Monday, 8 December 2014

There's a new terror threat in Kashmir

Uri terrorists were as well armed as NSG commandos.

| 2-minute read | 08-12-2014

Two items caught my attention from a neat line of assault rifles, ammunition and food packets, the army recovered from six dead Lashkar Taiba terrorists in Uri on December 5: a pair of sawn-off shotguns. Barrels chopped off to make them lethal in confined spaces, stocks removed for easy concealment. Why shotguns, one would ask, when the terrorists had far more effective AK-47s? I sent the picture to a friend in the special forces. His short response startled me. "Shotguns for opening locked/ latched doors. Indicates change in training/ equipping". It then struck me where I had seen shotguns being used. At the National Security Guard (NSG) training area in Manesar where commandos blasted away door hinges and locks to burst into rooms during hostage-rescue training. A 12-gauge shotgun pressed against door fittings delivers a concentrated burst of pellets that will shatter door fittings in a way that an assault rifle cannot.

I then recalled the eerie CCTV footage of the four terrorists at the Taj, kicking at hotel doors to capture hostages. Over a two hundred guests were saved because they barricaded themselves inside The Chambers.

Except these terrorists at Uri were not carrying the shotguns to rescue hostages. Most likely, to capture them. At the Uri camp, they were fortunately neutralised before they actually got a chance to use the "door openers" or the 25 shot shells. But they did use one or more light anti-tank rockets which they carried, to destroy the guard bunkers of the army unit in Uri; military-style ready to eat meals specially packed to withstand a march through three feet of snow and temperatures of eight degrees below zero where they crossed the Line of Control. They had two night vision binoculars and four radio sets. In short, everything an Indian army special forces team would carry into a mission.

As five terrorists hit the camp from two directions at 3 am, a sixth terrorist was positioned on the road outside. He ambushed a Quick Reaction Team Gypsy carrying Lt Colonel Sankalp Kumar. The jeep overturned killing the officer and a soldier. It would be another few hours before the six terrorists could be neutralised, fittingly, by an army special forces unit.

The 15 Corps Commander Lt General Subrata Saha’s December 7 statement in Srinagar that “the terrorists were highly trained, like special forces, to carry out the attacks” marks an ominous rise in the profile of cross-border terrorists. Terrorists who, like the ten who struck at Mumbai on November 26, 2008 are not just well motivated, but equipped, trained and tasked like the commandos they are pitted against.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.

Writer

SANDEEP UNNITHAN@sandeepunnithan

The writer is Deputy Editor, India Today.

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Friday, 5 December 2014

China's submarine noose around India

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Special Report

December 15, 2014

China's submarine noose around India

Submarine game: How China is using undersea vessels to project power in India's neighbourhood

Sandeep Unnithan December 4, 2014 | UPDATED 10:53 IST

Click here to EnlargeFour decades after the 1971 India-Pakistan war, India's intelligence agencies are once again scanning a stretch of coastline in southern Bangladesh. Cox's Bazar was rocketed and strafed by INS Vikrant's fighter aircraft to cut off the enemy's retreat into the Bay of Bengal. Today, 43 years later, it sets the stage for China's dramatic entry into India's eastern seaboard.
Assessments from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and naval intelligence say the Bangladesh Navy will station two ex-Chinese Ming-class submarines on bases that are less than 1,000 km away from Visakhapatnam, home to the Indian Navy's nuclear powered submarine fleet and the Defence Research and Development Organisation's (DRDO) missile test ranges at Balasore.
The developments on India's Arabian Sea flank are equally ominous. Intelligence officials say that over the next decade, China will help Pakistan field submarines with the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles from sea. Submarines, analysts say, are China's instrument of choice to not just challenge the Indian Navy's strategy of sea domination but also to undermine India's second-strike capability. These developments have been accompanied by a flurry of Chinese submarine appearances in the Indian Ocean this year-Beijing sent two nuclear submarines and a conventional submarine. Two of them made port calls in Colombo, triggering concern in New Delhi.
Toehold in the Bay
"No one interested in geopolitics can afford to ignore the Bay of Bengal any longer," geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan wrote in a seminal essay in Stratfor in November. "This is the newold centre of the world, joining the two demographic immensities of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia." For India, the Bay of Bengal is the launch pad for a 'Look East' policy that has received renewed attention under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Indian Navy is enhancing force levels at its Visakhapatnam naval base even as it has begun building a secret base for a proposed fleet of nuclearpowered submarines at Rambilli, south of Visakhapatnam. Equipped with the 700-km range B05 submarine launched missiles, the Arihant-class submarines will have to patrol closer to the shores of a potential adversary. But equipped with the 3,500-km range K-4 missiles currently being developed by the DRDO, the Arihant and her sister submarines can cover both Pakistan and China with nuclear-tipped missiles from within the Bay of Bengal, providing the "robust second-strike capability" as stated in India's nuclear doctrine.
Inputs suggest Bangladesh has acquired land and fenced locations at the Kutubdia Channel near Cox's Bazar and the Rabnabad Channel near West Bengal. Kutubdia, intelligence officials say, is likely to feature enclosed concrete 'pens' to hide submarines. The possibility of Chinese submarines using this base provides a fresh equation to the strategic calculus.
"Our submarines become susceptible to tracking from the time they leave harbour," says veteran submariner and former Southern Naval Command chief vice-admiral K.N. Sushil (retired). "But a far more worrying strategy is China's ability to be able to threaten our assured second-strike capability. That effectively tips the deterrence balance."
Chinese Han-class submarine Changzheng 2 in Colombo.West Coast Worries
Of greater long-term worry to Indian analysts is a strategic submarine project China finalised with Pakistan in 2010. Intelligence sources say this three-part programme will transform the Pakistan Navy into a strategic force capable of launching a sea-based nuclear weapons strike. Pakistan will build two types of submarines with Chinese assistance: the Project S-26 and Project S-30. The vessels are to be built at the Submarine Rebuild Complex (SRC) facility being developed at Ormara, west of Karachi. Intelligence sources believe the S-30 submarines are based on the Chinese Qing class submarines-3,000-tonne conventional submarines which can launch three 1,500-km range nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from its conning tower. A Very Low Frequency (VLF) station at Turbat, in southern Balochistan, will communicate with these submerged strategic submarines. The Project S-26 and S-30 submarines will augment Pakistan's fleet of five French-built submarines, enhance their ability to challenge the Indian Navy's aircraft carrier battle groups and carry a stealthy nuclear deterrent. "Submarines are highly effective force multipliers because they tie down large numbers of naval forces," says a senior naval official.

