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Advice from ex-chief: Accountability absolute must

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Advice from ex-chief: Accountability absolute must

Amitav Ranjan
Posted: Sun Nov 19 2006, 00:00 hrs
New Delhi, November 18:

DRDO should definitely be held more accountable for its work and it should stop saying it can do everything under the sun.

Coming from Dr Vasudev K Aatre, who headed the organisation between 2000-04, this could be the luxury of hindsight but yet, a painfully candid admission to the need for reform.

Now a professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Aatre has responded to this newspaper’s investigative series on DRDO’s dismal record (for the previous seven parts, visit www.expressindia.com). “I have been honest about our delays, I could not hide our shortcomings. There is a need to break certain cycles as the series in The Indian Express has shown. It is crucial that DRDO is a dictator of its own destiny.”

For that to happen, Aatre prescribes a five-point programme fundamental to which is, what he calls, “the absolute must for accountability.” And, two, the brisk introduction of the private sector into the fold of defence R&D to take away the burden of prototype production.

Calling for the immediate implementation of the incentive list for scientists — from sharing royalty to increased travel allowances — Aatre says the “Damocles’ Sword of imports” should not be allowed to hang over scientists engaged in fundamental research. Finally, and probably most importantly, “DRDO should stop making exaggerated promises.”

The aspect of talent retention is severely underestimated. Even President A P J Abdul Kalam, who headed DRDO through the ‘90s and saw first-hand the initial exodus of scientists to the newly booming IT sector — over 1400 have left in the last decade — said on November 11 in Ahmedabad: “We should work for the creation of a science cadre, with a clear mission and goal, well-defined growth path, and attractive salaries.”

But better remuneration is just one side of an intricate polygon of reform that DRDO admitted in June to be working on. The other crucial aspect is DRDO’s involvement with the services. The Navy, the smallest of the three armed forces, has the best depth of relations with DRDO but the less said about the Army and IAF, the better.

Experience has shown that programmes in which the agenda is set by senior serving officers, as in Navy’s avionics and sonars, have always performed with the greatest prudence — delivering on time, and cutting away losses when viability was severely undermined.

In June, as a start, the Standing Committee on Defence directed the DRDO to draw up a list of unviable projects that could be terminated.

But there is a consensus that synergy with the services is one way out of the present mess. Says Gen Shankar Roy Choudhary, former Army chief and member of the Standing Committee on Defence: “Coordination and interaction need a great deal of improvement. DRDO should make sure that officers from the services are part of design teams, and not looked upon as outsiders. Even today, they are accepted very reluctantly. I tried to do my bit in my time as Chief, but somehow it did not work out. This should be an immediate area of reform.”

Choudhary’s recommendation is an echo of what was officially proposed by the Defence Ministry’s Task Force on the “Reorganization of Higher Defence Planning”: a three-star serving officer should head the steering committee of DRDO programmes and the Armed forces personnel embedded with these programmes be recognised as integral members of the DRDO design team. None of this has been implemented yet.

New Defence Minister A K Antony, who received a three-and-a-half hour presentation on the DRDO on October 29, five days into office, told The Sunday Express, “In the few weeks that I have been here, I have realized the need for big changes. We need comprehensive reforms in this area to keep with changing situations. Over the next few weeks, I will be looking at this aspect in great detail.”

Consider what one of emerging India’s pioneers in industrial R&D, Biocon chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw has to say about DRDO: “Every research establishment in the country needs to be reformed. Defence is one area where we need a high level of innovation. Enough is not being done and the DRDO is no exception to this. There is no modern approach at all,” she told The Sunday Express. “They should be focusing on every emerging technology and the application of new technology. At present, there seems to be only imitative effort. A lot of the research is ineffective. We need reforms in defence research that capitalise on innovation. Good talent needs to be attracted to these organisations.”

