TRISHUL: The Devil Always Lurks Within The Detail
Forget this dictum, and the devil will be ever-ready to haul all our arses back to hell. And this is exactly what has bedeviled the Barak-2 LR-SAM programme of the MoD-owned Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO). And what has led to this rather expensive and time-consuming comedy of errors (about which I had known since 2011, but am revealing it all only now) being enacted is nothing else but the sheer lack of managerial skills of India’s present-day Defence Minister, Arakkaparambil Kurian Antony.
It may be recalled that India and Israel had inked the 70km-range Barak-2 naval LR-SAM’s joint five-year R & D contract—valued at US$556 million—on January 27, 2006, following 17 months of exhaustive contractual negotiations. For extended ground-based long-range air defence India’s Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) had on July 12, 2007 approved a $2.47 billion project to co-develop the LR-SAM’s 110km-range variant for the Indian Air Force. Subsequently, on February 27, 2009 India signed a $1.4 billion procurement contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the Barak-2’s IAF-specific LR-SAM variant, and this was followed in April the same year by a $1.1 billion contract for procuring the Barak-2’s naval LR-SAM variant. Both variants were to have been co-developed by a consortium of entities that included the DRDO’s Hyderabad-based Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad-based Research Centre Imarat (RCI) and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), and the Bangalore-based Electronics R & D Establishment (LRDE); plus Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) on one hand; and a consortium of IAI’s MLM and ELTA Systems business divisions, RAFAEL and RADA Electronics. The LR-SAM’s critical design review was completed by early May 2008 and its DRDL-developed two-stage pulsed rocket motor was successfully test-fired earlier the same year. The first six sets of these rocket motors were shipped to RAFAEL by the DRDL in July 2008 for further test and integration activities. Series production was due to have begun in 2011 at the Hyderabad-based facilities of BDL.
Now, it so happened that during the contractual negotiations stage between IAI, RAFAEL and RADA on one hand and the MoD and DRDO on the other, the DRDO had ‘assumed’ that the Israeli OEMs would deliver fully integrated Barak-2 area air-defence weapon systems to the DRDO, which in turn would supply them to the Indian Navy (IN) through BEL and BDL. However, by 2012 it had become evident that the DRDO’s ‘assumption’ had in fact, morphed into the mother of all ****-ups. And here’s why: the DRDO had wrongly assumed that the Barak-2 suite, comprising both the LR-SAM rounds and the 9-tonne, mast-mounted ELTA Systems-developed EL/M-2248 MF-STAR S-band volume-search active phased-array radar (APAR), would be fully integrated with the EMDINA Mk2 combat management system, or CMS (developed by the IN’s Weapons & Electronics Systems Engineering Establishment, or WESEE) on board the three Project 15A guided-missile destroyers (DDG). In reality, since the Barak-2’s risk-sharing co-development effort was solely DRDO-led-and-driven from the Indian side, the DRDO never even bothered to seek WESEE’s feedback regarding systems integration challenges and taskings, and consequently—believe it or not— what the MoD-approved joint R & D contract between the India and Israeli military-industrial consortiums specified on paper only pertained to integrating the LR-SAM rounds with the MF-STAR’s fire-control systems, and never addressed the need for integrating this fire-control system with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS.
Consequently, the WESEE, which since the late 1980s had designed and developed, along with Russia’s St Petersburg-based Northern Design Bureau and SUDOEXPORT FSUE, the BEL-built EMCCA computer-aided action information system (CAAIS) for the three Project 16A FFGs and three Project 15 DDGs, the BEL-built EMDINA Mk1 CMS for the three Project 17 FFGs and four Project 28 ASW corvettes, was tasked by the MoD to only develop the applications software of the BEL-built EMDINA Mk2 CMS, plus help the MoD-owned Mazagon Docks Ltd design and fabricate the 9-tonne main mast housing the MF-STAR for the three Project 15A DDGs. Therefore, no responsibility was contractually fixed (by the MoD in its all-knowing wisdom) on who should integrate the Barak-2 suite with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS. As matters now stand, development of systems integration software began in only late 2012 after a supplemental R & D contract was inked between the WESEE and the Israeli military-industrial consortium, and the final end-product will not be available for in-country firing trials till late 2015.
So why did things go so horribly wrong? There are two reasons for that. Firstly, the MoD’s existing discredited practice of maintaining two separate files—the Service File (owned by the concerned armed services HQ) and the Ministry File (owned by the MoD’s civilian component) for each procurement project, and between which the latter is always the only one that is considered sacrosanct and is the only one that makes its way to the CCNS for final approval, needs to be done away with post-haste. Instead, joint accountability for every procurement decision-making process must be enforced so that the concerned Project Director from the concerned armed services works together with the concerned Joint Secretary of the MoD as an embedded team, instead of functioning within administratively isolated cubicles as is presently the case.
Secondly, the DRDO, apart from approaching the IN for learning the art of contract negotiations of a military-industrial nature, should also have invested in acquiring a trials vessel on board which both the Barak-2 LR-SAM suite should have been integrated with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS and subjected to a series of developmental firing-trials at sea. Only after the successful completion of such sea-trials and their validation by the WESEE should a series-production indent have been placed by the MoD with the Indian and Israeli military-industrial consortium. One can now only hope that valuable lessons have been learnt by the MoD and DRDO and history won’t be allowed to repeat itself on board the four Project 15B DDGs and seven Project 17A FFGs.
Forget this dictum, and the devil will be ever-ready to haul all our arses back to hell. And this is exactly what has bedeviled the Barak-2 LR-SAM programme of the MoD-owned Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO). And what has led to this rather expensive and time-consuming comedy of errors (about which I had known since 2011, but am revealing it all only now) being enacted is nothing else but the sheer lack of managerial skills of India’s present-day Defence Minister, Arakkaparambil Kurian Antony.
It may be recalled that India and Israel had inked the 70km-range Barak-2 naval LR-SAM’s joint five-year R & D contract—valued at US$556 million—on January 27, 2006, following 17 months of exhaustive contractual negotiations. For extended ground-based long-range air defence India’s Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) had on July 12, 2007 approved a $2.47 billion project to co-develop the LR-SAM’s 110km-range variant for the Indian Air Force. Subsequently, on February 27, 2009 India signed a $1.4 billion procurement contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the Barak-2’s IAF-specific LR-SAM variant, and this was followed in April the same year by a $1.1 billion contract for procuring the Barak-2’s naval LR-SAM variant. Both variants were to have been co-developed by a consortium of entities that included the DRDO’s Hyderabad-based Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad-based Research Centre Imarat (RCI) and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), and the Bangalore-based Electronics R & D Establishment (LRDE); plus Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) on one hand; and a consortium of IAI’s MLM and ELTA Systems business divisions, RAFAEL and RADA Electronics. The LR-SAM’s critical design review was completed by early May 2008 and its DRDL-developed two-stage pulsed rocket motor was successfully test-fired earlier the same year. The first six sets of these rocket motors were shipped to RAFAEL by the DRDL in July 2008 for further test and integration activities. Series production was due to have begun in 2011 at the Hyderabad-based facilities of BDL.
Now, it so happened that during the contractual negotiations stage between IAI, RAFAEL and RADA on one hand and the MoD and DRDO on the other, the DRDO had ‘assumed’ that the Israeli OEMs would deliver fully integrated Barak-2 area air-defence weapon systems to the DRDO, which in turn would supply them to the Indian Navy (IN) through BEL and BDL. However, by 2012 it had become evident that the DRDO’s ‘assumption’ had in fact, morphed into the mother of all ****-ups. And here’s why: the DRDO had wrongly assumed that the Barak-2 suite, comprising both the LR-SAM rounds and the 9-tonne, mast-mounted ELTA Systems-developed EL/M-2248 MF-STAR S-band volume-search active phased-array radar (APAR), would be fully integrated with the EMDINA Mk2 combat management system, or CMS (developed by the IN’s Weapons & Electronics Systems Engineering Establishment, or WESEE) on board the three Project 15A guided-missile destroyers (DDG). In reality, since the Barak-2’s risk-sharing co-development effort was solely DRDO-led-and-driven from the Indian side, the DRDO never even bothered to seek WESEE’s feedback regarding systems integration challenges and taskings, and consequently—believe it or not— what the MoD-approved joint R & D contract between the India and Israeli military-industrial consortiums specified on paper only pertained to integrating the LR-SAM rounds with the MF-STAR’s fire-control systems, and never addressed the need for integrating this fire-control system with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS.
Consequently, the WESEE, which since the late 1980s had designed and developed, along with Russia’s St Petersburg-based Northern Design Bureau and SUDOEXPORT FSUE, the BEL-built EMCCA computer-aided action information system (CAAIS) for the three Project 16A FFGs and three Project 15 DDGs, the BEL-built EMDINA Mk1 CMS for the three Project 17 FFGs and four Project 28 ASW corvettes, was tasked by the MoD to only develop the applications software of the BEL-built EMDINA Mk2 CMS, plus help the MoD-owned Mazagon Docks Ltd design and fabricate the 9-tonne main mast housing the MF-STAR for the three Project 15A DDGs. Therefore, no responsibility was contractually fixed (by the MoD in its all-knowing wisdom) on who should integrate the Barak-2 suite with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS. As matters now stand, development of systems integration software began in only late 2012 after a supplemental R & D contract was inked between the WESEE and the Israeli military-industrial consortium, and the final end-product will not be available for in-country firing trials till late 2015.
So why did things go so horribly wrong? There are two reasons for that. Firstly, the MoD’s existing discredited practice of maintaining two separate files—the Service File (owned by the concerned armed services HQ) and the Ministry File (owned by the MoD’s civilian component) for each procurement project, and between which the latter is always the only one that is considered sacrosanct and is the only one that makes its way to the CCNS for final approval, needs to be done away with post-haste. Instead, joint accountability for every procurement decision-making process must be enforced so that the concerned Project Director from the concerned armed services works together with the concerned Joint Secretary of the MoD as an embedded team, instead of functioning within administratively isolated cubicles as is presently the case.
Secondly, the DRDO, apart from approaching the IN for learning the art of contract negotiations of a military-industrial nature, should also have invested in acquiring a trials vessel on board which both the Barak-2 LR-SAM suite should have been integrated with the EMDINA Mk2 CMS and subjected to a series of developmental firing-trials at sea. Only after the successful completion of such sea-trials and their validation by the WESEE should a series-production indent have been placed by the MoD with the Indian and Israeli military-industrial consortium. One can now only hope that valuable lessons have been learnt by the MoD and DRDO and history won’t be allowed to repeat itself on board the four Project 15B DDGs and seven Project 17A FFGs.
