It is necessary to eliminate or combine two or more stages and introduce AI-enabled processes at various stages to compress the MoD’s capital procurement timelines.
Defence expenditure must be aligned with operational requirements and the MoD's capacity to utilise the funds rather than be pegged to a certain percentage of the GDP.
Given that the Department of Expenditure will henceforth be the nodal department for issuing procurement related instructions in future, the Ministry of Defence must institute a system to promptly incorporate them in the MoD procurement manuals.
The success of the co-development-cum-production push in Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 would depend on the commercial viability of the co-developed product, apart from overcoming a host of conceptual and procedural challenges.
The GFR 2017 permit individual ministries to issue detailed instructions to address the needs and complexities of procurement carried out by them. The question is whether those principles and rules come in the way of the Ministry of Defence evolving a more efficient procurement procedure that meets the armed forces’ aspirations.
If existing procurement procedures are a hindrance in acquiring state-of-the-art defence materiel expeditiously, a case needs to be made out, based on demonstrable drawbacks of the existing system for a detailed blueprint of what system should replace it.
Defence of India is a multi-dimensional responsibility involving coordination with not only organisations within MoD, but also several external departments and agencies. Irrespective of whether the subject of defence of India is assigned to DoD or DMA, it is the defence minister who is responsible for the subjects allocated to the ministry.
