| K.P. NAYAR |
Washington, Feb. 5: When Pratibha Patil travelled to Europe last October, she and others in her entourage had a pleasant surprise in the sky. At one point along the air space that the President’s flight was using, half a squadron of Eurofighters appeared on both sides of her Air India plane. In the graceful style of these sleek war machines, they escorted the presidential aircraft to its safe landing at Patil’s next destination. Even so, those manning the Eurofighters could not resist showing off. When the Eurofighters displayed the prowess of this advanced new-generation, multi-role combat aircraft to the President, members of Parliament and senior officials accompanying her, New Delhi’s quest for 126 planes of its kind could not have been far from the minds of their pilots. The competition for the biggest military aviation deal in history, which began 11 years ago when the defence ministry initiated its “request for information” or RFI, had just entered its final and decisive phase. But the impromptu decision to send the Eurofighters across European skies to impress the President was typical of what cost some rivals of Dassault Aviation — last week’s winners — the lucrative Indian Air Force contract. It was somewhat reminiscent of Henry Kissinger’s disastrous invitation to defence minister Jagjivan Ram to visit Washington in 1971 as the sub-continent was heading into war, as recounted by Rukmini Menon, who was then joint secretary for the US in South Block. “Why should I visit Washington?” Ram asked a non-plussed Kissinger and proceeded to tell him how American arms supplies had emboldened Pakistan to ruthlessly suppress East Pakistanis. Partly, it was a similar approach that resulted in Boeing’s F-18E and Lockheed Martin’s F-16E being turfed out of the competition for the IAF deal earlier in the race. Not solely with the multi-role combat aircraft deal in mind, the Obama administration had made too much noise bereft of substance about the first state visit of his administration and Barack Obama’s first state dinner in honour of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There was a time when India’s rulers could solely be influenced by gimmicks. But theatrics and atmospherics can no longer substitute hard policy options. This is one lesson New Delhi has hopefully absorbed firsthand from intense, albeit under the radar interaction with Israelis — especially in defence matters — in the last 20 years. Then there was A.K. Antony, whom the losers in the bid for the IAF deal had not reckoned with. Antony, by nature, is averse to being the public face of decision-making. This has been the case throughout his tenure as defence minister, especially during scandals such as the Adarsh housing scam that rocked the army. Each time it was clear that the defence minister had made up his mind, but the decisions were put out as if they were taken elsewhere, along the proper channel. Such an approach came through clearly in his most detailed statement on January 31 on the controversy about the army chief’s age. Ending months of virtual silence in the matter, Antony blamed the army for sitting on the problem for 36 years and then dealing with it in its own wisdom. So much so the army chief Gen. V.K. Singh had to agree with the minister. Antony has maintained in public throughout that the multi-role combat aircraft acquisition process is a technical matter that would be decided by professionals in uniform. But such a public position overlooks the reality that Antony’s core support team in his ministry is much more ideological than in any other wing of the present government. Like civil servants, men in uniform are not immune from ministerial winds blowing in a particular direction. Ideological considerations have prevented Antony from visiting Israel and from signing at least three defence agreements with the Americans which his core team views as compromising India’s strategic autonomy. If the Russian plane on offer, MiG-35, had not clearly failed the tests, it was conceivable that it would very much have been in the reckoning. With the Russians out of the way, it did weigh with the political leadership in the defence ministry that France favours a multi-polar world and that India is a beneficiary of such an approach. France won the bid for the entire order because it supplemented the requirements of the global tender with sweeteners that in the real world of strategic engagement, only three countries can offer India: Russia and Israel, in addition to France itself. The collaborations that France has offered India in recent years in the field of intelligence sharing and upgrade are without parallel. Naturally, this is an area where co-operation cannot be publicised by the very nature of such engagement. India and France face somewhat similar threats of domestic terrorism, vastly different from the threats faced by the US, Russia or even Israel. The assistance that Paris has offered New Delhi in preparing the country against such threats and the constant upgrading of their assistance went a long way towards creating an environment that favoured the French on the aircraft deal. It was in direct contrast to Washington’s approach: the bulk of India’s intelligence community and key bureaucrats at decision-making levels believe that the Americans two-timed New Delhi on David Coleman Headley, their double agent in Chicago who played a major role in the Pakistan-supported terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. In addition, spread across India’s entire political spectrum that includes much of the Opposition, is a firm conviction that India would not have come out unscathed from the decision to conduct the 1998 nuclear tests if it were not for the steadfast backing that President Jacques Chirac — and Nicolas Sarkozy after him — offered India in an hour of great need. It is not widely known that during the Kargil war in 1999, the French approved with lightning speed the adaptation of Indian Air Force Mirages in tandem with equally speedy Israeli supplies of laser-guided bombs which they delivered in Srinagar: without such French and Israeli support, India could have lost Kargil to Pervez Musharraf’s perfidy. No honourable Indian in uniform can forget that in such a situation, the US or Britain would have probably suspended all military supplies to the combatants to prove their bona fides as honest brokers for peace. Policies may be the result of collective decision-making in governments, but within that framework, individuals do matter. One such individual who has left a mark on Franco-Indian relations is Jean-David Levitte, whose critical role in securing the Rafale deal for his country will never become a matter of public record because of the nature of his job. Levitte is diplomatic adviser and “Sherpa” to Sarkozy, who made amends for the temperamental mistakes during his President’s first visit to India as chief guest during Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi and organised a second trip that turned out to be one of most productive and substantive visits by any head of state to India. Levitte was senior diplomatic adviser to Chirac too when Brajesh Mishra, the then principal secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, flew to Paris as his first stop abroad seeking diplomatic support after the Pokhran II nuclear tests. Mishra found such support in Paris before he extracted reluctant support from Moscow. Soon afterwards, Levitte became French permanent representative to the UN in New York where he led, along with Russia, a split among the five permanent members of the Security Council on the issue of punishing India through sanctions on the nuclear issue. Later he was ambassador in Washington. Two of the countries which have been after the multi-role combat aircraft deal, the US and Britain, were at that time in the forefront of efforts in the Security Council to choke India into submission and roll back its nuclear programme. Within the political and civilian leadership of India’s defence establishment, there has been no doubt that other things being equal, India should reward a friend in need, in this case, France. |
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Why India chose Rafale
Interceptor missile test on February 10
India's missile scientists are gearing to conduct an interceptor missile test on February 10 as part of the plans to deploy a two-layered Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system.
This will be the seventh interceptor mission. The exercise is meant to test the capability of the system to kill incoming ballistic missiles with a range of 2,000-3,000 km. Of the six exercises held to date — the first was in November 2006 — five have been successful.
The proposed operation would be closer to the deployable configuration of the system for endo-atmospheric interception, according to Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) officials. During the upcoming mission, the interception of the target missile is planned at an altitude of 15 km in the endo-atmosphere. Four of the interceptor missile tests conducted so far have been in the endo-atmosphere, two in the exo-atmosphere.
Soon after the modified surface-to-surface target missile, Prithvi, is launched from Chandipur, an Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile will take off from Wheeler Island to intercept and destroy the incoming projectile, which, after reaching a height of 100 km, will start descending.
Upon Prithvi's launch, the Long-Range Tracking Radars near Puri will start tracking the target. A little later, the Multi Functional Radars located near seaport town Paradip will detect and track the missile and provide data for the guidance computer. This will compute the flight path of the target missile and launch the interceptor at the right time. The interceptor computes the optimal path for the missile to hit the target. In the terminal phase, the radiofrequency seeker will track the target and enable the interceptor to home in on to the target.
Ajai Shukla: Where is India's light fighter? IAF wanted to replace MiG-21s with light fighters. But now it will have heavy and enormously expensive Rafale
Kudos to the government for selecting a fighter aircraft for a depleted Indian Air Force (IAF), which currently fields barely 34 fighter squadrons (21 aircraft per squadron) against an assessed requirement of 45. While zeroing in on the French Rafale, New Delhi has said “no thanks” to arms supply heavyweights whose political and technological clout often bludgeons procurement decisions in their favour. This was helped, admittedly, by India’s ability to soothe the losers with alternative largesse — Washington with contracts for transport and maritime aircraft; Moscow with deals for helicopters, fighters and warships; London with trainer jets; and Stockholm with the hope of mammoth deals for artillery guns and conventional submarines. But that should not detract from the IAF’s credit for running a fair, transparent and relatively quick contest in which, for the first time in India, a detailed “life cycle” evaluation looked beyond the fighter’s ticker price to the cost of operating it through a service life of four decades.
