Army pushes for fast-track purchases to counter China, Pakistan

Kunal Biswas

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Take the case of the 30 mm AGL rounds (auto grenade launcher) - in a belt of 30 rounds, about 40% are misfires. This is from my experience in actual operations - infact we stopped using the OFB ammo and stuck to the Russian ammo with us.

Sniper ammo - our OFB chaps are clueless on the design and manufacture of match grade ammo.

INSAS - instead of running the marathon they should have tried to run the 10 km first. They tried to combine the barrel changing versatility of the Aug Styr and failed. Took a good 17 years to deliver the end product that looks like an FN FNC. The simple solution would have been to rechamber the barrel of the SLR for 5.56 mm, and continue with R&D to develop a new system.
Sir,
The manufacturing qualities of OFB is bad and can risk Soilder Life, But in deign prospect they are good so does DRDO, 7.62X54R Sniper grade ammo is produce in Russia only they hardly sold these rounds outside, Only Russian and Bulgarian manufacture these rounds no other nation archive to make Sniper grade ammo of 7.62x54r..

With all due respect Sir, SLR is not good Rifle in terms of handling, It just too long and heavy..
 

Archer

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We were the users, so please refrain from calling it misinformation.
I called it misinformation because you mixed up OFB's typical stuff with what DRDO did. My point was to differentiate between the two and point out the jibes at the latter, were well deserved by the former which routinely messes up things but is rarely called to account and hides behind national programs helmed by the DRDO.

The problem as you correctly point out, ran with the production organization. The DRDO, in India's bizarre MIC set up, run by a MOD which rarely does a decent coordination job - cannot order the OFB around. There is enough evidence, public - to suggest that they are are frustrated as the users and more so, to get the production up and running to their desired level of quality. Look at it from the designers and developers point of view. They work and get things working after a brutal trials process, hand it to the production guys, chosen for them by the MOD & things go haywire, they take the flack. Basically the risk taker/performer gets saddled with the negative press, whereas the bottleneck escapes without a scratch.

Pretty much every other high end product from BEL etc today the Army employs comes from DRDO. If this sort of misattribution persists, all we are doing is ensuring the DRDO one day will just walk off the job & call it quits, which is an unmitigated disaster for India, because the private sector is nowhere near the R&D capability (go look at the lack of design capability beyond subsystems and it speaks volumes; even the SMEs like Alpha who invest upto 30-40%+ of their turnover on R&D import upto 70% of their subsystems for their ordered products!). And second, it allows the OFB to go its merry way, unreformed.

Each time a problem occurs, the design partner takes the flack, the DPSU hides and license production at DPSU is the answer. Another disaster.

Licensed production is resorted to, killing the program, because the users need a quick answer, and the production agency is all too happy with any order - Indian or foreign & the cycle repeats, with even the imported products flunking again and again.

If we look at the vaunted Israeli 125mm ammo's license production in India? Did it work? It actually didn't. I'd actually go so far as to say, they effectively nearly killed local development by fobbing off penetrator blanks to us, having OFB machine them - and clearly even that did not work - because the rejection rate was as bad as or worse than what happened during the initial days of our local rounds - and we were tied to their apron strings to keep importing these rounds. Only when the IMI got blacklisted did the Army realize the con and ask for the ARDE 125mm round, MK2, development completed several years back, to be actually trialled to see if it met requirements. If ARDE had just cancelled the project, then we would have been nowhere.

Now, let me get to another point..which flows from your first sentence.

The issue is that just being the user is not enough. If most private technology companies just gave the answer - that "we are the user so cannot be wrong" - and I am paraphrasing here - they'd be out of business. The Army can no longer just sit back & have your "vendors" decide everything for you. Especially when you are at the forefront of technology and your lives - literally - are on the line.

Basically, you guys have to sort out the lack of technology experience within the Army and set up a mini technology organization - and by this I mean those who can track and monitor programs of this nature end to end on the user side like the Navy does with its several units. When I see the umpteen Army programs that are delayed or in trouble, whats remarkable is how little the Army is involved beyond just a trials unit. People are deputed, and then withdrawn - for their own career requirements - and this is what even VKS pointed to in a recent interview.

CAG: Army unclear about needs

The above clearly shows the Army's requirements planning and testing methodologies are haywire. Procurements are being driven ad hoc by individual fighting arms (akin to business units in the business sense) with little coordination of the overall program.

The Navy for instance faces every bit the problems the Army faces. They have pathetic shipyards to deal with (labour issues galore), funding challenges, long lead times - yet the Bangalore, Delhi class destroyers are actually being made in India.

Actually, if one speaks to Naval personnel - they have Naval designers, architects etc across the board. Can you tell me one Army "organization" that can claim to have the same. No - in fact people deputed to the DRDO etc to lead these programs are orphaned.