In DRDO’s journey from its fetters, it cannot ignore the private sector. The total volume of work undertaken by the private sector since May 2001 amounts to Rs 6,976 crore out of total capital acquisitions worth Rs 95,145.28 crore. Private sector potential in defence R&D is therefore enormous and mostly untapped.

On September 19, members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee received a compilation of the capabilities of just two private companies. Their capabilities officially declared as everything from weapon-launch systems, sea mines, submarines, fire-control systems and special materials to deep water technology, tracking radars, even space applications.

Atul Kirloskar, chairman of the CII’s National Committee on Defence, which played an integral advisory role to the Vijay Kelkar Committee on reforming self-reliance and procurement, told The Sunday Express: “With DRDO, there is a large opportunity to work on technological issues. Raksha Udyog Ratnas, or private sector systems integrators will be certified next year and will be able to make quotes. The new procurement procedure also includes a Make category. There are opportunities waiting.”

In a sense, few would know this better than Lt Gen S S Mehta, formerly Western Army commander and now Director General of CII. He said, “With growing similarities between civilian and military R&D, it is essential that Defence R&D evolve a collaborative structure which adapts to the rapidly changing technology eco-system.”

The journey to a weapons development system like in the US or Europe is still, quite certainly, decades away. But with shifting paradigms, the blurring of technological boundaries and a whole new element to the meaning of self-reliance, the essence of DRDO’s revitalization will be in accepting that the past is just that. The past.

(With Johnson TA in Bangalore)

What lies unread: the recommendations

• Kelkar Committee: streamline linkages with private sector, open up R&D, audit essential

 

• Task Force on Higher Defence Planning: Get senior service officers to head steering committees, let services personnel be part of design teams

• Create a science cadre with mission, goal, good salaries: President Kalam

• New evaluation technology to avoid time and cost overruns: ex-DRDO chief Aatre

• Cut losses, terminate unviable programmes, use resources for new ones, fashion future programmes with foreign partners: Defence Standing Committee

• Focus on emerging technology, innovate, attract best talent: Kiran Mazumdar Shaw

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DRDO gets it right when it works unlike DRDO

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Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – Seven

DRDO gets it right when it works unlike DRDO

Amitav Ranjan
Posted: Sat Nov 18 2006, 00:00 hrs
NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 17:


For all its defences against non-performance, the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), ironically, has only to look within for ready templates of distinction. Programmes that have met targets are an isolated few but they worked well because their ethic symbolizes a fundamental breakaway from the tedium of the larger organisation’s default approach. Self-reliance, a term battered by DRDO’s track-record on showpiece programmes, shines beneath the hood in the Navy’s sonars, avionics and electronic warfare systems on IAF fighter aircraft and missiles developed under corporate foreign joint ventures.
The first two were developed on time because of the labs linking up with the armed forces right from the initial stages and, significantly, leadership that keeps young scientists on their toes. The latter, because international partnerships mandate a more professional approach to programme completion.
One of the most successful DRDO laboratories is also one of the least known, tucked away silently in the Trikkakara suburb of Kochi, fomenting applied research and technology to give the Navy real self-reliance in critical sensor systems.

The Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), the only DRDO lab to win both the Silicon Trophy and Titanium Trophy for excellence, has, in the last two decades, given the Navy an impressive 87 per cent self-reliance in acoustic sensors for warships and submarines. All Navy warships, including foreign ones, as a result, are fitted with DRDO sonars like the APSOH, HUMVAD and HUMSA, and the Navy does not need to import. Now, it is putting its finishing touches to the USHUS sonar for the Navy’s Kilo-class submarines and the Mihir dunking sonar for HAL’s Advanced Light Helicopter, all well within their projected timeframes.

Vice Admiral Madanjit Singh, formerly the Navy’s Southern Commander at Kochi, said, “The NPOL’s success is from user involvement right from the word go. The steering panel is headed by a serving Naval commander who sets the agenda, efforts between the DRDO and Navy are joint.”

