Tag Archives: P. Rama Rao

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Modernisation of DRDO

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AUTHOR: NITI PIB BOT – MAY 9, 2015 http://www.niticentral.com//2015/05/09/modernisation-of-drdo-312496.html

Modernisation of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is a continuous process.

One of the major recommendations of Kelkar Committee report was to review the  functioning of DRDO. Accordingly, a Committee headed by Dr. P. Rama Rao was constituted by the Government for reviewing the functioning of DRDO.

The Committee submitted its report to the Government. After examination, the Government has implemented the following recommendations of the Committee:

• Nomination of Nodal Officers for structured interaction between DRDO and Services.

• Introduction of Integrated Financial Advice (IFA) Scheme for financial decentralization.

• Appointment of a dedicated Chief Controller for Human Resources (HR).

· Creation of Seven Technology Domain based Clusters headed by Director’s General,Restructuring of DRDO HQrs, Creation of Directorate of Systems Analysis and Modelling (SAM) and Directorate of Quality, Reliability and Safety (QR&S).

· Efforts have also been made to increase budget for Extramural Research as recommended by the Committee.

Further,a note has been initiated by DRDO for approval of the Cabinet for:

· Creation of empowered Defence Technology Commission (DTC).

· Creation of a Commercial Arm of DRDO.

· Renaming of Director General, DRDO as Chairman, DRDO.

· Full scale implementation of IFA scheme and creation of posts thereto.

This information was given by Defence Minister Shri Manohar Parrikar in a written reply to Shrimati Meenakashi Lekhi in Lok Sabha today.

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PM scraps DRDO’s ‘retirement benefits’ committee

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ABHINANDAN MISHRA New Delhi | 20th Sep 2014 – The Sunday Gaurdian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to scrap the Departmental Peer Review Committee (DPRCs) of the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) in an attempt to revamp the outfit. The main job of this committee of DRDO scientists is to grant extensions to fellow scientists. The committee has come under scrutiny after complaints that all that these scientists do is to park retiring and retired colleagues in important posts year after year. “The PM has ordered the scrapping of the committee that reviews cases to grant extension of service to scientists who are superannuating. Giving repeated extensions to scientists, whose capabilities could be questioned, is one of the major problems with the DRDO,” a DRDO official said.sunday gaurdians clip

Sources said that 15 top scientists in DRDO, including Director General (DG) Avinash Chander, are on extension. After getting two extensions, Chander is now on contract. “What should have been an exception, has become a norm here. Every year, six to eight senior people in DRDO get extensions. This has led to an alarming attrition rate in the organisation,” said a scientist who has been working with DRDO for the last 12 years. In the seven years between 2007 and 2013, at least 687 scientists left the organisation, which comes to a rate of 100 scientists leaving the organisation every year.

The DRDO, best known for missing manufacturing deadlines, is gearing up for a hard time after PM Modi told its scientists and officials that their lackadaisical approach would not be tolerated anymore. Last month, while addressing the annual award function of the organisation in the national capital, the PM expressed his unhappiness over the way things were working in the organisation.

“The Prime Minister is clearly unhappy with the way the DRDO has been functioning, as most of our projects are running years behind schedule, resulting in cost overruns and compromising of national security. During the event, he made sure that that senior officials were made aware of his views on the subject and the fact that such lackadaisical approach would not work anymore. With the government approving 49% FDI in defence, we need to start performing now,” said a senior DRDO official. Modi, while commenting on DRDO said that the organisation “should not say in 2014 that a project conceived in 1992 will take some more time”.

DRDO, founded in 1958, has a network of 54 laboratories, employs close to 35,000 employees including 7,500 scientists. In July this year, the BJP-led NDA government increased DRDO’s budget from Rs 5,985 crore — as provided by the UPA’s interim Budget in February — to Rs 9,298 crore, the largest ever increase in the organisation’s history.

However, despite being treated with extreme care by successive governments, DRDO has still not been able to shake off the negative image associated with it. Most of its projects, ranging from Tejas light combat aircraft and long-range surface-to-air missile systems to NAG missiles are running years behind schedule.

According to officials, at least ten major projects that are being worked on by the DRDO have exceeded their stipulated date. “The major ones among these are the light combat aircraft, naval light combat aircraft, aero engine Kaveri, airborne early warning and control aircraft, long range surface-to-air missile, air-to-air missile Astra, advanced lightweight torpedo, dual colour missile approach warning system for fighter aircraft. If you include the minor ones, like the NAG missile system, then the number of incomplete projects will become even more,” the official stated.

