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MoD Plans to Nominate BEL for TCS Project | India Defence Online
MoD Plans to Nominate BEL for TCS Project
The Indian Ministry of Defence is scheduled to give yet another discouraging sign to the private firms trying to enter the defence sector, by scrapping competitive bidding for the $2 billion project for developing the Indian Army’s futuristic Tactical Communications System (TCS).
The Indian Ministry of Defence has decided to hand over the crucial project to the state-owned Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) due to the crucial nature of the project and the secrecy needed. Sadly, it was the Ministry of Defence who had invited bids from the private sector in the first place. The India Defence Ministry has declared that the turnaround was caused after reviewing the new cyber policy formulated by the apex National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) – a secretive body that functions under the Cabinet Secretariat, which oversees electronic intelligence.
The TCS project also falls under the purview of this body. The TCS project involves the Indian government funding 80 per cent of the research and development cost, with the remaining 20 per cent to be funded by the chosen vendor for the project.
As for the TCS, it functions like a cellular phone network, the TCS’s exchanges and switches will be installed in high-mobility vehicles which will enable them to be transported and set up anywhere. The messages sent out over the TCS cannot be easily intercepted or jammed since they will not remain on a single frequency. The TCS will be configured in such a way that the transmissions will hop frequencies dozens of times every second in a pre-programmed sequence. This sequence is called a “hopping algorithm”.
The Indian Defence Ministry has declared that in order to maintain the secrecy of this “hopping algorithm”, or the sequence in which the TCS hops frequencies, the state-owned BEL is being handed over the TCS project.
The NTRO has also mandated that the “hopping algorithm” must remain the exclusive preserve of the government. Added to this, a special defence ministry committee is about to recommend that the TCS procurement be categorised as “Make – Strategic, Complex and Security Sensitive Systems”, as opposed to the prior “Make – High Tech”, wherein the private sector was invited. Under the Defence Procurement Policy and the NTRO’s guidelines and its mandate, the TCS project will automatically go to the state-owned firms Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and BEL.
The private sector firms who are left groping in the dark are Wipro, Mahindra Defence Systems, Tata Power, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Rolta and HCL.
These private sector players have blamed the Indian Defence Ministry for belittling their competence in the area of Information Technology, software and communications by making these unfair moves against them. The private players have warned that the current turnaround of events in the TCS project, and a host of others which the Indian government dangles and then snatches away, will only drive away the private sector players as well as shareholders investments in the defence sector.
While the private sector players have been involved in highly crucial projects involving secrecy, the current blow has come as a shock to them. In the TCS project, last year it was decided that top-secret algorithms in the TCS would be developed by the DRDO’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), but the private sector could develop the rest of the project. Even the Kelkar Committee had recommended that companies with a history and proven potential in defence production should be designated Raksha Udyog Ratnas (RURs) and treated at par with DPSUs in the award of projects like the TCS. But, the Indian defence ministry decided against nominating RURs as well.
The private sector players claim that the secrecy can be fully preserved by reserving the ‘hopping algorithm’ for DRDO and BEL, and it seems unfair that just to safeguard the secrecy of the microchip which contains the ‘hopping algorithm’, the defence ministry is handing them an entire $2 billion project.
This will only lead to future crucial projects finding their way in to the laps of the state-owned companies.
The private sector has also cited the false notion of indigenisation that the state-owned firms are fronting in these projects and said that the BEL, which has been awarded the TCS project, builds systems that are built mainly from foreign components. BEL’s Artillery Combat Command and Control System (ACCCS), a system similar to the TCS, has computers and software from Israeli company, Elbit.
In the past, Indian private companies have played important and responsible roles in some of India’s most secret defence projects. Larsen & Toubro, built most of India’s nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, and will have a similar role in building successors to the Arihant. Another private company, Tata Power, which built crucial command systems for the Arihant, also designed the core of the top secret Samyukta Electronic Warfare system. However, they have been unfairly sidelined in the TCS project.
Even the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence, has raised concerns over the false indigenisation where Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) have allegedly fronted for foreign companies. Last year, the Standing Committee’s report noted that a large proportion of procurement takes place through the ordnance factories and DPSUs, which are indigenous sources, but have to depend on imports for manufacturing the finished product.
