Overambitious norms in Qualitative Requirements are largely
responsible for the alarming equipment shortage that the forces face
today.
The Indian Army recently dispatched a global Request for
Information (RfI) for a multi-purpose Future Ready Combat Vehicle
(FRCV), which has generated much mirth in military-industrial circles,
for its sheer ridiculousness and operational folly.
The
Army’s request is for an FRCV that will not only serve as a
‘medium’-sized main battle tank to replace the Army’s ageing fleet of
licence-built Russian T-72s but also as a ‘light-tracked and wheeled
tank’, built on the same platform. In layman terms, this is like asking
for a Humvee and a Maruti 800 on the same platform. Hopefully, the
document will be either withdrawn or amended before its July 31
deadline.
Surely, the Directorate General of
Mechanised Forces at Army Headquarters, responsible for issuing the
request, realises the irony and irrationality of drawing up such absurd
general staff qualitative requirements (GSQRs), which are
technologically impossible for any manufacturer to fulfil.
What
is all the more surprising is that such QRs are formulated after
extensive discussion, not only by the division concerned — in this case,
the Mechanised Forces — but finally approved by the Army’s Deputy Chief
(Planning & Systems), who is responsible for acquisitions. His
office, as are those involved in formulating the requests and the
subsequent proposals, or tenders, is purportedly staffed by competent
scientific and technical advisers.
Senior Army
officers concede that such over-ambitious and flawed requests for
information, leading to equally over-stretched, faulty and diluted
tenders, are largely responsible for the alarming equipment shortage
that the forces face today. The shortfall includes small arms,
howitzers, assorted helicopters, armour with night-fighting capacity,
air defence capability and varied ordnance, among other things. Although
Army Headquarters blames the hidebound and ill-informed Ministry of
Defence (MoD) bureaucrats for this, it also has largely itself to blame
for the glaring deficiencies.
‘Blinkered views’
“The
whole process is carried out with limited knowledge and blinkered
views,” said former Maj. Gen. Mrinal Suman, the Army’s leading authority
on acquisitions and offsets. Poorly conceived, formulated and drafted
QRs create confusion and delays, resulting in the entire process being
aborted much later, he said. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Defence concurs.
In its report tabled in Parliament
on April 30, 2012, the Committee declared that as many as 41 of the
Army’s proposals for diverse equipment in recent years were withdrawn or
terminated. The reasons included faulty or over-ambitious qualitative
requirements. The Committee report unambiguously pinned responsibility
on the Army. The MoD and attendant financial advisers had no role in
framing weapon QRs. Service Headquarters consult with the largely
uniformed Directorate General Quality Assurance (DGQA), sometimes with
inputs from the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
The
typical process is this: all available literature on the equipment is
gathered and its multiple characteristics collated. The idea is to
include as many features as possible to demonstrate how exhaustively the
task has been performed. Thereafter, as the draft travels up the chain
of command, it gathers additional parameters, as each officer feels
compelled to suggest more improvements. “The final QR takes the shape of
a well-compiled wish list of utopian dimensions, which simply do not
exist,” stated Gen. Suman.
For instance, in 2004, the
Army issued a tender for 168 light utility helicopters to replace the
obsolete fleet of Cheetahs and Chetaks inducted into service in the
mid-60s. The proposal required the chopper to hover uninterruptedly for
30 minutes, a capability no helicopter in the world possessed at the
time. The maximum hover time then available, with a U.S. helicopter, was
seven minutes. The Army was forced to withdraw the tender soon after.
Similarly,
a tender to upgrade FH-77B 155mm/39 calibre howitzers, acquired in the
1980s, had to be scrapped twice, first in 2006 and again in 2009, as the
QRs drawn up by the Artillery Directorate were unworkable. A BAE
Systems official associated with the upgrade at the time said that the
requirements were ‘unrealistic’ for these old guns, expecting more
capability than even new howitzers.
In 2013, the
request sent to at least five overseas vendors to replace the Army’s
obsolete Bofors 40mm L-70 and Soviet ZU-23mm 2B air defence guns had to
be scrapped. All five vendors declared the requirements to be
unreasonable, as they demanded a firing rate of 500 rounds per minute, a
capability no gun in the world possessed.
The same
has applied to tenders for tank fire control systems, long range
observation systems and for different ammunition types, all terminated
over the years on grounds of overreach and unrealism. It would appear
that the Indian Army’s search for matchless, and globally unavailable,
equipment and capabilities triumphs over and over again.
thehindu
