India’s Military Modernisation – The Future is Digital and Indigenous

Warfare has undergone rapid changes and technological superiority is increasingly going to be the decisive factor in future battles. As India’s armed forces embark on a massive modernisation programme, with digitisation being the driving aim, the stage is set for a massive thrust in indigenous research and development

By Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Admin SPECIAL FEATURE : Indian Armed Forces Modernisation

India’s intensified competition with communist China, heightened instability in Pakistan, New Delhi’s growing military ties with the West, the linkup between home-grown radicals and the Islamic State, and the festering Maoist insurgency have transformed the conversation about Indian defence issues from what it was before. The new thinking in the apex political and military leadership is that the country needs to transform its armed forces to be able to deal with multi-front conflicts such as a “2.5 Front War” in which India would face a coordinated attack by China, Pakistan and internal enemies. There is now a clear understanding that if India is able to ultimately achieve its destined place as an apex power, it should not only have the ability to protect its borders but also its economic and geopolitical interests beyond our borders.

No large country can aspire to be a global power without a strong military. And there cannot be a strong military without a substantial military-industrial complex that churns out advanced weapons as and when required by the armed forces. For decades, India’s military might was grounded in massive imports of military equipment, mostly from Russia, and lately in substantial quantities from France, Europe and the US. As of 2022, over half of India’s military equipment is either of Soviet or Russian origin.

However, imports create a window of vulnerability in times of war as happened during each of India’s conflicts. For instance, during the Kargil War, India was denied vital GPS data by the US, the IAF had to import laser-guided bombs on an emergency basis, and ammunition too had to be hurriedly bought from Israel. In fact, in the 1962, 1965 and 1971 Wars, India fought with mostly outdated weapons. It was primarily due to the bravery and innovation of our soldiers that India won in 1965 and 1971.

 

Future threats

As the ongoing Ukraine War has demonstrated, modern conflicts are likely to be high-intensity, technologically sophisticated conventional warfare against adversaries with similarly sophisticated military capabilities.

 
The new thinking in the apex political and military leadership is that the country needs to transform its armed forces to be able to deal with multi-front conflicts such as a “2.5 Front War” in which India would face a coordinated attack by China, Pakistan and internal enemies. There is now a clear understanding that if India is able to ultimately achieve its destined place as an apex power, it should not only have the ability to protect its borders but also its economic and geopolitical interests beyond our borders

The Ministry of Defence’s ‘Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap’ agrees that technological superiority is increasingly going to be the decisive factor in future battles. “Warfare has already undergone rapid changes with the impact of new and emerging technologies of the past two decades, especially in the fields of electronics, miniaturisation, materials and computing. This has had a profound impact on the development of more versatile systems across a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from communications to sensors and guided weapons.”

 

Computing technology has, in addition, made an entry into systems across every warfare capability thus adding a new dimension to modern warfighting. Adoption of the latest technology in developing new warfare systems would propel the Indian armed forces towards their goal of achieving a technological edge over our adversaries. “This in turn would permit India to prevail decisively across the entire spectrum of conflict, even with reduced force levels, while ensuring that our forces suffer minimal casualties. The easy accessibility of modern weapons and systems employing the latest technologies is also a factor to be considered. This reality predicates that we are well equipped to handle threats arising from such proliferation in the most cost-effective and optimum manner.”

Against this backdrop, the Indian armed forces are going in for a wide spectrum of capabilities. As well as big-ticket platforms such as fighters (AMCA and Tejas), stealth warships, ballistic missiles, BRAHMOS supersonic cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, nuclear attack submarines and field artillery, India’s weapons acquisition programmes include futuristic platforms such as military cyber capabilities, new C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities, anti-satellite weapons, electronic warfare, military robots, attack and reconnaissance drones, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Because joint forces operations increasingly rely on data-driven technologies and integration of diverse data sources, the three major forces need to implement institutional reforms that integrate data, software and artificial intelligence efforts and speed up their delivery to the warfighter. The idea is to provide both the soldier on the ground and the war planners at the back end a ‘God’s Eye View’ of the battlespace. The side that has a better overall picture of the ongoing or impending battle will emerge victorious.