Which brings me back to the second point - you cannot wait for the MOD to get its act together & give you prepackaged systems. As the Navy did, you'll have to take ownership of part of the process.

This will not only give you ownership - which means you can support & influence where it matters - like developing a long term ammunition development strategy and avoiding the mess that is happening at OFB, and if not, then making sure it is limited or at least rectified.

And third, the development is realistic and you have transparency.

Right now, its just a walking disaster - the users in the Army have no ownership beyond testing, the DRDO does not have the power or mandate to enforce production agency control, the production agency is amongst the most politicized and inefficient and could not care less whether it is a local design or imported as long as it has business (on which it'll add a margin).

Leave alone tank ammo, even basic small arms ammo is very substandard.
Agreed!

Archer, OFBs mfg problems in poor procurement management or production quality control are exactly what cause problems. That is why I say their Phds count for sh!t..

OFBs union issues or what ever is not the armed forces problem. If good equipment cannot be supplied then OFBs are useless.
And this is where Lemontree, is where the Army has singularly failed itself. The Navy as far back as the '60s saw that it needed to own its supply chain & second, that the future battlefield required technology (which it could not import). It did two things - it set up institutions - against bitter bureaucratic opposition, which gradually started owning weapons development and deployment programs and second, its institutions formalized parallel streams for weapons platform developers and designers who would work with the local industry to ensure naval requirements were met. Third, and this is in hindsight - amongst the most important - it developed a vision. The Navy has a common vision across platforms extending for a decade, in terms of systems, in terms of its requirements and then it aligns industry accordingly. Just see the lack of arty with the Army and see the missed opportunities there.

A decade or so back, I met a PSU gent who was travelling back after talking to the Army over making local bofors variants. The Army, cancelled the program because it thought imports were around the corner. This gentleman was clearly eager for business. The PSU, one of the better run ones, was idle for business and he was worried about lack of orders. The Army really did not care much. Today, we are doing what we should have done a decade back and its being projected as visionary..we wasted so much time hankering for imports.

The Navy in contrast - when faced with a similar situation funded the near defunct Keltron to make items for it. Today Keltron is a vital part of the Navy supply chain. The issue is not of manpower or talent in these two services, the issue is the Navy has organizations that have started owning products.


I have stated that reverse engineering is OK, but the basics have to be right.
When we were already manufacturing 105 mm tank ammo, then we should have had some our sources of propellant suppliers that manufacture propellants to suit Indian conditions OR we should have been doing our own R&D in propellant design. The key word here is R&D.
LT, the DRDO when it approaches such projects has to divide responsibility. It cannot take up the entire thing. In India, for most projects the Tier 1 partner is a DPSU. A matrix is drawn of capability & different agencies, per past experience take up their portion. Now, if we take a look - with HAL and Tejas, its been 50-50. HAL gets the job done but does not regard it as its baby. With BEL - the agency does a mostly ok job and since it does regard local products as its own revenue base - it has been fairly consistent in development, support and delivery.

The OFB - has been a disaster.

If you look further, the nature of the engagement becomes clear. Of these three agencies, the OFB is the one with the worst management or management challenges, whatever we call it. It was the last to be liberalized. Way back in the 90's HAL for instance decided to move from cost plus production to a more dynamic form, which at least made it realize that it had to implement productivity gains. Similarly, it started R&D centers. BEL is actually one of the biggest spenders in R&D in corporate India. Basically, for all their issues, both DPSUs have some capability to both innovate and also fulfill their end of the bargain.
OFB if you check up, just started on its R&D path a few years back. Capex was also stalled. Management - I need not even bring up the recent CBI thing do I.

The writing on the wall is clear, as to why things are so lackadaisical & why when it comes to land systems, the DRDO is far more challenged than it is with missiles and radars etc, which can be equally complex in some areas but at least the partner does some of its heavy lifting, as it should. In land systems, OFB all the way, and that organization has been stagnating with 1960's era practises in the 2000's..

Given that, the 125mm ammo fiasco is just one of many.

Ideally, there would have been no need of DRDO for small arms etc. But today, it is DRDO which has to make stuff like grenades, as versus concentrating on higher end items like artillery guns etc. or path breaking tech to bring to the field which can then be implemented in products made by OFB.

Reverse engineering and R&D leads to innovation and upgrades the equipment. This is just lacking in the BRDO/ OFB sarkari babus.
If DRDO made a design, did they not recommend to the OFBs the specifications of the the ammo propellant? These are basics that are missing from the mindset of the DRDO/OFB dodos.
And this is where the issue lies. As there is no Army org monitoring the process, you didn't follow the issue & hence blame it all on the DRDO. Of course they would have given the OFB the specifications of what the propellant should and should not do. The OFB if it had R&D capability of its own, would have developed this item. Instead, it just went to its regular suppliers, the Russians and ordered a mixed up batch...this is typical OFB..its not the first case nor will it be the last..