MoD Plans to Nominate BEL for TCS Project
The Indian Ministry of Defence is scheduled to give yet another discouraging sign to the private firms trying to enter the defence sector, by scrapping competitive bidding for the $2 billion project for developing the Indian Army’s futuristic Tactical Communications System (TCS).
The Indian Ministry of Defence has decided to hand over the crucial project to the state-owned Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) due to the crucial nature of the project and the secrecy needed. Sadly, it was the Ministry of Defence who had invited bids from the private sector in the first place. The India Defence Ministry has declared that the turnaround was caused after reviewing the new cyber policy formulated by the apex National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) – a secretive body that functions under the Cabinet Secretariat, which oversees electronic intelligence.
The TCS project also falls under the purview of this body. The TCS project involves the Indian government funding 80 per cent of the research and development cost, with the remaining 20 per cent to be funded by the chosen vendor for the project.
As for the TCS, it functions like a cellular phone network, the TCS’s exchanges and switches will be installed in high-mobility vehicles which will enable them to be transported and set up anywhere. The messages sent out over the TCS cannot be easily intercepted or jammed since they will not remain on a single frequency. The TCS will be configured in such a way that the transmissions will hop frequencies dozens of times every second in a pre-programmed sequence. This sequence is called a “hopping algorithm”.
The Indian Defence Ministry has declared that in order to maintain the secrecy of this “hopping algorithm”, or the sequence in which the TCS hops frequencies, the state-owned BEL is being handed over the TCS project.
The NTRO has also mandated that the “hopping algorithm” must remain the exclusive preserve of the government. Added to this, a special defence ministry committee is about to recommend that the TCS procurement be categorised as “Make – Strategic, Complex and Security Sensitive Systems”, as opposed to the prior “Make – High Tech”, wherein the private sector was invited. Under the Defence Procurement Policy and the NTRO’s guidelines and its mandate, the TCS project will automatically go to the state-owned firms Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and BEL.
The private sector firms who are left groping in the dark are Wipro, Mahindra Defence Systems, Tata Power, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Rolta and HCL.
These private sector players have blamed the Indian Defence Ministry for belittling their competence in the area of Information Technology, software and communications by making these unfair moves against them. The private players have warned that the current turnaround of events in the TCS project, and a host of others which the Indian government dangles and then snatches away, will only drive away the private sector players as well as shareholders investments in the defence sector.
While the private sector players have been involved in highly crucial projects involving secrecy, the current blow has come as a shock to them. In the TCS project, last year it was decided that top-secret algorithms in the TCS would be developed by the DRDO’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), but the private sector could develop the rest of the project. Even the Kelkar Committee had recommended that companies with a history and proven potential in defence production should be designated Raksha Udyog Ratnas (RURs) and treated at par with DPSUs in the award of projects like the TCS. But, the Indian defence ministry decided against nominating RURs as well.
The private sector players claim that the secrecy can be fully preserved by reserving the ‘hopping algorithm’ for DRDO and BEL, and it seems unfair that just to safeguard the secrecy of the microchip which contains the ‘hopping algorithm’, the defence ministry is handing them an entire $2 billion project.
This will only lead to future crucial projects finding their way in to the laps of the state-owned companies.
The private sector has also cited the false notion of indigenisation that the state-owned firms are fronting in these projects and said that the BEL, which has been awarded the TCS project, builds systems that are built mainly from foreign components. BEL’s Artillery Combat Command and Control System (ACCCS), a system similar to the TCS, has computers and software from Israeli company, Elbit.
In the past, Indian private companies have played important and responsible roles in some of India’s most secret defence projects. Larsen & Toubro, built most of India’s nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, and will have a similar role in building successors to the Arihant. Another private company, Tata Power, which built crucial command systems for the Arihant, also designed the core of the top secret Samyukta Electronic Warfare system. However, they have been unfairly sidelined in the TCS project.
Even the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence, has raised concerns over the false indigenisation where Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) have allegedly fronted for foreign companies. Last year, the Standing Committee’s report noted that a large proportion of procurement takes place through the ordnance factories and DPSUs, which are indigenous sources, but have to depend on imports for manufacturing the finished product.