Military technological innovation in India: A tale of three projects

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Indian strategy through the lens of military innovation. Comparing three major indigenous defense projects undertaken within a decade of each other, it asks why the Indian defense establishment managed to deliver on the Naval project while those of the Army and the Air Force were delayed by decades. To explain these differing outcomes, the paper argues, we need to analyze three inter-related issues: institutional capacity within the services; innovation strategy; and project management structures and accountability.

Notes

1. “Revitalizing Defense Industrial Ecosystems Through Strategic Partnerships,” Chapter VII of Defense Procurement Policy. Accessed on 15 July 2017. http://www.mod.nic.in/sites/default/files/Chapterdppn.pdf.

2. Most recently, an expert committee appointed by the Defense Minister and led by Lieutenant General (Retd.) Shekatkar has called for a major overhaul of the DRDO. Accessed on 15 July 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/03/14/shut-down-laboratories-and-overhaul-the-drdo-expert-committee-t_a_21886734.

3. Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization (New Delhi, India: Penguin, 2010), 32–34. For an older account that makes a similar same point, see, Chris Smith, India’s Ad Hoc Arsenal: Direction or Drift in Defense Policy? (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994).

4. Barry Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1976); Deborah Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).

5. For a useful, if slightly dated, survey of the literature, see, Adam Grissom, “The Future of Military Innovation Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 5 (2006): 904–34.

6. Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), passim.

7. The importance of design expertise is also emphasized in Joseph Lin “Defense Procurement in the Indian Armed Forces: An Organization Theory” (unpublished paper presented at Center for Advanced Study of India Annual Conference, March 2014). I am grateful to Devesh Kapur for drawing my attention to this unpublished paper.

8. Srinath Raghavan, India’s War: World War II and the Making of Modern South Asia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016), 88–89, 326–28.

9. Lieutenant General (Retd.) Ajai Singh, “Getting Serious on Defense Production: The Case of MBT Arjun,” United Services Institution of India Strategic Perspectives, January 2014. Accessed on 15 July 2017. http://usiofindia.org/Article/?pub=Strategic%20Perspective&pubno=39&ano=2168.

10. Lieutenant General (Retd.) Ajai Singh, “Getting Serious on Defense Production: The Case of MBT Arjun,” United Services Institution of India Strategic Perspectives, January 2014.

11. Lieutenant General (Retd) Ajai Singh, “The Arjun Tank Saga,” 6–7 (unpublished paper in the author’s possession).

12. Public Accounts Committee (PAC) 57^th Report of 2003 (New Delhi, India: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2003), 25.

13. PAC 5^th Report of 2000 (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2000), 3–4.

14. PAC 5^th Report of 2000 (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2000), 4–6.

15. PAC 5^th Report of 2000 (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 2000), p. 9.

16. Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) Report no. 35 of 2014 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, 2014), 162–63.

17. PAC 57^th Report of 2003, p. 22.

18. Jugal Purohit, “On ‘Overweight’, Next-gen Arjun Tanks, DRDO Chief Says They ‘Missed the Point’,” India Today, March 29, 2016. Accessed on 15 July 2017. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/exclusive-on-overweight-next-gen-arjun-tanks-drdo-chief-says-they-missed-the-point/1/629489.html.

19. G.D. Khanolakara, Walchand Hirachand: Man, His Times and Achievements (Bombay, India: Walchand & Co., 1969), 355–75.

20. A.K. Nagalia, “Ignoring Organic R&D in the IAF and its Consequences,” in Indian Air Force: The Case for Indigenisation, edited by Air Commodore (Retd.) Jasjit Singh (New Delhi, India: KW Publishers, 2013), 94–95.

21. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, May 2015), iv, 15.

22. CAG Report No. 8 of 1999 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, 1999), 50–51.

23. Nagalia, “Ignoring Organic R&D in the IAF,” 99.

24. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, 2015), 27.

25. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, 2015), 19–20.

26. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015 (New Delhi: Comptroller & Auditor General, 2015), 14–15.

27. Interview with Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, July 27, 2017.

28. Interview with Vice Admiral (Retd.) Premvir Das, July 28, 2017.

29. Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 48.

30. Admiral S.M. Nanda, The Man Who Bombed Karachi: A Memoir (New Delhi, India: HarperCollins, 2004), 135–39.

31. Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 64; Interview with Vice Admiral (Retd.) Premvir Das, July 28, 2017.

32. Interview with Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, July 27, 2017.

33. Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, My Ships Sailed the Seas But I Stayed Ashore (Chennai, India: Bookventure, 2017), 124–30.

34. Interview with Vice Admiral (Retd.) Premvir Das, July 28, 2017; Interview with Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, July 27, 2017.

35. Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 67; Mohan Ram, My Ships Sailed the Seas, 156–58; Interview with Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, July 27, 2017.

36. For details, see, Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 56–63.

37. Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 65.

38. Interview with Captain (Retd.) N.S. Mohan Ram, July 27, 2017.

39. Ramadas P Shenoy, Defense Research & Development Organization, 1958–1982 (New Delhi, India: DRDO, 2006), 107ff.

40. PAC 5^th Report of 2000, 3.

41. PAC 57^th Report of 2003, 24.

42. This and the next paragraph draw on PAC 2^nd Report of 1977 (New Delhi, India: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1977), 39–73.

43. Cited in Nagalia, “Ignoring Organic R&D in the IAF,” 99.

44. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015, 29–31.

45. Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence, 69.

46. IDR Research Team, “India’s Main Battle Tank – Arjun,” Indian Defense Review (January 1990), 184.

47. PAC 57^th Report of 2003, 27.

48. PAC 7^th Report of 2000, 7–8.

49. CAG Report No. 17 of 2015, 24–26.

50. Nagalia, “Ignoring Organic R&D in the IAF,” 101.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Srinath Raghavan

Srinath Raghvan is Senior Fellow, Center for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, New Delhi, India.