Take the case of the 30 mm AGL rounds (auto grenade launcher) - in a belt of 30 rounds, about 40% are misfires. This is from my experience in actual operations - infact we stopped using the OFB ammo and stuck to the Russian ammo with us.

Sniper ammo - our OFB chaps are clueless on the design and manufacture of match grade ammo.

INSAS - instead of running the marathon they should have tried to run the 10 km first. They tried to combine the barrel changing versatility of the Aug Styr and failed. Took a good 17 years to deliver the end product that looks like an FN FNC. The simple solution would have been to rechamber the barrel of the SLR for 5.56 mm, and continue with R&D to develop a new system. Something like the Chinese have done with the SKS, the T-81 is a fine rifle that arms the majority of the PLA, R&D gave them the QBZ 95. This is how reverse engineering works, and not like the hotchpotch that MoD, DRDO and OFB do.
Agreed, but please do not buy into the propaganda of the QBZ etc. Having researched some on the Chinese system, I can fairly say that we don't have an iota of the wastage and corruption in their system. Their princelings are sitting on an empire that is an iceberg of waste, and all we see is the tip of the 'berg. There is a good book which just explores some of the issues if you have the time: "Poorly made in China"..unlike us, they have no CAG or others to keep them honest..the recent case of how badly their power equipment is performing post import is also reflective of the reality..

The 9mm carbine can be made in a backyard garage and OFB and DRDO cannot make an improvement over a 1920s design???
The Army won't accept a mere improvement, we both know this. And the problem with an import is the OFB will be making it, so its back to square 1..

HF-24 - was a very fine fighter-bomber designed by the great Tank Kurt. Instead on working on obtaining a better engine for the aircraft, we let the project die!!!...
And the blame for this rests in part with both HAL and also with a significant section of the IAF who saw this plane as a hindrance to the imports of better off the shelf jets..which is why I said product development capability is something the services need across the board..

Archer, with all due respect the DRDO and OFB lack a passion for their vocation. OFBs should be privatised to see any improvement in the weapons manufacturing industry.
Here I have to disagree, having spoken to a wide cross section of DRDO and DPSU personnel, plus seen their products, I can quite clearly say the former have a passion for their work, but are severely fed up of the prevailing attitude where they are blamed for anything and everything, while the latter - the DPSUs, many have an attitude, that whether it is local or foreign - all that matters is that their order books be full.

Lemontree, what you have to understand is that merely calling these guys names etc is not going to work. What will happen is that the brightest and best are simply going to be fed up and leave with a degree of contempt for the services and feeling they are unfairly targeted, while the mediocre remain behind with the attitude that they'll just play a game as the DPSU lot are. The civilians - and we both know this- notions of patriotism apart - profit rules. They'll work at margins which make the BEL etc guys look like angels over the longer term.

What the Army et al have to do is to begin working with the best manpower of the local agencies - DRDO, DPSU to develop products. The reason we buy stuff today from the Israelis and French are becuase they have firmly integrated their militarys into the product development stage. The end result is they put up with the initial troubles of maturing a product, but the payoff is huge over a period of time. The Navy developed an entire CMS with BEL.

Of course, for all this to happen, the OFB needs to be reformed, but you guys cant sit and wait for that to happen. Learn from the Navy experience and take ownership and then begin parceling out contracts to the private sector in land systems. If the Navy could get an oil manufacturer to make gearboxes for its warships, getting a Mahindra to make small arms is chump change in the matter. It won't be easy, it will require political savvy and will take time, but its needed. A product owner perception has to be there in the Army. That way, its not just DRDO or XYZ versus the OFB etc. The user who is part of the project can cast his vote as well to decide how the project is to be scheduled and run. Greater transparency keeps everyone on their toes as well

This change has to come from the users as well. Sitting on the sidelines and complaining is not going to get the Army anywhere, but just lead to the Russians etc gypping us more. Raising prices on the eve of conflict by 3X-4X is the usual but a day may come when they don't even have what we want.
 
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Archer

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if we are buying konkurs M from russia then why do we need javelin....??
Konkurs M is a drop into the existing launchers held by both the Mech units (BMPs) and infantry. It allows them to field a missile that can take out ERA equipped armor at 4 km +. Javelins will likely be given to the units which lack current anti-armour, plus special units.
 

Ray

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Pushing alone will not work.

Some bureaucratic necks have to be wrung!
 

Ray

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But it can and has scared China.

Check the Chinese media for articles that are totally outraged!
 

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