price down

* Parliament wasn’t told about this, nor of the plan for supplementary contracts

* The performance on the ground showed that the T-90 was an appalling mistake

* This has set in train even more costly cover-ups

* All this, while the indigenous Arjun is free of many of these minuses

Rather than buying more Arjun tanks, Indian Army to spend billions on refurbishing outdated T-72s

An Iraqi T-72 fires a broadside at a target in the desert. The Indian Army will be spending about Rs 5000 crores on modernising its aging T-72 for serving another 15-20 years.

(2nd part of a 3-article series on next month's comparative trial between the T-90 and the Arjun)

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 3rd Feb 2010

The Indian Army chief’s dismaying disclosure last month, that India’s tank fleet was largely incapable of fighting at night, highlighted only a part of the problem with the Russian T-72, the army’s main tank. In fact, the T-72 is in far worse shape than General Deepak Kapoor let on.

Another signal of the T-72’s obsolescence was its recent withdrawal, by the army’s Directorate General of Mechanised Forces (DGMF), from next month’s comparative trials with the indigenous Arjun tank. An embarrassed DGMF has realized that, without major refurbishing, the T-72 was not in the Arjun’s class.

But in the army’s long-term planning, the T-72 --- which the more advance T-90 will replace only gradually --- will continue to equip almost half of the army’s 59 tank regiments as far in the future as 2022.

Business Standard has accessed a sheaf of technical reports and funding requests that actually quantify the state of the T-72. Exactly 32 years have passed since the first T-72s arrived in India; army guidelines stipulate 32 years as the service life of a tank. The earliest tanks from the army’s 2418-strong T-72 inventory should have already been retired, making way for a more modern tank, such as the T-90 or the Arjun.

Instead, the DGMF --- longstanding advocates of Russian equipment --- plans to spend Rs 5 crores per T-72, hoping to add another 15-20 years to that tank’s service life by replacing crucial systems, such as its fire control system, main engine and night vision devices.

The military’s Annual Acquisition Plan for 2008-2010 (AAP 2008-10) lists out the cost of modernizing the T-72 fleet as follows:

• New 1000-horsepower engines (identical to the T-90 tank) to replace the T-72’s old 780 horsepower engines. The cost of each engine: Rs 3 crores.

• Thermal Imaging Fire Control Systems (TIFCS) that will allow the T-72 gunners to observe, and fight at night. Each TIFCS will cost Rs 1.4 crores.

• Thermal Imaging (TI) sights to provide T-72 tank commanders with night vision. Each TI sight costs Rs 0.4 crores.

• An auxillary power unit (APU) to generate power for the tank’s electrical systems. Each APU will cost Rs 0.16 crores.

The Rs 5 crore cost of upgrading each T-72 knocks out the argument that the T-72 --- at Rs 9 crores apiece --- is value-for-money. Retrofitting upgraded systems will escalate the cost of the T-72 to Rs 14 crores. In contrast, a brand new Arjun, with a 1500 horsepower engine, state-of-the-art integrated electronics, and the indigenous, widely praised Kanchan armour, can be had for a marginally more expensive Rs 16.8 crores.

“It is folly to stick with Russian tanks despite having developed the Arjun, and the design capability to continuously improve it?” says Lt Gen Ajai Singh, who headed the army’s Directorate of Combat Vehicles before becoming Governor of Assam. “India can tailor the Arjun to our specific requirements and continuously upgrade the tank to keep it state-of-the-art. Why upgrade old T-72s? It is time to bring in the Arjun.”

The T-72’s galloping obsolescence is magnified by the MoD’s failure to overhaul tanks on schedule: some 800 T-72s are years overdue for overhaul. Originally, each T-72 was to be overhauled twice during its service life of 32 years. But as the overhaul agencies --- the Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi; and 505 Army Base Workshop, Delhi --- failed to meet their overhaul targets of 70 and 50 tanks respectively, the army decided that one overhaul was good enough. And with even that schedule not implemented, a desperate MoD has approached Indian industry to play a role in overhauling the T-72 fleet.

The total expenditure on the T-72 tank, budgeted for AAP 2008-10, is over Rs 5000 crores. The cost of overhaul has not been accurately determined.

