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.
Over the years, India has set up comprehensive infrastructure for the manufacture of defence equipment. Although considerable growth has taken place in indigenous capabilities, India is largely dependent on foreign technologies for the high-tech equipment. However, despite Transfer of Technology from foreign countries, the development of indigenous technologies has met with limited success. In the last two decades, India’s relations with the US have become stronger and India has been designated by the US as a ‘Major Defence Partner’. There have been a number of agreements between the two countries for collaborations in various fields including defence technologies, with iCET being the most promising initiative. This provides India with an excellent opportunity to achieve technological excellence with collaboration and co-development with the US. However, there are many challenges which may be an impediment to such development. This article examines India’s need for technology transfer, track record of technology transfers from the US, analyses the current agreements, identifies opportunities and challenges and recommends a way forward.
The acrimonious debate in the public space on the acquisition of Rafale aircraft has been primarily focused on a few issues. The debate does not inform the public about the long, arduous and complex nature of the programme and the joint effort invested in it. The uniqueness of this programme is also not in the public domain. It does not specifically inform the lay person as to the rationale for restricting the numbers to two squadrons, and carries on oblivious of the collateral effect it may have on future acquisition programmes.
This book is a compendium of papers presented and circulated in the International Seminar on Defence acquisition organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses on July 12-14, 2011. Written by the practitioners, industry leaders and subject experts, the book brings out the best international practices in defence acquisition.
The Directorate General of Quality Assurance (DGQA) is the organisation that is responsible for ensuring the quality of a wide range of military hardware at the time of their procurement. This is a very old organisation and has evolved over a period of time to meet the aspirations of its customers. However, since the introduction of Defence Procurement Procedure it has invited lot of criticism from its users due to the delays caused in procurements and attributable to Quality Assurance (QA), as also the introduction of sub-standard equipment in service.
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 Srijan defence indigenisation portal is a limited but concrete example of the implications of India’s defence indigenisation efforts for key strategic partners like Israel.
Defence procurement in India needs to adopt a mix of procurement avenues in which the indigenous solutions, foreign equipment and futuristic R&D continue together in a balanced manner. Considering that piecemeal solutions are not effective in the long term, there is a need to adopt a ‘Systems Approach’ to come up with a holistic solution which is enduring and progressive.
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.