VK Aatre, former NPOL director who went on to become DRDO chief, agrees. “When I was there, we could not distinguish between designers, Navy personnel and production engineers,” he said. “We shared an excellent rapport. The difference here was that the user was part of the design team.”

The lab’s current director V Chander, an IIT-IISc alumnus, has espoused applied research like no other DRDO establishment, working not for idealistic invention, but delivering quality, fool-proof sonar systems to the Navy. How?

First, he’s rechristened the HR cell as People, Academics, Research & Training. He’s made sure young scientists get to spend time with the Navy for extended periods of time rather than labour away only in their laboratories. Third, he’s made sure that the level of involvement with warships and the Navy is so high that projects are either completed or prudently foreclosed before despondence and lassitude can set in.

Vice Admiral Singh, as DG Defence Planning in 2000, recommended to the Task Force on the Reorganization of Higher Defence Planning, that the country’s R&D labs be rationalized on the lines of NPOL. What ensued, another story entirely, was a turf war that saw the idea quietly dissipate. Another area where DRDO has shone despite itself is avionics and electronic warfare systems for IAF fighter aircraft.

The IAF’s most advanced fighter, the Sukhoi-30 MKI, flies with avionics developed by the Defence Avionics Research Establishment (DARE) in Bangalore, and has proved so good that the new British Hawk advanced jet trainers and the license-produced units of the upcoming contract for 126 foreign fighters, will be armed with DARE avionics and electronic warfare systems.

For now, in addition to the Sukhois, these arm IAF Jaguars and MiG-27s which, combined, have over 30 DARE electronic systems, including mission computers, electronic warfare suites, laser rangers and multifunction advanced cockpits.

A testimony to DARE’s work: in 2003, the Royal Malysian Air Force ordered radar computers worth Rs 21.15 crore (75 per cent of DRDO’s officially declared export value of Rs 27.93 crore) from DARE for its Sukhoi-30MM fighter fleet, and is interested in buying more.

Air Marshal JS Gujral, formerly IAF Central Air Commander and Deputy Chief in charge of acquisitions, feels DARE has done an excellent job in a world where such technology is simply too advanced to share. “DARE’s projects have succeeded also because of deep interfacing with the IAF. They have maintained a high mark in defence output and timeframes compared to DRDO’s other not-so-successful ventures. Across the board, the avionics and electronic warfare systems by DARE match up with the best in the world. The IAF has been very happy with what they have provided us,” Gujral said. DARE Director RP Ramalingam said, “DRDO has realized that if there is a WW III, the winner will be the side that can best control the electromagnetic spectrum, and has therefore placed India as a competent force in the world map of avionics.”

Foreign joint ventures, on the other hand, have compelled DRDO to put out more realistic predictions on time and cost. The BrahMos missile project, which began development in 1998 as a corporate joint venture with Russia and resulted in a world-class cruise missile that other countries now want to buy, was completed in just six years at a cost of Rs 667 crore – no time and cost overruns.

Similarly, the new generation Barak-II surface to air missile for the Navy, being developed by DRDO in a JV with Israel, is officially to cost Rs 2, 606.02 crore and be ready by May 2011, a far more realistic predictive frame than any other missile project under the indigenous IGMDP.

The defence sector does not have a policy for foreign direct investment, but DRDO open to joint ventures with foreign partners. No wonder then, that on June 7, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence said, “BrahMos model should be followed in other projects also. Private sector should be given more opportunities in defence production and user participation should be encouraged from R&D stage.”
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Why they don’t line up for DRDO job interviews

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Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – Six

Why they don’t line up for DRDO job interviews

Amitav Ranjan
Posted: Fri Nov 17 2006, 00:00 hrs
NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 16:

While there could be a thousand and one reasons to explain the Defence Research & Development Organisation’s dismal success rate in defence projects, no rocket science is required to explain why it can neither attract — or retain scientific talent.