Steel sharks on silk route
Speaking in Indonesia's Parliament last October, Chinese President Xi Jinping articulated a "21st century Maritime Silk Road". His vision calls for investments in port facilities across south and south-east Asia to complement a north Asian route. This year, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) put steel into Xi's vision. In February, a Shangclass nuclear-powered attack submarine made China's first declared deployment in the Indian Ocean. This was followed by port calls made by a Han-class submarine in Colombo to coincide with a state visit by President Xi and a visit by a Song-class conventional submarine in November.
China's heightened activity in the Indian Ocean region is underscored by investments in a new port in Gwadar at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, a container facility in Chittagong and Kyaukpyu port in Myanmar. "Such developments have sharpened China's geopolitical rivalry with India, which enjoys an immense geographic advantage in the Indian Ocean," says Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research. "Aspects related to their (Chinese) deployment in international waters are part of securing their maritime interests," Navy chief Admiral Robin K. Dhowan told journalists in Delhi on December 3.
China's new military posture reflects the 'Malacca dilemma' faced by the world's largest oil importer. Close to 80 per cent of China's crude oil imports of 11 million barrels per day, the life blood of its economy, is shipped through the narrow Malacca Strait. Any disruption to this could threaten its economic growth. "Hence, China's economic interests in the Indian Ocean have now taken on an overt military dimension," says an intelligence official.
Naval intelligence officials who correctly predicted that China would use anti-piracy patrols as a pretext for deployments in the Indian Ocean feel vindicated. Their prognosis of this game of 'weiqi'-a game of Chinese chess which uses encirclement, is gloomy. "A full-scale Chinese deployment in the Indian Ocean is inevitable," an admiral told India Today.
"You can only watch it and prepare yourself for it." The preparations include acquisitions of long-range maritime patrol aircraft such as the US-made P8-I Poseidon, investment in anti-submarine warfare and inducting new submarines and helicopters to fill up critical deficiencies in force levels.

Measured Response
China's submarine thrust into South Asia coincides with Narendra Modi's renewed emphasis on securing India's perimeter. "India's response has to be nuanced, a mixture of coercion and largesse," says Jayadeva Ranade, a former RAW official and member of the National Security Advisory Board. While the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government scoffed at encirclement theories, the new Government is clearly concerned over the creeping Chinese presence.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval voiced India's concerns at the 'Galle Dialogue' in Sri Lanka on December 1. He cited a 1971 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution mooted by Sri Lanka calling on the "great powers to halt further escalation and expansion of their military presence in the Indian Ocean".
India's defence diplomacy has been severely limited by its inability to offer military hardware to offset the Chinese presence. Over half the military hardware of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are of Chinese origin. In 2008, India called off a plan to transfer the INS Vela to the Myanmar Navy when it discovered the vintage Russian-built submarine was past its service life.
When plans to transfer hardware materialise, they are too feeble to make a difference-a solitary helicopter such as the one gifted to Nepal by Modi in November and a small ex-Indian naval patrol craft gifted to Seychelles recently. Often, there is a demand for capabilities where India itself is deficient. Bangladeshi officials stumped Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials last year when they asked India, and not China, to provide submarines. The Indian Navy is down to just 13 aging conventional submarines. The MEA suggested Bangladesh buy Russian submarines instead. Their efforts are yet to bear fruit. It is a gap China willingly fills.
- Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan.