[Tomorrow: Concluding part: The Russian T-90 contract: shooting ourselves in the foot]

Summary: The cost of refurbishing each T-72

1. New 1000 horsepower engine : Rs 3 crores
2. Thermal Imagining Fire Control System : Rs 1.4 crores
3. Commander’s Thermal Imaging Sight : Rs 0.4 crores
4. Auxillary generator : Rs 0.16 crores

TOTAL Rs 5 crores per tank

Duel in the desert: Comparative trials in March to feature Russian T-90 vs Indian Arjun

The Arjun (pictured here) will be tested in March-April in Rajasthan. The aim of the trial is to identify an operational role for the Arjun

(Part 1 of 3 articles: Indian tanks, or Russian?)

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 2nd Feb 2010

Next month, India’s homegrown Arjun tank will take on the new Russian T-90 in a long-awaited comparative trial. The outcome could decide whether the Indian Army will ride Indian tanks into future battles or continue its reliance upon a heavily criticized fleet of Russian T-72 tanks, which even the army chief admits is 80% blind at night, when most tank battles occur.

The army’s Bikaner-headquartered 24 Infantry Division will conduct the month-long trials in the desert expanses around Bikaner, Suratgarh and Pokhran. A squadron (14 tanks) of the Arjun will be pitted against a T-90 squadron. Both will be evaluated by day and by night, comparing their abilities to speed through rugged, sand-dune-infested terrain; to fire accurately even while moving; their abilities to operate for long periods over long distances; and the fatigue they impose on their crews.

The declared aim of the comparative trial, surprisingly, is not to identify the better tank. The army claims the T-90 is not on trial; instead, the strengths and weaknesses of the Arjun are being evaluated, to help the army decide what operational role the Arjun could play, and which sector of the border it could effectively operate in.

But the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) --- which has developed the Arjun tank at the Central Vehicles R&D Establishment (CVRDE) at Chennai --- insists that if the Arjun performs well against the vaunted T-90, the army will be forced to order the Indian tank in larger numbers. Arjuns could start replacing the T-72, while the T-90 remains in service for another three decades.

So far the army has only ordered 124 Arjuns for its 4000-tank fleet. An incensed DRDO has long demanded comparative trials against the T-72, and the newer T-90, to prove the Arjun’s quality. Trials were scheduled, and then postponed, because of a shortage of Arjun ammunition. With the ammunition now available the army, significantly, has withdrawn the T-72 from the trials.

“The army knows that the T-72 would have performed very poorly in trials against the Arjun”, complains a senior DRDO officer. “Despite that, the army continues to sink money into its 2400 outdated T-72s. Any comparative trial with the T-72 would make it clear that the Arjun should replace the T-72.”

But there is also concern about the subjectivity of trials involving an entire squadron in tactical maneouvres. Major General HM Singh (retired), the father of the Arjun, says, “It is impossible to measure the tactical performance of 14 tanks. There are too many variables, including the skill of the tank crews and coloured perceptions of the judges. A comparative trial should be a scientific comparison of each tanks’ physical performance in identical situations.”

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has not responded to an emailed questionnaire from Business Standard on the comparative trials and the condition of the T-72 tank fleet.

Meanwhile, the Arjun is ready for production in larger numbers, with a production line at the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) near Chennai established at a cost of Rs 50 crores. Capable of producing 20 Arjuns annually, it has already equipped India’s first Arjun unit, 43 Armoured Regiment. Now, a second unit, 75 Armoured Regiment, is being converted to the Arjun.

But that is as far as the army is prepared to accept the Arjun. According to the army’s long-term plan, which Business Standard has accessed, no more Arjuns are planned. Instead, the army will field equal numbers of T-90s and T-72s for the next 15 years, spending thousands of crores on extending the life of the T-72.

But these trials, despite the reservations about their relevance, are the moment of truth for the Indian tank. A strong performance by the Arjun will force the army to redo its maths. Conspicuous failure, on the other hand, could cap the programme at just 124 tanks.

(Next, Part II: Refurbishing the T-72; trying to breathe life into a bullock cart)