In latest testimony before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, available with The Indian Express, the DRDO admitted that 1,404 scientists had left for greener pastures in the last 10 years which, incidentally, coincided with the information technology boom in the country. Worse, this exodus has progressively eroded nearly 10 per cent of DRDO’s technical strength during these years. The DRDO confessed to the Committee on June 7: “The problem is not of the numbers and not of the lack of training but of retaining the scientists.”

In the same breath, however, DRDO said that the “reason” for the attrition was that a large chunk of the 1,404 left on “personal/domestic grounds” – an unbridled expression that could encompass anything from fatter pay packets to the exasperation of working on stalled projects within a sarkari structure. A 16-point list of incentives for its scientists, including royalty-sharing schemes, upgrading allowances, providing financial assistance for laptops and conferences, proposed to the ministry by former DRDO chief V K Aatre in July 2001 languishes in the recesses of the South Block.

Five years later, on July 12 this year, DRDO testified to the Committee that nothing has moved. “DRDO is striving to meet the rising expectations of scientists to attract and retain them in the organisation. Proposed incentives have been submitted to RM (Defence Minister) through RRM (Minister of State for Defence).”

The lack of success, quite apart from compensation at DRDO, is also a dampener in attracting talent. (See table). It is no wonder, therefore, that the IITs – some of the few institutions at which DRDO holds campus recruitment programmes – sends almost none of its students to the organization when they graduate.

Says Professor Y P Singh, formerly Head of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur and now consulting for a DRDO project: “DRDO was never a preferred place for our students. Most development there is reverse engineering and hardly any original work. Somehow, they have got lost. There is no dearth of talent in the country.”

His remedy: If DRDO could get even a handful of talented youngsters and took good care of them in every way, there would would be no limits to what could be achieved. DRDO today is, therefore, attractive for an internship or a short-term stint for a promising young scientist – there is never a shortage of research resources and equipment – but probably the last place he or she would look at for an enduring career in cutting edge research and development.

That all of DRDO’s biggest programmes are led from Southern laboratories, mostly in Hyderabad and Bangalore, from 1996 onward, the organisation has provided easy pickings for the IT and industrial R&D base there. DRDO chief M Natarajan himself testified on June 7, “A number of MNCs are establishing R&D centers in India, many in the cities where DRDO has a cluster of laboratories and establishments.”

What Natarajan wouldn’t say is that DRDO is also afflicted by a bizarre level of stagnation, in which project directors spend a decade or more on projects, undermining both growth at the lower levels, and a freshness of perspective vital to keep programmes on their toes. The problem is well known – what lies beneath is not. So DRDO scientists are no longer just leaving for better salaries. Groups of scientists and engineers from DRDO are coming together now to form high-tech startups with seed funds from venture capitalists. Salaries are low, but what’s driving them – “entrepreneurial aspirations” (See box).

According to an official estimate, in 2005-06, 42 scientists left DRDO to join startups run by their contemporaries. But a glance at the 16 incentives being asked for, now in the hands of Defence Minister AK Antony, is a revelation of what DRDO scientists want:

* Enhance professional update allowance for scientists from Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000, reimbursements of Rs 1,000 for internet access and telephone for all scientists, in addition to a Rs 80,000 laptop grants for all scientists, air travel and field trial duty allowances of Rs 500 per day and a Rs 1,000 hard station posting allowance.

* Enhance study leave to 36 months and total absence of 48 months for doctoral degrees among its staff, a study leave living allowance of Rs 3,000 per month, financial assistance of Rs 1 lakh for scientists at international conferences (which they should be allowed to attend once every two years), a reward of Rs 10,000 for scientists who get their papers published in international journals, grant of sabbatical leave for a maximum of 24 months in two spells after a minimum 10 years service.

* Royalty sharing scheme on the lines of CSIR, reward schemes for scientists who get their products inducted into the services , authorisation for individual consultancy to the private sector for three days every month and permission to hold an adjunct appointment for a month every year.