Monday, 1 December 2014

Cdr Khan's revenge

1971 war: Commander Khan's revenge

The death of the Vikrant draws the curtain on the 1971 war’s most spectacular chase.

POLITICS

| 5-minute read | 01-12-2014

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

@sandeepunnithan

As I write this, contract labourers in a Mumbai scrapyard, are slicing away with blow torches at the Indian navy’s greatest warship, the Vikrant. The slow death of the Vikrant rings down the curtains in an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors that began this month, 43 years ago.

On November 14, 1971, the PNS Ghazi, a US-built submarine loaned to the Pakistan Navy, slipped out of Karachi harbour.

War with India was imminent. The Ghazi, helmed by commander Zafar Muhammad Khan, would be in place to fire the opening salvo. Where that salvo would be fired, was a secret known only to commander Khan and a handful of his comrades on shore. Khan was a well regarded submariner. He had been executive officer of Pakistan’s first new-build submarine, the PNS Hangor commissioned in France two years earlier by commander Ahmed Tasnim. Khan’s executive officer, Lt Cdr Pervaiz Hameed, had served as the Hangor’s navigating officer. There were 92 crew on board.

The Ghazi’s destination was not Mumbai, home to the Indian navy’s powerful Western fleet, which she sailed past on November 16. Her knife-life hull glided around peninsular India and Sri Lanka before she entered the Bay of Bengal. She traversed the 2200 nautical miles with ease. The Diablo had a 11,000 nautical mile (17,000 km) range, being specifically designed to transit the Pacific Ocean.

Locating the target for her torpedoes and mines, was the only issue. On November 23, the Ghazi entered a patrol area codenamed Zone Mike: Madras.

The Ghazi was on a blood hunt. Her quarry was the pride of the Indian navy: its sole aircraft carrier the INS Vikrant.

Just where on the east coast the Vikrant was, the Pakistan navy was not sure. But they knew why she was there: a crack in the carrier’s boiler had reduced the Vikrant’s speed to a limp, barely enough to allow her to launch her deadly warplanes— British-built Sea Hawk fighter jets and French Alize anti-submarine aircraft. The Vikrant was now deployed on India’s east coast where it was thought she would be safe from the Pakistani submarines.

The Ghazi prowled off Chennai for three days before a signal from commodore Submarines, Karachi on November 26 electrified commander Khan. “Occupy Zone Victor with all dispatch. Intelligence indicates carrier in port.”

It was the message Khan had been waiting for. Zone Victor was Visakhapatnam.

The Ghazi arrived here on November 27. Commander Khan hunched over the notched crosshairs of his periscope, scanned the coast for a week. There was no sign of the Vikrant’s distinctive 600-feet long silhouette. He then began laying his trap. A series of two-metre-long cylindrical containers — deadly "influence mines" on the muddy seabed at the mouth of Vizag harbour. Each mine was an aluminum container with a half-ton of high explosive. When the Vikrant or any other warship passed overhead, its magnetic field would trigger the mine off. The resulting column of water would leap out of the sea and shatter the warship.

On the night of December 3, the people of Visakhapatnam were awoken by a thunderous explosion. The blast came from out at sea but the shockwave rattled windows ashore. It could not be explained. At daybreak, fishing boats reported life jackets and other debris. Divers onboard a naval patrol craft sent out to investigate, reported a Pakistani submarine sitting on the seabed. The forward section of the submarine had been blown out. When the divers cut open the hatch, bloated bodies of six crewmen floated out. Divers who entered the conning tower recovered maps, charts and signals that precisely detailed the Ghazi’s final voyage. It was clear what had happened. The Ghazi had suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. One of its deadly mines had either been jammed in a tube and gone off, or she had accidentally triggered off one of the mines she had laid. The warrior had fallen on its own sword even before the war had begun.

The Vikrant, meanwhile, steamed out of her hiding place in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over 1000 miles away. On the morning of December 6, three days after the Ghazi blew itself up, the Vikrant launched the first of several air strikes against coastal installations in East Pakistan. The carrier prevented the seaborne escape of the Pakistan armed forces garrison.

The Indian navy manufactured an elaborate story to back the claim that its warship, the INS Rajput, had sunk the Ghazi. The navy’s official history states that the elderly World War II era destroyer, laid up for decommissioning at Vizag, had rolled down depth-charges which had killed the submarine. In any event, the navy did not allow a detailed investigation into the Ghazi’s sinking and refused offers from the United States and the Soviet Union to raise the vessel.

Exactly a decade ago, I was lucky to have become one of the few civilians to have actually seen the Ghazi.

I was on a Gemini inflatable off the coast of Vizag peering into a colour monitor. Over 30 metres below me, a naval diver stood on the wreck of the submarine and pointed a camera, recording what he saw. Over three decades underwater had stripped away the submarine’s outer pressure hull, its barnacle encrusted surface virtually indistinguishable from the seabed. The expedition which could not have been possible without the assistance of the Indian navy helped me to scrape together evidence to solve one of the biggest naval mysteries of recent times. Pictures, sonar images and testimonies of the divers suggested the Ghazi sank after an internal explosion.

The expedition came five years after I ran a successful campaign at the Indian Express which briefly threw it a lifeline to the Vikrant. Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-BJP government gave the historic warship a Rs 6.5 crore grant. But the grant extended the warship’s life only for a decade.

Successive state governments lacked the enthusiasm or the vision to pursue the project. And even the Indian navy, which tended the warship for nearly two decades after her 1996 retirement, washed their hands off.

In a few weeks, the Vikrant will be atomised. Her role in the 1971 war will be consigned to history books, her valuable steel will be melted into bars, the anonymous building blocks of multi-storeyed buildings and bridges of a new India. The tragic commander Khan remains on board the Ghazi, on "eternal patrol" off Vizag. He has finally had his revenge.

Sunday, 30 November 2014

Black Tornado: the three sieges of Mumbai 26/11. Released on Nov 19, 2014.

Monday, 20 October 2014

End of a start-up Sena

Raj Thackeray: End of a start-up Sena

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena looking for a new script.

POLITICS

| 2-minute read | 20-10-2014

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

@sandeepunnithan

I met Raj Thackeray just once. It was not an interview. The Shiv Sena leader, then only 35, informally interacted with a small group of reporters at the state government headquarters, Mantralaya, ahead of the 2004 Maharashtra state Assembly elections. My only takeaway from that brief encounter was how closely Raj Thackeray resembled his uncle, Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray. The spectacles, the sullen don’t-mess-with-me look, the timepiece worn on the inside of his wrist, the acerbic jibes at Congress and NCP leaders. This was clearly someone carefully positioning himself for a take over.

But evidently that was not to be. That year, Bal Thackeray chose Uddhav to lead the electoral charge. A son who resembled him neither in temperament nor looks, but was, nevertheless, his son. Raj’s campaign for the Sena, hence, was low-key. His anger, which he so successfully hid from the reporters in Mantralaya that day, found expression in full scale revolt in 2006 when he broke away to launch the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Uddhav had failed his test to bring the Shiv Sena into power. So here was Raj, a younger more aggressive version of Bal Thackeray with his start-up Sena furiously batting for the "Marathi manoos".

He was, unlike the gentler Uddhav, unafraid to call for vigilante action against the "outsiders" who were stealing jobs from the sons of the soil. In fact, that was his only electoral plank. It took him far in the 2009 elections. A respectable tally of thirteen assembly seats and a 5.7 per cent vote share. Not enough to capture power but enough to unsettle the Shiv Sena and show Uddhav as a leader incapable of breaking the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party stranglehold on the state.

Another election, Raj would have hoped, would bring the MNS closer to power.

But that, as we now know from the bloody Sunday verdict on October 19, was not to be. The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah battering ram smashed Uddhav’s chief ministerial ambitions and brought the BJP 122 seats in Maharashtra; if Uddhav does swallow his pride and return, it will be to a BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. But nowhere else has a rout been as ignominious as it has for Raj Thackeray’s MNS. Raj’s party has been reduced to a singularity. It won just one Vidhan Sabha seat and was totally wiped out in Mumbai.

Even an "outsider" like Akbaruddin Owaisi’s Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) won two seats, including one in Mumbai. The reasons are not far to see. The MNS was a one-trick pony. A badly made movie with a duplicate for a hero. A set of slapdash action sequences, but no script. The electorate chose the compelling pro-development choice offered by Modi. Raj has not been spotted since the electoral verdict. He is perhaps, looking for a new script.

Writer

SANDEEP UNNITHAN@sandeepunnithan

The writer is Deputy Editor, India Today.

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Friday, 17 October 2014

Future conflicts will be shorter: PM Modi

Future conflicts will be shorter, full scale wars will become rare: PM Modi

Sandeep Unnithan | | New Delhi, October 17, 2014 | UPDATED 17:16 IST

PM Modi waves to soldiers during his visit to Leh in this file photo dating August 12, 2014. Photo: PTIPrime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday told commanders of the army, navy and air force that "the duration of future conflicts will be shorter" and that "full scale wars may become rare" but "force will remain an instrument of deterrence and influencing behaviour".
The Prime Minister's eagerly awaited address at the close of the Combined Commanders Conference was astonishing in its grasp of the troubles bedeviling India's armed forces. He spoke of the need for ' jointmanship', 'transformation' and a 'Digital Armed Force'.
He outlined India's key strategic challenges and priorities (not shared in the press release issued by the PMO) but observed that in addition to the 'familiar challenges' India had to be prepared for a changing world, which demanded a new thinking on our part with regard to economic, diplomatic and security policies. Also read: Chinks in the armour
Prime Ministers' addresses at the combined commanders conferences are generally mundane affairs, that typically steer clear of detail. At the last combined commanders' conference last November, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of managing military budgets in times of economic downturn and civil-military balance. Modi's speech, however, articulated a vision which could instantly translate into instant deliverables on the ground.
He may have, for instance, tacitly approved a long- pending demand of the armed forces for the creation of three new commands: a cyber command, a special forces command and a space command. Modi noted "beyond the immediate, we are facing a future where security challenges will be less predictable; situations will evolve and change swiftly; and, technological changes will make responses more difficult to keep pace with.
"The threats may be known," Modi said, "but the enemy may be invisible. Domination of cyber space will become increasingly important. Control of space may become as critical as that of land, air and sea."
He asked the services to give serious thought to upgrade technological skills for effective "projection of power" by men. "When we speak of Digital India, we would also like to see a Digital Armed Force," he said.
The most important task, the PM observed, was to 'transform our armed forces'. He called for increased jointness and urged the three wings of the Services to work as a team all the way from the lowest levels of the Services to the top. He suggested a number of practical steps to achieve that goal.

Friday, 12 September 2014

Defence in knots cover

soldiers of misfortune

Chinks in the armour / "Defence in Knots" cover story

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Cover Story

September 22, 2014

Chinks in the armour

Modernisation freeze and policy drift over the past decade is aggravated by a part-time defence minister

Sandeep Unnithan | | September 11, 2014 | UPDATED 12:02 IST

An Indian soldier with US marines during a joint military exerciseAround 2:30pm each day, the sentries near the large sandstone Ashoka lions on the first floor of South Block stiffen to attention. Arun Jaitley has entered his wood-panelled office in room 134 after a short drive from the finance ministry office in North Block. This daily change of guard, when the finance minister segues into defence minister, has been a ritual for more than 100 days. The trouble is that the challenges before the defence ministry are full-time. Just as they are for the country's armed forces, currently carrying out an unprecedented humanitarian relief operation in flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir.
"The defence ministry requires undivided attention," says former defence secretary Ajai Vikram Singh. "The present arrangement is unfair to both ministries and the person in charge."
The ministry's spectacular drift over the past decade has seen a muddled policy to buy arms, a stunted capability to build them domestically and a shortage of critical equipment. India's aspirations for a seat at the UN Security Council are unleavened by the fact that for three straight years it has been the world's largest net importer of defence equipment, sourcing arms worth Rs.83,458 crore or nearly 60 per cent of its needs from four P5 nations. China, which the armed forces see as a major military strategic threat in the foreseeable future, meanwhile, went from being the world's largest arms buyer to the fifth-largest arms exporter.
Jaitley is not a plodder. Defence ministry officials say he is quick to grasp complex issues and takes swift decisions. His ministry recently raised foreign direct investment (FDI) to 49 per cent in the defence industry, pending for over a decade, and has a nuanced policy on dealing with defence firms which sets aside his predecessor A.K. Antony's sledgehammer approach of blacklists. There are early signs that his Government emphasises boosting domestic defence production: Jaitley has thrown open to Indian industry a contract to make 197 Light Utility Helicopters worth more than $1 billion, which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) earlier planned to import.
In the coming months the defence minister also needs to fix the defunct defence industrial complex which, despite massive investments, does not yield results. The Ordnance Factory Board alone consumes Rs.1,200 crore each year and is hugely inefficient. It charges the MoD Rs.1.4 crore to overhaul an Infantry Combat Vehicle, instead of Rs.20 lakh it should cost. The reliance on external sources is complete. India has just two indigenous defence platforms which it has designed and built and can offer for export: the Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher and the Akash surface-to-air missile system.

Import dependence disrupts preparedness. An IAF official grimly notes how India's joint project with Ukraine to upgrade more than 100 An-32 transport aircraft has hit a rough patch-five An-32s sent to Ukraine for modernisation are stranded there because of ongoing tensions with Russia. Ukrainian factories also supply the IAF's primary long-range missile, the R-27 for Sukhoi Su-30s and MiG-29s and gas turbines that power most of the present frontline Indian naval warships.
At the core of India's military mess lies the inability of the defence ministry to perform a critical role: lay out a modernisation blueprint. The defence ministry has been unable to bridge the gap between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which designs weapons, the public sector undertakings that produce them and the armed forces which require them. It has failed to prioritise acquisitions; the system currently encourages a first-past-the-post procurement method.
The fault could lie in the lack of a comprehensive national security policy which meshes foreign, economic and defence policy objectives and guides a modernisation programme. Defence planning, instead, flows out of a slim document called the 'Raksha Mantri's Operational Directives' issued every five years. These directives guide all hardware acquisition and shape India's defence posture. The directives are, however, collated from recommendations from the armed forces themselves.
The only vision statement, the 15-year Long Term Integrated Perspective Plan of the three armed forces, is a hardware shopping list. It leads to an inter-services scramble to prioritise arms purchases-the emphasis is on platform replacement rather than capability planning. Individual services function in silos. Coordination among them is hampered by the absence of a full-time chief of defence staff (CDS) as recommended by the Kargil Review Committee in 2001. The CDS is yet to be appointed but his staff, more than 300 service officers who make up the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), is already in place. Critical reforms suggested by the HQ IDS have been ignored by the services. These included a Logistics Command, which could procure supplies for all three services. Service brass are quick to approve reports that expand their empires and swift to reject those that suggest reducing their turf.
Nearly 60 per cent of the Rs.2.2 lakh crore defence budget is spent on manpower costs, leaving only 40 per cent for the services to urgently buy helicopters, submarines and combat jets. Even so, a sluggish acquisition system means it takes the defence ministry nearly eight years to get any weapon system through competitive bidding. Delays in DRDO project are so legendary that Prime MinisterNarendra Modi recently admonished their "chalta hai" (anything goes) attitude. "The world will no longer wait for us."
The only one waiting, it would seem, is the Indian soldier. For comfortable combat boots, lightweight bulletproof vest and a reliable assault rifle. A systemic inability to provide a modern infantry combat kit sees the soldier tucking a one-litre packaged water bottle into his bandolier- his belt has no loops to hang the small military-issue bottle.
The rot within India's war machine is not a military secret. The MoD has, for over a decade, received at least half-a-dozen reports calling for reform. The Kargil Review Committee of 2001, which led to Groups of Ministers' reports recommending a revamp of the structure, the Vijay Kelkar Committee of 2005 which suggested boosting indigenous defence manufacturing and, finally, the 2012 Naresh Chandra Task Force on national security which recommended restructuring the defence forces to meet new challenges of special operations, space and cyber attacks.
Arun Jaitley

Arun JaitleyNone of these reports have been implemented in their entirety. The Kelkar Committee which pushed for corporatising the struggling Ordnance Factory Board and opening up the sector to private sector giants, was shelved reportedly because then-defence minister Antony did not want to upset the powerful trade unions.
The MoD and the armed forces have stubbornly resisted internal reform that could partly reduce pressure for enhancing the defence budget. Internal MoD finance reports from 2011 note a wastage of more than Rs.5,400 crore each year. The Army Service Corps, for instance, buys food worth Rs.2,122 crore but spends Rs.1,500 crore on manpower, an acquisition cost of 70 per cent. (Food Corporation of India has an acquisition cost of 16 per cent.) Nearly 75 per cent of the MoD-run Border Roads Organisation's (BRO) engineers are deployed in administrative jobs instead of in the field. This, even as construction of over 200 strategic roads of more than 13,000 km in the north and North-east are years behind schedule.
High-value defence purchases- such as the Navy's need to import and build six new conventional submarines for Rs.60,000 crore-are not subjected to critical review. A similar 2005 contract to build six Scorpene submarines for Rs.23,000 crore in India, is already five years behind schedule and has not transferred technology.
Merely increasing FDI will not bring in technology. "If that were the case, India should have been a global hub for mobile phone handsets because it has had 100 per cent FDI in telecom for years," says the CEO of a private sector defence firm. Even the other preferred route, of licensed production hardware such as Sukhois, is not the answer.
"Licensed building degrades our capability to produce indigenously designed and developed hard- ware," says Vice Admiral Raman Puri, former IDS chief. Fixing the mess calls for tremendous investments of time, effort and political will. It can only come from a defence minister who stays the reform course.
Followthe writer on Twitter @ SandeepUnnithan

Friday, 5 September 2014

Warship deal runs aground

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DEFENCE

September 15, 2014

Warship deal runs aground

Defence Ministry flags irregularities in purchase of mine-sweepers

Sandeep Unnithan | | September 5, 2014 | UPDATED 12:59 IST

A South Korean Navy minesweeper ofthe type India hopes to acquire.India's first major defence hard-ware import from East Asia is in jeopardy after the defence ministry flagged irregularities in a Rs.2,300 crore deal to buy eight mine counter-measure vessels from South Korea.
On May 29 this year, the ministry encashed a Rs.3 crore bank guarantee furnished by the Kangnam Corporation, which had been shortlisted to supply the minesweepers to the Indian Navy. The liquidation of the guarantee came after an inquiry by the ministry found that the South Korean shipyard may have hired middlemen to facilitate the contract. Employing middlemen in defence deals is banned.
Vendors have to sign a pre-contract Integrity Pact stating that they will not offer bribes and are required to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs.3 crore. "There are questions about the people who the Korean shipyard hired and we are looking at whether their presence in negotiations can be construed as vitiating the process," a defence ministry spokesperson told India Today. The ministry is now awaiting the opinion of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi to whom the case was forwarded in July.
Amit Cowshish, a former financial adviser to the defence ministry, says the quantum of the deviation from the agreement will determine the Government's next course of action. "Breach of the pre-contract Integrity Pact is a very serious matter and it will be difficult for the Government to compromise its own stand."

Kangnam Corporation was shortlisted as it was the cheaper of two firms that had bid for the proposal that was floated in 2008. The Navy wants eight 800-tonne vessels with composite anti-magnetic hulls that can clear sea mines laid by enemy warships, submarines and aircraft to blockade harbours during war. Two vessels would be imported from the foreign vendor for Rs.2,300 crore, a cost that covers technology transfer to build the remaining six vessels at the Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL).
The Navy plans to eventually get 24 such vessels over the next decade at a cost of Rs.24,000 crore. GSL is expected to build 16 more minesweepers in two batches of nine and seven, for a total Rs.16,000 crore. In 2008, Kangnam had bettered Italy's Intermarine Shipyard to close the deal, and by October 2011 it concluded price negotiations with the defence ministry. Kangnam's closest competitor, Italy's intermarine also approached the central vigilance commission with allegations of a lack of transparency in procedure. But sometime in 2012, a BJP MP who is now a cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi Government, wrote to then defence minister AK Antony, raising questions about the presence of defence agents hired by the South Korean shipyard at every stage of negotiations with the government. The ministry launched an internal inquiry which established deviations in the procedure.
As a consequence, the ministry did not sign the contract with the Korean shipyard. (Kangnam Corporation did not respond to a detailed questionnaire sent by India Today). Defence ministry officials believe that the agents were camouflaged as Kangnam's 'offset managers' to handle the mandated defence offsets in the deal, or the reinvestment of 30 per cent of the Rs.2,300 crore contract back into India. The name of a prominent Delhi-based arms agent has been doing the rounds as one of the possible beneficiaries of a three per cent commission in the deal.
Initially though, the defence ministry chose not to act on the findings of the inquiry. It just put the deal in limbo, not unlike the Army's case for acquiring 197 light utility helicopters where procedural deviations had been noticed in 2012. The case remained dormant till it received a fresh impetus when South Korean President Park Geun-he visited New Delhi in January this year. In a joint statement with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, she flagged the pending deal and asked "for his interest in support for the export of Korean minesweepers to India".
After a nudge from the political leadership, the acquisition wing of the defence ministry held a series of meetings between January and April, in which they finally discovered deviations in procedure. This led to the Kangnam bank guarantee being encashed in May.
When the NDA Government took over, it reviewed the UPA's blacklist of global defence firms. In two major decisions, the defence ministry lifted the 2005 ban on South Africa's Denel as well as the ban on dealings with Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica that was imposed after allegations of bribery in the VVIP helicopter deal came to light in 2012. The minesweeper deal also figured in the new Government's first Defence Procurement Board meeting on July 11 but a final decision on it is pending.
The Navy, meanwhile, distraught over gaps in its minesweeping capabilities and the possibility of procurement delays, has strongly pitched for a relook at the Kangnam deal, arguing that its requirement of the minesweepers is extreme and urgent. "We don't have sufficient minesweepers to protect even one harbour in a crisis," a senior naval officer said. Only seven of the 12 minesweepers that were acquired from the erstwhile Soviet Union between 1978 and 1988 are in active service. And only four of them were considered fit for a mid-life upgrade. Delay in the Korean deal, therefore, may compromise the Navy's minesweeping potential.
For the defence ministry, it is a case that can no longer be swept under the carpet.