The difficulty in conducting such an exercise is illustrated in Brazil, where competing pulls and pressures have stymied a simpler decision between the Boeing F/A-18, the Rafale and the Gripen NG fighters.
India’s decision stemmed from Defence Minister A K Antony’s insistence on letting the IAF determine which aircraft best met its needs. But, sadly, this unwise reliance on the views of fighter pilots alone has twisted the rationale for buying a fighter. Instead of the cheap, single-engine, light fighter that the IAF set out to buy in the 1990s to replace India’s ageing MiG-21 fleet, the IAF will have 126 heavy, twin-engine and enormously expensive Rafales.
These six squadrons of Rafales could go up to nine squadrons through a follow-on order, say IAF planners. Add to those 12 squadrons of the Sukhoi-30MKI and another 12 squadrons of the fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) that India is co-developing with Russia, and the IAF will field 33 squadrons of heavy, high-performance fighters by 2022 — 75 per cent of its 45-squadron fighter fleet. This might gladden the heart of a young fighter pilot, just as a fleet of Ferraris would gladden the heart of a college-going youngster, even if his commute were two kilometres through crowded traffic. But it is worrisome to a defence planner who seeks a balanced force for performing a multitude of tasks economically.
Light fighters are affordable, and cheaper to buy and to fly. Being smaller, they are inherently more stealthy, less observable on enemy radars. A top-class light fighter is one-third the cost of a Rafale. Even though the Rafale is a powerful, high-quality brute of a combat machine, it will almost always lose in a contest with three modern light fighters. “Quality is fine,” said Stalin, always the pragmatist; “but quantity has a quality of its own.”
That is why the USAF and the Israeli air forces have large fleets of single-engine F-16 fighters. That is also the logic for India’s MiG-21 fleet and for the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) that will replace it. In the late 1990s, whilst justifying the procurement of fighters from abroad, the IAF cited delays in the Tejas programme and suggested that the Mirage-2000 production line be bought from Dassault, and the single-engine fighter be built in India. But when the ministry of defence (MoD), still smarting from the Tehelka exposes, insisted on a multi-vendor global tender, the IAF reframed its requirements. The term became MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) and the specifications favoured a twin-engine, heavy fighter. Astonishingly, nobody in the MoD seemed to notice the turnabout or object to the contradiction.
Today, India’s light fighter hangars are emptying fast with replacements lagging. By 2013-14, seven squadrons of MiG-21s must retire; another six squadrons will be phased out by 2017, as will four squadrons of MiG-27s. It is vital, therefore, to drive home the indigenous Tejas programme, committing the money, resources and organisational effort needed for developing and manufacturing at least 10-12 squadrons of progressively improved Tejas light fighters.
Compared to the estimated Rs 75,000 crore for just 126 Rafale, the Tejas’ budget has been a pittance. Since 1983, Rs 9,690 crore has gone into aerospace infrastructure – R&D laboratories, defence factories, private industry, academic institutions, and a world-class test facility, the National Flight Testing Centre (NFTC) – and into building and flight-testing some 20 Tejas prototypes. An additional Rs 4,353 crore are earmarked for the Tejas Mark II. Boosted allocations must now expand R&D facilities and up-skill the manpower that drives the Tejas programme.
Simultaneously, a world-class Tejas assembly facility must be built, incorporating the manufacturing practices and quality control measures that characterise aircraft production worldwide. Currently, Tejas manufacture is the responsibility of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), which has been without a CEO since Ashok Nayak retired last October. With HAL’s focus on ongoing production lines like the Sukhoi-30MKI, Tejas assembly is hardly a priority. Nor is there emphasis on reducing manufacturing cost, which is currently too high at Rs 180-200 crore ($36-40 million) per Tejas Mark I. That must be brought down to Rs 125-150 crore ($25-30 million) to make the LCA a compelling buy on the international market. Export orders would allow scale manufacturing, driving down prices further.