Striking a balance

The problem with predicting the future is that new military capabilities are spawning all the time. So the moment one has acquired a new technology, there is suddenly a brand new threat on the horizon. In a report titled ‘Indian Military Platform Modernisation: Uncertainties, Challenges and Progress’, Kartik Bommakanti of the Observer Research Foundation notes that a debate is currently ongoing within strategic circles regarding the nature and character of warfare in the coming decades.

“Proponents of technology and futuristic systems believe that the days of total war, involving large-scale ground forces led by armour columns, will give way to a combination of cyber and AI-based autonomous weapons in the air, sea and land, using precision targeting and adaptive-learning techniques.

“On the other hand, the conservative view is that while the means to wage wars may change, the visceral nature of conflict is such that escalation and all-out war using conventional platforms cannot be ruled out. Defence planners are then tasked with striking a balance between these two views, based on which they must convince finance mandarins to fund the procurement of fighting platforms. The Indian Army’s RFI for the FRCV is reflective of this dilemma.”

For a country like India which still has an abundant quantity of outdated weapons based on technology dating back to the 1960s and ’70s, there will be ample opportunities to proceed with caution. Do we junk everything and go for completely brand-new platforms or keep a mix of the old and new? It needs to be noted that older weapons systems that lack microelectronics are impervious to electronic jamming and may have their use under certain conditions in today’s battlefield.

Fast forward on technology

While individual military services have taken various actions to boost innovation and speed in their weapon acquisition initiatives, the Army’s 10-year modernisation programme is an excellent example of how to integrate advances in technology into the fighting forces. At the heart of it all is the Regional Technology Node-Bengaluru (RTN-B) of the Army Design Bureau (ADB) at the Army Service Corps Centre & College.

However, imports create a window of vulnerability in times of war as happened during each of India’s conflicts. For instance, during the Kargil War, India was denied vital GPS data by the US, the IAF had to import laser-guided bombs on an emergency basis, and ammunition too had to be hurriedly bought from Israel. In fact, in the 1962, 1965 and 1971 Wars, India fought with mostly outdated weapons. It was primarily due to the bravery and innovation of our soldiers that India won in 1965 and 1971

The RTN-B has been tasked to leverage the location of the ASC Centre & College to build an interface with trade, industry and academia with a specific focus on IT to coordinate advancements in technology for the overall benefit of the Indian Army on behalf of the ADB and HQ ARTRAC (Army Training Command). The ADB is one of India’s milestone projects under the Indian Army’s Make-in-India initiative in the defence sector.

The role of the ADB, established in 2016, is to conduct technology scans, identify technologies for acquisition and development, and facilitate R&D efforts with industry, academia, Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The intention is to provide inputs and enable them to understand user requirements while initiating design and development cases with the aim to promote indigenisation. To further exploit the success of this model, it was visualised to have similar formal structures at the regional level to further extend the outreach and enhance the assimilation of technology in the Indian Army.

Similarly, RTN-Pune was the first regional-level node set up under the ADB to act as an interface with the industry in the Maharashtra region. One of the major initiatives undertaken by the ADB is the publication of the Compendiums of Problem Definition Statements that identified the core issues of concern for the Indian Army.

Breaking away from the past

For decades, what stood in the way of an indigenous military-industrial complex was India’s political leadership keeping the private sector out of the defence sector. This was due to two reasons – one, the defence PSUs are highly unionised and the politicians were too scared to take them on. Two, the PSUs would promise to develop weapons platforms required by the forces but would never deliver. This would necessitate emergency imports, thereby benefiting the middlemen and the politicians who got kickbacks from the defence deals.

Some of the most spectacular failures were the Arjun tank, Light Combat Aircraft and artillery guns which sucked in tens of thousands of crores without delivering a viable product. Of course, in some cases, there was clearly internal sabotage by military officers working for import lobbies (such as the notorious Chandigarh Lobby). Former BrahMos Aerospace Managing Director A. Sivathanu Pillai explains this phenomenon in his book ‘The Path Unexplored’.