Even if these are approved, experts say, the larger problem remains: the lack of original work in DRDO’s labs, as IIT’s Singh underlined; the bureaucratic structure, the lack of accountability at all levels on project delivery. The same reasons as the ones behind its failure to deliver on projects.

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Will anyone dare audit the DRDO?

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Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – Five

Will anyone dare audit the DRDO?

Amitav Ranjan
Posted: Thu Nov 16 2006, 00:00 hrs
NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 15:

For a full 20 months now, the Defence Ministry has been sitting on two crucial recommendations of a committee on reforming defence procurement chaired by former Economic Advisor to the Finance Minister Vijay Kelkar. Not only have these not been made public, there’s been no action on any. It’s not difficult to understand why.

These two recommendations have to do with what is unspeakable at the Defence Research & Development Organisation: the need for an “independent audit” of its abysmal record of delay and waste in virtually all weapons programmes, as reported in the ongoing series in this newspaper.

Numbered 6.19 and 6.20 in the report, accessed by The Indian Express, the Kelkar panel, including scientists, officials of the three service chiefs and industry organisations, said that the Defence R&D Board, the apex review mechanism headed by the DRDO chief, should also include representatives from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

This, the Committee noted, was “in order to enable the Defence R&D Board to draw the expertise and experience from institutions falling outside the purview of defence.”

Second, the Kelkar Committee recommended that DRDO be periodically reviewed “for its functioning” by an independent high level committee and the first such review should be initiated in 2005. The reason: “DRDO has expanded considerably and tried to create in-house research facilities for all defence requirements. This, perhaps, is not a very cost-effective move…DRDO, as a research body has also not been reviewed by an external and independent group of experts”, a process the Kelkar Committee said would compel DRDO to “reform wherever necessary”.

Not just Kelkar. In 2004, the Late J N Dixit, then National Security Advisor, had strongly argued for a comprehensive audit of DRDO’s dubiously expensive project record.

However, such advice is blasphemy in the DRDO. So on January 2 this year — nine months after the Kelkar Committee report was submitted — when the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence asked DRDO what it planned to do about new auditing mechanisms, this is how the DRDO replied: “DRDO has enough audit and reviews of the projects at various stages. It is not considered necessary to introduce additional audit and reviews.”

Limited audits of DRDO were conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in 1988-89, 1992-93 and in 1997-2001 but these focused on manpower utilization, procurement of systems, all concluding derelict financial management and inexplicable expenditure. These reports were followed up by Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee reports, the last one in August 2005 recording massive wastages in 15 major DRDO establishments.

But the fact remains, there has been no single comprehensive audit of the DRDO or its functioning. Perhaps this is what prompted Comptroller and Auditor General V N Kaul to say today at a seminar in the capital on defence finance…”Defence R&D is an area where accountability often takes shelter under the policy of self reliance, and indigenization becomes a reason for delay…accountability of domestic R&D organizations needs to be re-emphasized to enable better assessment of return from investment. Sensitizing of the defence services to the role of public audit is essential.” But an investigation by The Indian Express into official records and testimonies shows that it will take more than a CAG speech to sensitise DRDO. Consider these:

• Not only has DRDO testified to the Standing Committee in January that it has more than sufficient auditing mechanisms, it wants less interference from the government, and even less accountability. In fact, in what the armed forces call preposterous, DRDO chief M Natarajan told the Standing Committee: “We intend examining the possibility of a structure similar to Space Commission/ Atomic Energy Commission to bring about greater autonomy in our functioning…This may take some time to evolve conceptually, before we could seek government approval for the same.”

• The highest monitoring body for DRDO, the DRDO Research Council (DRC), is in-house and under the control of the DRDO chief, who personally reviews its progress. DRDO has testified to the Standing Committee that it has “no scientific audit of DRDO projects as such”, and justified this by indicating the existence of feasibility studies for projects, decision aid for technology evaluation (DATE), in-house project peer reviews and post-project reviews.

