Now, a tank of worms crawl out of DRDOs Arjun
Natteri Adigal
30 April 2008, Wednesday
CLOSE ON the heels of the Indian Air Force (IAF) being slammed by ultra-patriotic scientists and technologists, it is now the turn of the Directorate General of Mechanised Warfare (DGMF) to get the beating from bureaucrats and politicians, batting for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The R&D behemoth, which routinely hogs media limelight for the feel-good factor involved in its breakthroughs, considers
IAF as insensitive to national pride. The airmen have chosen to be disloyal to the country and send out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to six global manufacturers for the acquisition of 126 multi-role combat aircrafts. If IAF is unpatriotic for losing faith in the ever-elusive Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA), the Army is accused of being extremely reluctant to induct Arjun battle tanks, successfully developed indigenously by it. Citing that the indigenous tank has undergone extensive trials driven over 75,000 km, fired over10,000 ammunition rounds they claim the Arjuns have proven themselves.
The Army seems more keen on inducting foreign tanks at great cost rather than indigenous ones, says a
high profile lobbyist engaged by DRDO. The Indian Army has been obliquely accused of internal sabotage of the nationally important strategic project. Rao Inderjit Singh, the honourable minister of state
in charge of defence production in the Manmohan Singh government has implied disloyalty of the combat officers from the mechanised forces of the Army, by stating, The possibility of sabotage in the recent winter trials of the (Arjun) tanks should be examined. The dignitary is not as one might imagine from his authoritative note a knowledgeable one-time military officer, well versed in tank warfare. Inderjit Singh is supposed to be a humble farmer cum lawyer and owes his position to former chief minister of Haryana and his illustrious father, Rao Birender Singh, noted as past master in the game of political disloyalty and defection. Far from being a decorated officer, he is unlikely to have attended any National Cadet Corps (NCC) drill as a student!
DRDO was assigned the work of building Indias own Main Battle Tank (MBT) in 1974. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was set on projecting herself as a formidable leader of the Indian Ocean region after
her triumph in creating Bangladesh and becoming Durga in the eyes of gullible Indians. Just like the indigenous development of nuclear reactors and weapons undertaken by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC),
the only achievement of DRDO in the MBT project was to give it a formidable name Arjun! It missed deadline after deadline on targets set by itself. While the unfulfilled promises of BARC about a breakthrough in nuclear power sector being just around the corner, could be made up by setting up numerous inefficient thermal power plants, similar hollow promises by DRDO about the MBT (as well as about the LCA) did not present any such alternative to the defence services. Eventually, the organisation that has become noted for sky-high levels of nepotism, corruption and non-performance, lost any semblance of trust it had enjoyed with the Army and the IAF.
The army had to buy the T-72 tanks in late 1970s and T-90 tanks in the 1990s from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The trusted friend of India was the monopoly supplier, enjoying good clout with top politicians and bureaucrats of New Delhi. So, the
Army had to live with numerous technical glitches in these second grade tanks. Moscow sucked up billions of dollars from Indians in the guise of rupee trade, while worthies from Congress and communist parties were content with the crumbs thrown at them.
In 2000, the Army was forced, despite serious deficiencies in the half baked imitations touted by DRDO, to place an order for 124 Arjun tanks. These were supposed to be manufactured by the Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF) at Avadi, near Chennai and handed over by 2008-09. Even as five machines submitted after long delays to the Army for Accelerated Usage-cum-Reliability Trials (AURT) are yet to be cleared, HVF claims to have almost completed assembly of several tanks under this order at great expense.
Reporting on the third round of AURT last winter, when the tanks miserably failed to stand up to the stringent requirements, the Army told honourable MPs, comprising of the standing committee on defence, We (Army) have just carried out the trial in winter. The tanks have performed very poorly. There have been four engine failures so far... There has been a problem. The defence minister has been apprised by the (Army) chief... So, a
lot of improvements have to be done before the Army will be satisfied with the Arjun tank.
The public relation folk of DRDO and Indias breed of armchair strategic analysts started finding fault with the Army, claiming that the DGMF systematically undermined the project. The super-brilliant scientists of DRDO went to the extent of
questioning the intelligence of the Army officers. It was said that whenever they approached a technology solution, the
Army would get new ideas from the latest issue of Janes Defence Weekly and upgrade the design goalposts! The logic of the soldiers that they could not accept a tank-equivalent of PC-XT in the age of Pentium 4 has been portrayed as their keenness to please foreign arms dealers!
Interestingly, the indigenous Arjun is powered by a German engine and the transmission components are designed according to German technology, just like the indigenous Tejas LCA has a General Electric power plant.In both cases, suboptimal design of the other components, awry integration of systems and too high a weight have led to the failure of proven engines.
The MPs, in their superior wisdom, have observed, The committee, however, is startled to hear now from a representative of the Army that the Arjun tanks have performed very poorly and a lot of improvements have to be made before the Army is satisfied with the Arjun tank.
It is not clear why things went wrong with the Arjun tank. In any case, the causes for the failure of the Arjun tank should be identified without loss of time...It requires only a little bit of common sense to make the causes clear!
The
netas and babus want the Army and IAF to emulate the Indian Navy and fully participate in indigenous design and development of their needs. The worthies have found fault with the soldiers for seeing the Arjun not as a national defence project, but as a tank that they must drive into battle! In effect, the netas are against adopting a judgmental approach in approving indigenous items. Army Chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor has rushed to HVF as part of the stocktaking by the government, in the wake of failure of the trials.
High pressure lobbying has been mounted to force the Army to somehow give grace marks and pass the Arjuns in the fourth round of AUCRT in May.
No rational person will find fault with combat officers from the mechanised forces for seeing the Arjun as a tank. After all, the Army is supposed to maintain the tanks over extended periods in combat-ready condition and can compromise on reliability only at the countrys peril. If the netas need to peddle feel-good euphoria to their illiterate vote banks, there are other areas for that.
They can boast of any number of make-believe breakthroughs on other fronts like Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), moon missions, submarine-fired nukes and such other fictitious strengths, which are never intended to be used. Any number of desk-bound, bogus scientists and technologists could be employed for that purpose. Similarly,
our Navy is minuscule and has only a ceremonial presence.
Even if all the allocated money is siphoned off in junks like Kitty Hawk or Admiral Gorshkov, it is not going to make much difference. But, when it comes to real military might, there can be no compromise on quality. It is heartening that the Army and IAF top brass are standing firm and not betraying their fighters.
They simply cannot accept mediocre products that are even worse than Russian ones, just because they are indigenous and can generate euphoria. Hopefully, the Army and IAF will succeed in drilling sanity into the heads of the babus and netas that manufacture of mission-critical equipment and subsequently R&D at a later stage are better left to be done by entities with core skills and requisite investments. They cannot be achieved just by hollow self-pride. Also,
cutting edge R&D can have meaning only after high-tech manufacture is mastered.