According to a former bureaucrat, who had worked in the Ministry of Defence, the government has been always generous when it came to funding the DRDO. “The DRDO has never suffered from any paucity of funds. The main problem with the organisation is at the top. No accountability is fixed on them. There is no other place where you will find senior officials being given repeated extensions despite doing nothing.”

The former bureaucrat added that he had come across instances where the country’s defence preparedness suffered because the DRDO first made a commitment that it would manufacture the product, but when the deadline arrived, it did not have the product. And in cases where the product was there, the quality was not acceptable. “It is a shame that due to DRDO’s inefficiency the country has to import more than half of its defence requirements,” he said.

Even the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has time and again come down heavily on the DRDO. “Year after year, the CAG has revealed the kind of mismanagement that has been happening in the DRDO. In February this year, CAG audits revealed that the DRDO spent Rs 52 crore to buy a cooling substance, which was to be used in the NAG missile system in 2007. The interesting part is that the NAG was not operational at the time and it is still not operational. Can you expect such kind of mismanagement from any other defence organisation in the world elsewhere?” an official with the DRDO said.

According to him, the onus of revamping the DRDO is with the Defence Minister. “The DRDO officials and the defence ministry bureaucrats will not take the bull by the horn; no one wants to disturb the status quo. It is the Defence Minister who needs to do it. The minister needs to implement the recommendation of the first-ever external review report of the DRDO, which was prepared by an independent committee of experts headed by P. Rama Rao, former secretary, Department of Science & Technology, and former ISRO man Dr Brahm Prakash. It had recommended a massive restructuring of the 50-year-old body to make it more effective,” the official said.

However, Ravi Kumar Gupta, Director, Directorate of Public Interface, DRDO, said that the PM was very appreciative of the work being done by the organisation during his interaction with the officials last month. “He has positive views about the organisation and said that the organisation had a lot of potential and whatever we were doing, we were doing it in a professional way. He also said that just as it holds true for any other organisation, we too should not lose focus and follow the chalta hai attitude,” Gupta said.

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The Missile that Cannot Fire – Long delays, cost escalation damage DRDO’s reputation

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Amarnath K, Menon and  Gaurav C. Sawant – April 13, 2012 – India Today 

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was set up in 1958 with a vision to “provide our defence services a decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions”. The DRDO has clearly failed in its mission.

There is no bigger indictment of India‘s premier organisation for research and development in military hardware than the fact that 54 years after its establishment, India still imports 70 per cent of its equipment requirements. In 1997, India best known defence bureaucrat and the then scientific adviser to defence minister, APJ Abdul Kalam, had said that India should bring the hare of imports in defence equipment purchases down to 30 per cent by 2005. No progress has been made. The percentage is still 70-30 in favour of imports.

DRDO`s list of successes is short-primarily the Agni and Prithvi missiles. Its list of failures is much longer.The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project, which was commissioned in 2001, is running late by four years. The costs have gone up from an original estimate of around Rs 3,300 crore to over Rs 5,780 crore. The Kaveri Engine for LCA is running late by 16 years and the cost has escalated by around 800 per cent.
In 2011, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) put a serious question mark on drdo’s capabilities. “The organisation, which has a history of its projects suffering endemic time and cost overruns, needs to sanction projects and decide on a probable date of completion on the basis of a conservative assessment of technology available and a realistic costing system,” its report stated.

The CAG report also revealed that not all technologies developed by DRDO were suitable for use by the armed forces. The three services have rejected 70 per cent of the products developed at the Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), Pune, in the last 15 years costing Rs 320 crore because the products did not meet their standard and requirement, The CAG report stated that in order to form a fair and balanced view of the success of the projects undertaken by drdo, 46 completed and nine ongoing projects worth Rs 387.35 crore were scrutinised in February 2011. Of the 46 completed and closed projects, only 13 closed projects, wrapped up at a cost of Rs 68 crore, underwent production. “Without close synergy between the users and the technology development agency, much of the development efforts would go in vain, as the success rate of projects in ARDE amply demonstrates,” the report said.

The army is not impressed by DRDO`s performance either. Says Major-General S.V. Thapliyal, a former deputy director-general for perspective planning at army headquarters in Delhi, “DRDO promises to manufacture. It nixes our plans to acquire from abroad; It does not meet the deadline. Worse, it does not maintain quality either. The soldier, the end user, is the worst sufferer.”