• All DRDO projects costing more than Rs 2 crore are to be compulsorily “peer reviewed” by an expert committee for their viability. The Peer Review Committee (PRC) is necessarily an in-house mechanism.

 

• There are three-tier monitoring boards for all projects over Rs 100 crore. All these boards are under the aegis of the DRDO.

• This September, Army vice chief Lt Gen S Pattabhiraman reviewed 40 DRDO staff projects for the Army and found just three of them on track. Later, in the same month, DRDO chief Natarajan recommended to the Standing Committee that time extensions and cost increases be jointly endorsed with the services for government approval. In other words, DRDO would have sole control over projects but would rather not be accountable all alone.

• In its latest testimony, DRDO has said that accountability “cannot be fixed for loss of time in projects” and that slippages are due to “technological problems and not negligence”. Yet, on September 22, it officially asked the government for the freedom to recommend additional project authorizations, and that the Department of Defence Production (DDP) should ensure compliance.

• Given that the three services are the ones most visibly complaining about DRDO delays and results, DRDO has recommended that equipment trials be conducted by an independent test and evaluation agency, preferably with Integrated Defence Staff or DG Acquisition. In other words, DRDO doesn’t trust the armed forces but puts itself above all questioning.

Audit Mechanism

India

C&AG audits defence expenditure and individual performance of DRDO programmes but ministry justifies with scientific reasons for shortcomings and delays. No independent or external audits for project performance.

USA

US Department of Defence Inspector-General audit, followed by independent technical and performance audit of all programmes. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviews financial prudence.

UK

National Audit Office (NAO) reviews financial performance of defence branches, independent performance audit for programmes

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Armed Forces wait as showpiece missiles are unguided, way off mark

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Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – Two

Armed Forces wait as showpiece missiles are unguided, way off mark

Amitav Ranjan                                                                                                                            Posted: Mon Nov 13 2006, 00:00 hrs                                                                            NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 12:

 

It is the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s most prestigious undertaking. Yet the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) remains a venture matchless for its repeated and expensive failures.

Of the five missile families that the DRDO announced at the IGMDP launch in July 1983, two ballistic missiles, the tactical Prithvi and long-range Agni, have been inducted into the Services. But investigation by The Indian Express reveals that even these are far from operational readiness. Among the other three missiles, the situation is worse.

DRDO claims its first success, Prithvi-I, is fully operational. However, the missiles were forced upon the Army even before crucial terminal accuracy trials were complete, according to a 2003 report by one of DRDO’s own top scientists. Even now, despite DRDO’s claims, the Army does not rely on the Prithvi as an effective deterrent and cannot do so unless serious technological issues affecting launch preparedness are resolved.

Former deputy director of the Prithvi project and now DRDO’s chief controller of missiles and strategic systems Dr V K Saraswat’s report RCI/PGT/PGM/1 admits: “Accuracy of missiles like Prithvi is acceptable in surface-to-surface theatre role, but precision strike without collateral damage is not possible with this system.”

Agni-I and Agni-II, the only strategic delivery systems in the Army’s arsenal, are considered risky. DRDO has told the Parliamentary panel, in testimonies available to The Indian Express, that the missiles have been successfully tested five times. What it conveniently leaves unsaid is the fact that this is out of at least 10 tests. Either way, the Army feels a handful of tests is not enough to prove a missile’s worth.

The Agni-III, which plunged into the sea after just five minutes of flight in July, will be tested again only towards mid-2007 as the teams at DRDL and the Integrated Test Range in Chandipur try to unravel the disaster.

As for the remaining three, anti-missile system Trishul is a closed chapter proving to be only a technology demonstrator, by former Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s own recent admission, after it was decided that persistent beam guidance glitches could not be put behind the project.