For a country like India which still has an abundant quantity of outdated weapons based on technology dating back to the 1960s and ’70s, there will be ample opportunities to proceed with caution. Do we junk everything and go for completely brand-new platforms or keep a mix of the old and new? It needs to be noted that older weapons systems that lack microelectronics are impervious to electronic jamming and may have their use under certain conditions in today’s battlefield

According to Pillai, many of his colleagues, including senior bureaucrats, were of the opinion that in the absence of quality requirements – let alone the promise of an order – from the armed forces, the development of the Indo-Russian BRAHMOS missile was a risky venture. There was also the prospect of internal sabotage. Pillai reveals there were senior military commanders who wanted to scuttle the BRAHMOS project by declaring its performance unsatisfactory. Their plan was to continue India’s dependency on imports, which would result in more kickbacks for middlemen.

However, what saved the project was the involvement of key members of India’s political establishment. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s rapport with Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was also the Defence Minister, proved to be a great advantage for the missile men. Rao, the prime mover behind India’s economic liberalisation, was the right Prime Minister at the right time.

Pillai points out that when Kalam would forward a proposal to Rao, the file would come back with his approval the same day. This was something unimaginable back then because politicking came first and national security always took a back seat. In India, even low-level personal assistants can delay projects of vital national interest by sitting on files. Sometimes they expect a bribe to clear a file; on other occasions, they are paid by a competitor or foreign agency to block it.

New start

The good news is the current dispensation in New Delhi is strongly pro-military. What has given a major impetus to the modernisation of the Indian armed forces is that the Narendra Modi Government has not only greenlighted the imports of long-delayed weapons such as the Rafale fighter, S-400 missile defence system and assault rifles, it has laid the foundations for the development of domestic defence production as part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. Its key pillars are:

  • The private sector will be allowed to form joint ventures with public sector undertakings in India by acquiring a 51% stake and manufacturing the required weapon system.
  • Ending the influence of import lobbies.
  • Allowing the private sector to export 25% of the production to third countries.
  • The armed forces will give assurance that they will purchase the end product. The first major project to follow this process is the Indian Multi-Role Helicopter, which will ultimately replace all Russian-built Mi-17 and Mi-8 helicopters in the Indian military’s present inventory.
  • Increasing cooperation between the DRDO and the private sector to indigenise production of key equipment that was traditionally imported.
  • Restructuring the Ordnance Factory Boards in order to make them accountable like corporate entities.
The good news is the current dispensation in New Delhi is strongly pro-military. What has given a major impetus to the modernisation of the Indian armed forces is that the Narendra Modi Government has not only greenlighted the imports of long-delayed weapons such as the Rafale fighter, S-400 missile defence system and assault rifles, it has laid the foundations for the development of domestic defence production as part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan

To enhance the strategic capabilities and develop advanced technologies and products the following initiatives and policies have been made by the Government:

  • The DRDO has established five DRDO Young Scientist Laboratories (DYSLs) to provide solutions in advanced technology areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, cognitive technologies, asymmetric technologies and smart materials to tackle emerging challenges in military warfare.
  • 18 major defence platforms for industry-led Design & Development in March 2022.
  • Three ‘Positive Indigenisation lists’ of a total of 310 items of services and two Positive Indigenisation lists of a total of 2,958 items of DPSUs for which there would be an embargo on the import beyond the timelines indicated against them.
  • Launch of innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) scheme involving start-ups and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
  • Launch of an indigenisation portal namely SRIJAN to facilitate indigenisation by Indian industry including MSMEs.
  • Opening up of Defence Research & Development (R&D) for industry, start-ups and academia with 25% of the defence R&D budget earmarked to promote the development of defence technology in the country.

Conclusion

Modernisation and self-reliance in meeting the requirement of defence equipment for the armed forces is a strategic necessity. Accelerating this pace of indigenisation is now a priority area for India for which the active participation of industry – both the public and private sectors – is important at every stage of the developmental process. According to a report by the Integrated Defence Staff Headquarters, positive interaction between all agencies concerned is vital for progress to be tangible and viable, and the Ministry of Defence has initiated a number of measures to develop this relationship through interaction at various levels.

If the momentum achieved by Aatmanirbhar Bharat is continued for the next couple of decades, it is not unreasonable to expect that India will have weapons conglomerates that can take on the might of Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

–The writer is a globally cited defence analyst. His work has been published by leading think tanks, and quoted extensively in books on diplomacy, counter terrorism, warfare and economic development. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda