The key point is whether the sums allocated for CAPEX are enough to address the key needs for the coming year?
What major purchases are planned and how long will they take to be inducted into the system?
There will never be enough CAPEX as the babudom, govt and services between them see to it that procurements are a painful and slow process drawn out for as long as possible with every possible twist and turn along the way.
List is long and growing day by day:
C295
AAR
MCMV
Shallow water ASW vessels
MRCBF
Minesweepers
NMRH
NUH
MGS
Small arms (assualt rifles, sniper rifles, carbines etc)
SSKs
MMA
LRMPA (P-8I, follow on)
C-17 (follow on)
FICV
ATGMs
UAVs (micro, MALE, HALE)
Rafale (follow on)
The list above easily ammounts to >$200bn USD and it is the deals that have NOT been signed but there is an open requirement for, ongoing Indian projects like SSN, SSBN LUH, LCH, IMRH, QRSAM, Nirbhay etc that still need funding haven't in addition to the above been included. And this is a very rough list that lists only the top most "headline grabbers", there are masses of "less sexy" equipment that will be needed also
Over the next 7 years CAPEX needs will be close to $500bn just to fund the above, hard to see that being granted with the defence spending actually contracting each year vis a vis GDP.
Maake it to 3% of gdp and our dalals will just go on an import spree, ditching our indigenous products.
This is sadly true, one of the (few) things to cheer about under NDA has been the huge ramp up in Made in India defence equipment purchases (LCA, LCH, AKASH, QRSAM etc), give the military more and surely FOREX is going to fly out of the door faster than you can blink.
Not really sure what the solution to this is, DPP-2016 has provision to favour "IDDM" (Indian designed devloped and made) but DPP-2016 has gone absolutely NOWHERE, almost no new deals have been launched or signed under NDA, almost all are carried over from UPA era.