Even though the system’s radar is ready and functional, the Trishul team has never been able to correct the missile’s flawed trajectory — in all tests it has escaped out of its envelope. The project’s manpower has already been distributed among PSU Bharat Dynamics Ltd in Hyderabad, the Indo-Israeli Barak-II next generation missile project, the Project Nag and the submarine-launched missile, designated K-15.

A notional one-year extension granted to the project till December 2007, after hectic lobbying, is being seen as an outrage by the Army and Navy.

The Akash medium range surface-to-air missile, which DRDO publicly claims “is in the process of induction” will, according to the Ministry in testimony to a Parliamentary Standing Committee, only begin Phase-II user trials in December on a T-72 platform, a change that could pile up the massive time overrun further.

An exasperated IAF, which calls Phase-I user trials unsatisfactory, has decided to buy Israeli Spyder missile systems instead.

Realisation of the ramjet propulsion system has crippled the Akash programme, which continues to flounder when the missile is fired at its ceiling range of 25 to 27 km. The IAF, in fact, has certified the missile to a range of just 16-18-km, virtually declaring it a dud at maximum capacity. Officers in the IAF fear the Akash may go the Trishul way, but Natarajan claims: “The Akash missile defence system has been successful.”

The third missile, the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) Nag, which DRDO brags as an “imminent success,” has not been accepted by the Army. After 57 flight trials, it has encountered unforeseen problems with its Imaging Infrared (IIR) seeker, rendering it inaccurate until the seeker is properly miniaturized for use. User trials are slated for June-December 2007. Saraswat’s report calls for integrating Nag’s seeker with Prithvi to make the latter a precision-guided munition (PGM) but that hasn’t worked either, since the Nag’s seeker is far from ready.

The result: After over two decades of research in seeker technology and expenditure of upto an estimated Rs 800 crore, all Indian missiles, even the Indo-Russian BrahMos,fly with foreign seekers. This is especially troubling since the North Korean and Chinese missiles are known to fly with far superior terminal guidance technologies.

The IGMDP should have wrapped up each of the projects by December 1995 using Rs 388.83 crore, but it got a 10-year extension from the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao after the then DRDO chief APJ Abdul Kalam managed to convince him that only a two-three year extension was not acceptable. Its revised funding: Rs 1771.43 crore, a budgetary overrun of Rs 1,382.6 crore. The time line has been further extended to December 2007 under the current chief M Natarajan.

“The Akash was to come at a certain time, and it didn’t. I had to change everything to make up for the delay.”

Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi

“It was a troubling scenario. On the one hand, DRDO assured us of Trishul’s success, and on the other our Western fleet was sitting completely vulnerable to a Pak missile attack.”

Admiral Sushil Kumar (retd)

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6,000 cr wasted, 10-yr delay & they want 150,000 cr more

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Express Investigation: Delayed Research; Delayed Organisation – Part – One

 6,000 cr wasted, 10-yr delay & they want 150,000 cr more

Amitav Ranjan

Posted: Sun Nov 12 2006, 00:00 hrs

New Delhi, November 11:

Make India prosperous by establishing a world-class science and technology base…provide our Defence Services the decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions… design, develop and lead to production state-of-the-art weapons systems…

That’s the “vision” and the “mission” the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has proudly spelt out for itself.

An investigation by The Sunday Express into official records that include detailed testimonies by the Ministry of Defence to a Parliamentary Standing Committee — its report is yet to be tabled in Parliament — shows that if there’s one thing this behemoth of 50 laboratories with a staff of about 33,000 has developed to almost perfection, it’s this: wrapping itself around the flag to hide a record of delay and non-delivery in virtually all major weapons programmes.

At a time when China is rapidly modernising its armed forces through international collaboration and acquiring advanced technology from abroad, the DRDO has become a prisoner of its own misleading slogan on self-reliance. In preventing the armed forces from buying urgently needed weapons with brave talk, “we can make it here”, and failing to deliver, the DRDO has introduced uncertainty into the government’s defence planning.

According to latest official records, obtained by this newspaper, in 12 of its showpiece projects, none of which is anywhere near completion, the DRDO has overshot sanctioned estimates by Rs 6,013.43 crore in just the last 10 years. The projects include the crucial guided missile programme, the Arjun tank, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA Tejas), the Samyukta communication system and Kaveri jet engine.

To put this in perspective, this cost overrun is larger than DRDO’s budget of Rs 5,356 crore for the current year. And this is reflective of just 12 projects. It speaks nothing of 427 others, all in varying states of drift. And yet DRDO claims, “Global level R&D and any world-class defence product can be brought out in competitive time and cost.”

These were the words used in a September 22 presentation to the Standing Committee especially in the year of the organisation’s biggest symbolic failure, the Agni-III strategic missile.

But if cost overruns were not enough, consider this: Records show that for all major projects, DRDO’s average time overrun is 10.11 years (see chart). For example, a 16-year delay for the Arjun tank and 12 years for just Phase I of the LCA Tejas.

Responding to a written questionnaire from The Sunday Express, DRDO chief M Natarajan, who has also been involved with one of DRDO’s biggest failures, the Arjun tank, says: “This is a complaint which I hear very often. But one should understand these are all R&D projects. All advanced countries face similar situations. If you say that we are always late, then it would not be fair to us. We generally deliver the goods on time.”

If that were true, Natarajan must have had a trying time explaining that on October 29 at the very first DRDO presentation to new Defence Minister A K Antony. Drawing comparisons with the China-Russia relationship, Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt reportedly wanted to know why there were such “massive delays” in DRDO projects and persistent technological gaps.

Former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy was more direct. Called in a year after he retired to give testimony, he told the Parliamentary panel: “For improvement in DRDO’s working, it is essential to make fundamental changes in organization and structure with accountability to the user and to do work in time.”

Krishnaswamy couldn’t have been more spot on. For, although DRDO defended its performance by blaming the three services — they change their requirements while development is in progress, they spend too much time on trials — here’s just how bad the current situation is: In the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Plans, with DRDO’s failures a compelling factor, according to the Defence Ministry, the country has spent an average of 24.25% of the Defence budget on imported systems to fill in holes caused by DRDO’s non-delivery. That translates into roughly Rs 42,376 crore since 1991-92.

Even the “self-reliance” index, the one plank the entire DRDO justifies itself on, has remained static for the last 15 years. Ironically, in 1991, it was President A P J Abdul Kalam, then DRDO chief, who charted out a plan to push self-reliance up to 70% by 2005. Today’s self-reliance index, according to the Ministry’s own estimate: 30 per cent.

 

Kalam, in fact, started the Self-Reliance Implementation Council (SRIC) in 1992 and monitored it to check for slippages and gaps. But that was more an academic exercise than anything else. For five years now, the council hasn’t met once.

Papers are only “activated” when Parliamentary questions are asked. In what has the armed forces on tenterhooks now, on October 29, the DRDO recommended to Antony that a “certain percentage of defence acquisitions be earmarked exclusively for DRDO and indigenously developed products.”

The total cost of 439 projects currently in progress with DRDO adds up to Rs 16,925 crore, with just 17 of those adding up to Rs 13,560 crore, most of them on time and cost extensions. In September, DRDO asked, in its testimony to the

Parliamentary committee, for an assured allocation of Rs 1,50,000 crore at the rate of Rs 10,000 crore per year for the next 15 years starting 2010.

It’s time Antony asked the DRDO a few questions, beginning with the Integrated Guided Missile Development programme. There is no indigenous weapons project as prestigious as this, neither is there one that matches its record of repeated and expensive failures.

Every project has to fructify within a given timeframe, otherwise it will just begin to drift and lose focus

Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy

DRDO needs greater accountability. We have not been able to get the maximum out of DRDO, even though self-reliance should be our core

Gen V P Malik