NEW DELHI: The Indian army has mounted a customary pre-budget pressure on finance minister Manmohan Singh to allow higher allocation on the ground of antiquated weaponry and lack of monetization.

“Consider the facts regarding growing deficiencies in the Army. Working on a 80% combat availability, there is shortage of over 18,000 crore worth of equipment. This is more than the entire 1992-93 defense budget of Rs 17,500 crore. There is critical shortage in certain specialized categories of ammunition like armor-piercing-fin-stabilizing discarding-sabot, 155 mm calibre projectiles, extended range monitor ammunition and special small arms calibre munitions. In these categories, the Anny may not be able to sustain an intense war beyond 3.5 days. There is also a grave shortfall in certain types of mines,” says an officer.

The vehicles needed for war mobilization have shortages worth over 26,000 numbers. Because of no vehicle policy, the state-controlled Director General Ordnance Factories (DGOF) produces 8,000 vehicles each year, of which 4,000 manufactured Shakti man vehicles have long been declared useless by the service. There are “works” deficiencies estimated at over Rs 9,000 crore, with an annual allocation of only Rs 400 crore provided in the budget. “Works” include both troops and equipment accommodation. The latter is critical as given the lack of authorized equipment sheds and traditional army distaste for maintenance; the wear and tear on sophisticated and expensive armament is enormous.

The daily maintenance of 35 divisions (each having about 13,000 troops) and numerous static formations equipment and all those spares which cost either more than Rs 2 lakh or have a life more than seven years, are required to be catered by the “maintenance budget.” This also includes the daily nearly Rs 3 crore spent on the Siachin operations.

And the 199293 army maintenance budget was Rs 3188.89 crore, of which Rs 1,600 crore were given to the DGOF, which is Capacity based and not product based state owned organization. This implies that while the army for the same money gets less equipment each year (because of inflation and depleting forex), the DGOF has been maintaining its ever increasing idle capacity and overstaffed manpower.

Monetization, for which Rs 1219.61 were allocated in 199293, consists of up gradations and weapon acquisitions. Also included in this money are the contractual obligations of previously purchased imported equipment in forex, usually accounting for about 30% of the mentioned capital outlay.

In so far as up gradations are concerned, little has been done in the last four years for lack of finances, Conversion of Vijayanta tank formations to the T72 tank are way behind schedule, resulting in, at least, 14 holding formations operating with defect prone Vijayantas, which itself are wearing off by the day. While the Avadi T72 tank factory has a capacity to manufacture 400 tanks every year, the Army does not have finances to purchase more than 40 tanks annually. There are no thermal imagers (required to operate at night and under inclement weather) for the tanks and most fire control systems of the 1,400 T54/55 tanks require urgent up gradations.

The air defense guns are archaic, L/70 AD guns require immediate replacements. There is an urgent need for 300 indigenously manufactured flycatcher radars, each costing Rs 7 crore. And the army cannot pay for more than six radars every year. Russian Tanguskhas costing Rs 7 crore each have been sought as replacements for the anti-hated Shilka antiaircraft guns. These, and certain critical air defense missiles wait replacement for lack of funds. There is also a dire need for medium range battle field surveillance radars to optimally utilize Prithvi battlefield support missiles.

‘The cost of each Prithvi missile is Rs 1.7 crore and the third generation fire and forget antitank missile Nag will cost 60 lakh each. With each corps scheduled to have a four missile launcher unit, the most question is how many missiles the Army can afford.

Even before Prithvi is inducted into the service, there is requirement for an integrated battlefield command, control, communication and intelligence systems to optionally utilize the Prithvi150 version scheduled for the Army and 250 versions or the air force. Also needed are target acquisition means, real time communications linkup and damage assessment means, which Army does not have.

Perspective planning, both short and long term, has remained defunct.

Article extracted from this publication >>  February 19, 1993