Paying Rs 75,000 crore for the Rafale will indeed boost national defence. But a far smaller expenditure on the Indian aerospace establishment, and the squeezing of key technologies from Dassault and Thales during contract negotiations, will ensure that the Rafale is the last fighter that India buys abroad.
Anti-terror body NCTC to be operational from Mar 1
New Delhi: Toughening its stand on counter-terrorism, the government has decided to operationalise from March 1 the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), a body meant to coordinate operations against terror groups.
Three weeks after the Ministry of Home Affairs got the nod from Cabinet Committee of Security, it unveiled its plan of the anti-terror body which has been given powers to arrest and carry out searches and will have a separate wing for operations.
"It (NCTC) shall come into force with effect from March 1,....the officers of the operations divisions of the NCTC shall have the power to arrest and power to search under Section 43A of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967," the order said.
The unit would be headed by a director of the rank of Additional Director General with three units – gathering intelligence, analysis of intelligence and carrying out operations -- and each of these division would be headed by a joint director of Intelligence Bureau.
This is the second such organisation set up by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram post 26/11 after the National Investigation Agency.
The NCTC will have the power to requisition services of the National Security Guard or the elite Black Cat commandos.
Official sources said through the NCTC will be part of IB initially, in the long run it will come into existence as a separate entity.
PTI
"It (NCTC) shall come into force with effect from March 1,....the officers of the operations divisions of the NCTC shall have the power to arrest and power to search under Section 43A of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967," the order said.
The unit would be headed by a director of the rank of Additional Director General with three units – gathering intelligence, analysis of intelligence and carrying out operations -- and each of these division would be headed by a joint director of Intelligence Bureau.
This is the second such organisation set up by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram post 26/11 after the National Investigation Agency.
The NCTC will have the power to requisition services of the National Security Guard or the elite Black Cat commandos.
Official sources said through the NCTC will be part of IB initially, in the long run it will come into existence as a separate entity.
PTI
Indian Air Force's biggest ever wargame deferred
NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force has deferred its biggest ever wargame codenamed 'Operation Livewire', which was scheduled to begin later next month, after realising that the force needed to integrate its new acquisitions into the service before holding the exercise.
The IAF was planning to deploy all its frontline aircraft, including the Su-30MKI, Jaguar, Mirage 2000 and the AWACs, at the exercise earlier planned be held between March 24 and April 15.
India, Russia to hold Exercise INDRA
NEW DELHI: Indian Army troops will proceed to Russia later this year for participating in the annual INDRA series of exercise between the two armies.
Moscow had called off the exercise scheduled to be held in June last year in Russia. An exercise between the navies of the two sides was also cancelled after Russia cited the engagement of their ships in rescue operations in Tsunami-hit Japan.
12 more marine police stations for Gujarat shores
Come August and the 1,600-km-long seashore of Gujarat will be strengthened with additional 31 police boats, 1,000 trained police officers and 12 marine police stations. The Centre, in its endeavour to fortify coastal areas of the nation, has allocated more funds for Gujarat seashore, leading to an increase in number of marine police stations from 10 to 22.
The new marine police stations will be situated close to the coast, the locations of which have been finalised by Gujarat government. However, the state is currently in talks with central security agencies like Coast Guard and Indian Navy to provide specialised training to new staff to be recruited at these stations.
“900 constabulary and 100 police officers will be recruited in these new police stations,” said a source in home department of state government, adding that new officers, who are receiving training at police academies, will be recruited for marine security of the state. The Centre will also allot 31 patrolling boats to Gujarat police to enhance bandobast at the shores. “Tender for these boats had already been issued, and will be opened on February 15, 2012,” said sources. Gujarat may get the boats in next six months. There are 10 police stations and 30 boats functioning in coastal Gujarat. In 6 months, these are expected to grow to 22 and 31 respectively. Gujarat is the first state to complete this phase of coastal security and gear up for the second, said sources.
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