Friday, 8 August 2014

The quiet general

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August 18, 2014

General Dalbir Singh, the quiet general

Sandeep Unnithan August 8, 2014 | UPDATED 14:49 IST

General Dalbir SinghAs an instructor at the IndianMilitary Academy (IMA) inOctober 1987, General Dalbir Singh, then a captain, urgently dialled a senior regimental officer in army headquarters and requested to join his unit. The 4th battalion of the 5th Gorkha Rifles was among the first two Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) units deployed in Sri Lanka. Earlier, a visit to his former commanding officer's family in Dehradun to convey he had been killed by the LTTE, told him the IPKF was not on an ordinary peacekeeping mission. In 24 hours, Company Commander Dalbir Singh was on an An-32 into Palali airbase in northern Sri Lanka where his unit was extricating a Sikh Light Infantry company, savagely ambushed by the LTTE in University of Jaffna. India's 26th Chief of the Army Staff, General Dalbir Singh, is someone who chooses his battles carefully.
Two years ago, as commander of the Dimapur-based 3 Corps, he remained silent after being subjected to an unprecedented public attack and disciplinary action by the then army chief General V.K. Singh. The outgoing chief had directed his ire at a raid conducted by a Corps military intelligence unit. But the intense, personal nature of the barrage seemed more to do with halting General Dalbir's chances of becoming army chief.
The public attack by the ex-chief continued even after General Dalbir was exonerated of all charges by the defence ministry and cleared as army chief by the outgoing UPA government, a decision ratified by the Narendra ModiGovernment in June this year. In July, a petition filed in the Supreme Court by his IMA batchmate, LtGeneral Ravi Dastane, challenged his elevation as Eastern Army commander in 2012. The petition resurrected some older charges of negligence filed by V.K. Singh but the court refused to stall his appointment. "It was clear in my mind that I had done nothing wrong," the General told close associates when the attack resumed this year. "The truth shall prevail." In public, he maintained a studied silence throughout, talking on national television only to make a statement after taking over as army chief on July 31. He laid down his priorities-modernisation of the force, development of critical infrastructure and welfare of ex-servicemen. Lieutenant General Jasbir Singh (retired), his schoolmate from Sainik School, Chittorgarh, recalls him as a brigadier trekking to all the 50-odd counter-infiltration posts strung along the LoC in north Kashmir.

Outgoing army chief General Bikram Singh described his successor at a private gathering in the Capital as a "soldier's general" and "rooted to the ground". It was, perhaps, a reference to his humble background-the son of a junior commissioned officer from Bishan village in Haryana's Rewari district who tilled the family land and attended classes in an open-air school. Admission into the Sainik School in 1965 put him on course for the National Defence Academy and finally an army commission in 1974. He is among the first service chiefs in recent years not to attend the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, though not a prerequisite for becoming army chief.
Like Bikram Singh, General Dalbir assiduously avoids the media. On July 31, there was that brief finger-wagging warning from him to Pakistan that incidents such as the beheading of Indian soldiers in 2013 would not be tolerated. And then, silence. The media shyness may be a continuation of his predecessor's plan of insulating the Army from media exposure and restoring the sanctity of the chief's office after two years of public hazing in V.K. Singh's tenure. "The nation's weapon of last resort had become a subject of drawing room gossip," says a senior army officer. The new chief has also gone the extra mile to trim public ostentation. Visitors who flocked to the open house he threw at his official home the evening of his takeover, July 31, were instructed to come without bouquets and gifts.
Keeping the world's third largest army away from media gaze may be the easy part, but restoring its sharp edge in his 30-month tenure will be a Himalayan task for General Dalbir. Little has changed since a March 2011 internal army assessment revealed deficiencies of Rs.60,000 crore in the stock of ammunition, missiles and vehicles. It will take at least five years of enhanced budgetary support to restore the Army's ability to fight a fullscale war against Pakistan or China.
The service also needs to allocate resources for a 90,000-soldier Mountain Strike Corps. The Corps was sanctioned at a cost of Rs.64,000 crore.
Most of this money will be spent to equip the Corps with helicopters and howitzers. This will prove to be a major worry given the Army's snail-paced acquisition. It got its last new 155 mm howitzer when General Dalbir was a company commander in Sri Lanka. Its last major doctrinal and acquisition thrust came in General N.C. Vij's tenure between 2003 and 2005.
Assisted by then vice-chief Lt- General Shantanu Choudhary, Vij initiated the Mountain Strike Corps proposal, built a counter-infiltration fence along the LoC and formulated the Cold Start doctrine in case of war with Pakistan. LtGeneral Syed Ata Hasnain, former Commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, sees a similar alignment in the Army with Lieutenant General Philip Campose's appointment as the vicechief. "This is an excellent opportunity for General Dalbir to replicate that model and put the Army on the path of modernisation," says Hasnain. The 760 km LoC with Pakistan isthe frontage for a potential arc of instability this year. The United States military drawdown from Afghanistan coincides with Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir later this year.
Army officials anticipate heightened infiltration from across the border. The 3,000 km disputed border with China is also being attended to, but quietly. General Dalbir's plan involves speeding up the Army's mobilisation along the border. He has prioritised building up of border infrastructure with China. This preparedness will not, however, come in the way of India's ongoing military diplomacy with China. The two sides resumed military-to-military exchanges in 2013 after a four-year break. The Border Defence Cooperation Agreement between the two countries will ensure that incursions like the one in Ladakh's Depsang area in April last year don't escalate into hostilities. Shouldn't be a hard task for a man who thinks before he fights.

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