General V.P. Malik, who was chief of army staff during the Kargil War, has an interesting incident to narrate in his book Kargil From Surprise to Victory. In 1997, the army finalized plans to acquire the AN/TPQ-37 Fire finder radars from the US. Prices were negotiated and just before purchase, drdo offered to manufacture them at half the price and within two years. The government shot down the army’s plans to buy these radars. In 1999, during the Kargil War, the radars were desperately needed. Neither had DRDO manufactured them nor could they be procured from the US (post-1998 Pokhran tests there was an arms embargo). Several lives were lost in Pakistani shelling. Wlien Indo-US relations improved, India did buy these radars in 2003, but at almost twice the initial price. “The problem with drdo is that it is big on promise and small on delivery. There is no accountability in the system,” says Malik.

DRDO continues to mislead. On April 4, it claimed it had achieved a major milestone on an “indigenous” programme to develop a sophisticated radar to monitor the Indian airspace. The aircraft on which the radar is mounted—a modified Embraer EMB 1451-is imported from Brazil. drdo had to resort to the Embraer aircraft because its own efforts at producing an indigenous carrier had ended in disaster. Project Guardian Airawat was stalled in 1999 when its HS-748 turboprop aircraft crashed, killing eight crew members-engineers, scientists and Indian Air Force (IAF) officers-on board.
Under a Rs 1,050 crore agreement, Brazil’s Embraer will now act as the pverall systems integrator for the “indigenous” project, supplying the three jets, mounting the radar and electronics onto the plane’s fuselage and ensuring that the altered jets retain acceptable flight performance.

According to its original 2004 timeline, this project was to be completed by 2011. Now the delivery of the remaining two modified Embraer aircraft is only expected by mid-2013. The project will not be complete until 2014. Even then there are serious flaws in the project. IAF has pointed out that the Embraer EMB 1451 cannot fly above 4 0,000 ft and therefore is only of limited use in surveillance. “DRDO has a history of claiming foreign designs as its own, like the Arjun tank which is a derivative of the German Leopard,” says a source in the agency. ~
The technology development agency is also largely responsible for the fact highlighted by General V.K. Singh that 97 per cent of the army’s air defence is obsolete. The CAG report lists seven requirements of the army for air defence guns and the project status report. CAG notes the end result: “Even though three R&D projects and one staff project were undertaken, the air defence gun system could not be developed by DRDO to satisfy the frequently revised requirement of the user.”

Army air defence sources say DRDO is tinkering with World War II equipment instead of working on cutting-edge technology. “The chief downplayed the state of affairs. It is in dire straits,” says a top-ranking air defence officer.

“The air defence is in a very-sorry condition,” says Air Marshal A.K. Singh, former air officer commanding-in-chief, Western Air Command. “DRDO is not able to service the equipment. Even if systems are acquired from abroad and DRDO or Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is meant to service it, it fails.This leaves critical gaps in national defence,” he says.

The Government had constituted a committee for the first-ever external review of the agency in February 2007. The committee chaired by P. Rama Rao, ex‘secreta1y, Department of Science and Technology and former director, Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, suggested that DRDO be restructured to make it a leaner organisation. It also recommended the setting up of a commercial arm of the organisation to make it a profitable entity, besides cutting back on delays in completing projects. “Delivery delayed is delivery denied,” said
Defence Minister A.K. Antony on delays in DRDO projects. But little progress has been made in the last five years on implementing the committee’s suggestions.

DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat is eager to put his house in order. He has called for the setting up of a Defence Technology DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat is eager to put his house in order. He has called for the setting up of a Defence Technology Commission as well as a bigger role for DRDO in picking production partners for products developed by the agency. Instead of the current practice of the Ministry of Defence arbitrarily nominating a defence public sector undertaking or an ordnance factory to build the product, usually when development is almost complete, DRDO would be able to select a capable partner company from the outset, from the private sector if necessary.

The defence organisation, which has an annual budget of over Rs 10,000 crore, now has no choice but to reinvent itself. The agency‘s research has drifted away from its core competence in recent times. It has been accused of “wasting time and precious resources” being engaged in research and development of technique for detection of pesticides in fruits, technology for dengue control, dental implants, foldable stretchers and berry juice.
The moribund agency is also suffering from employee attrition. Over the past five years, while the report of the Rama Rao Committee has languished, around 1,700 of its 7,900 engineers and scientists have left for better opportunities in private companies. The depletion of talent will be the last stage in what cynical insiders say is the process of converting DRDO into a dodo.