The Rediff Special /Admiral J G Nadkarni (retd)

Bargains of compromise

Recent controversies regarding the Bofors gun, the Su-30 aircraft and naval submarines have once again highlighted that, except for the few intimately connected with arms purchases, people at large know next to nothing about these matters.

The perpetual lack of transparency by the defence ministry coupled with the media's penchant for sensationalising even minor matters has compounded the ignorance and created many myths about how armed forces make purchases.

Purchasing arms is a complex matter but it will help the lay reader a great deal if one invokes the analogy of buying a car.

Let's take the myths one by one.

Myth no.1: India always purchases the best available weapons and equipment for its needs.
Nonsense. Weapon systems, like cars, are always a mixture of compromises. In some cars speed is sacrificed for the sake of better fuel efficiency. Similarly a weapon is a compromise between weight, range, mobility and other parameters. Even if a perfect system could be developed, it will be far too expensive for the country to afford. So people burdened with the responsibility of buying arms inevitably have to settle for what is available, affordable and the best bargain under the circumstances. So the car will not go beyond 70 mph, will be a gaze guzzler and rattle like hell. But it will do the job of taking you from A to B and you can get two of them for the price of one. So you buy them and 10 years later the babu in the Comptroller General of Accounts office will talk about the "serious deficiencies" of the equipment.

Myth no.2: There is widespread corruption in the higher echelons of the armed forces concerning arms purchases.
Bofors has somehow created the impression that senior service officers are all deeply involved in these scandals. The general impression is of Bill Gates walking into a car dealer's showroom, his pockets stuffed with bank notes, being offered a choice between a Mercedes and an Ambassador, and opting for the Amb because some money changed hands.

To start with, service officers are not involved in purchasing arms. They only evaluate the available offers from the technical point of view and make the final selection. The price negotiations are always held by the defence ministry officials and no service officer is ever present at these meetings.

Secondly, the choice is not between a Mercedes and an Ambassador. It is more like a selection between a Toyota, Nissan, Suzuki and a Honda. Inevitably, like men with no money in their pockets, servicemen spend an interminably long time on the evaluation process. They visit the companies, prepare 40-page questionnaires and prepare elaborate matrixes when the final choice may rest on what colour your wife likes. The maximum they get out of it is some trips abroad, diaries, calendars and ballpoint pens. Sadly, they don't get anywhere near the moolah.

In the Bofors case for example, the focus of investigation shifted on the merits of the gun, diverting attention from the real scandal. In reality, there was very little to choose between the guns. All were as good or bad as the others.

Myth no 3: Where national security and defence of the country is concerned money is of no concern.
This is the biggest myth which is being perpetuated. After all, successive defence ministers and finance ministers keep giving solemn assurances to the armed forces that their "genuine needs" will always be met. This is hogwash. Money in fact is of primary concern. Practically every major decision on arms purchases taken during the past 30 years has been influenced by the availability or the lack of adequate funds.

Take for example the Indian navy's purchase of submarines. In the early eighties the navy signed a deal with the German HDW for the purchase/construction of four submarines. Two were built in Germany and two were constructed by Mazagon Dock in India with the CKD kits which HDW provided. When the agreement was signed, the deutsch mark was trading at Rs 3. The kits cost the Indian government about Rs 800 million each. After construction the Mazdock subs cost about Rs 15 billion each.

By the late eighties when the time came for exercising the option for the purchase of two more kits for construction at Mazdock, the rupee had devalued to Rs 15 per DM. The kits were costing Rs 35 billion each. The submarines would have cost Rs 50 billion each. The navy did not have that kind of money and had no option but to forego construction of any more HDW submarines. Today an HDW sub will cost at least Rs 100 billion.

Compare this with the Soviet subs. India purchased six submarines from the Soviet Union in the eighties. The price? Rs 900 million each, that too with an extended credit over 15 years. In effect the subs cost us less than Rs 500 million each when the international price for an equivalent boat would have been about Rs 30 billion. Amazingly, seven years later the Soviets offered two more boats at the same original price!

The Kilos were excellent boats. (China, no novice when it comes to arms purchases, recently purchased four and is reportedly building many more at home). They, of course, had some shortcomings. The Soviet battery performance was poor and the air conditioning could be bettered. The former was corrected by substituting far superior Indian batteries and the latter by better AC discipline on board.

But then who are we to complain about the rattles and the gas guzzling of the Ambassador? It gets the job done. (The government must be agreeing. Even with all its "serious deficiencies" the government still buys the Ambassadors as staff cars!)

Mazagon Dock spent Rs 400 million in creating facilities for the construction of HDW submarines. There has been a considerable hue and cry how this has been wasted by the cancellation of further construction. Continuing production at Mazdock would have been akin to a man who builds a small garage for his Rs 40,000 car and some years later, even when he cannot afford it, buys the 200,000 Mercedes so that the garage will not go waste.

Arms selection and purchase in India is a tedious and thankless task. There is little money with the government to start with. One has to spend endless hours to make sure that every aspect and parameter is thoroughly scrutinised to ensure that the country is not taken for a ride. One has to perpetually convince the South Block babus about the choice, terms and conditions. It is a credit to India's armed forces that despite these difficulties, by and large, they have always given the country value for money in their selections.

There will always be the inevitable investigative reporter, 10 years down the line, who will invent the skeleton in the cupboard. Service headquarters will have to learn to ignore such pinpricks.

Admiral J G Nadkarni (retired) is a former chief of the naval staff.

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