India’s Most Interactive Defence Community Site Unveiled by Armed Forces’ Chiefs

Dr. Annurag Batra, Editor–in- Chief, BW Businessworld: “A leader in the forces command more respect than any other professionals. Today we are happy to roll out BW Defence. Why are we really doing all this? We are doing this to add to the Defence preparedness of our forces, to analyze, understand and enable the world of Defence in India, to increase awareness about India’s ever prospering ecosystem of Defence and act as a motivator for a further development in the area. We aim to be a catalyst in India’s Defence preparedness, to improve the lives of Defence forces personnel. And most importantly, this is a unique angle that we bring i.e. to be a bridge and an editorial platform between the defence forces and other stakeholders in the government, bus and public especially the business. This is one editorial platform that we are not necessarily doing for profit. We believe that our objective sand the principles on which laid the foundation of BW Defence is to build respect around Indian forces and work towards their welfare. We want to create more awareness about the complexities and nitty-gritties of Defence.’

Sanjay Jaju, Joint Secretary, and Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence (MoD): “If you look at the defence production policy, you would have realized that the major thrust is on modernizing the requirements of our forces, not just modernosing but also allowing India to become a defence manufacturing hub. All of you would agree that the country of our size cannot afford to depend on imported supplies for long. At the same time, the country of our size cannot remain aloof from global supply chain of defence manufacturing. We have not just laid stress on indigenous production on defence forces, but if you have read the policy, you would have realized that Defence manufacturing will be a major growth multiplier on our landscape. If you look at the core aspects of defence production, you will realize the policy is giving a major slant to production in the private participation in this sector. Our country has been ably supported by defence public sector undertaking. We manufacture many of the critical systems in the country. It is also important that production is not just limited to the public sectors, private sector has its own advantages of scale, efficiency, innovation, and empower the global supply chain, the area which we need to stress on indigenous defence production of our process. As a result, 30-40% of the defence production is run by the private sector. It is equally important for us to keep supporting the private sector by equalizing our policy regime by providing them a level playing field vis-à-vis their foreign competitors. I am sure that they have access to the latest technologies, they have access to finance, and the ability to impact the overall industry ecosystem.”

Maroof Raza, Publisher, Salute Magazine, who moderated one of the sessions, stated “We have been having a lot of talk about make in India but we also need to buy to meet the critical requirements of our services, we are not going to be in a situation to eventually make in India. I think critical technologies a d the state-of-the art   weapon systems which work as force multipliers in an environment which is changing so dramatically, that it is quite difficult to say with confidence that a design that you have approved years ago would really be worthwhile and would really give you the edge today.“

Lt Gen P.J.S. Pannu, Deputy Chief, Integrated Defence Staff: “When you talk about procurement and make in India, the whole thing appears to look simple. But with actually getting to the process of procurement and product, and you will find that there are wheels within wheels that the whole system is more complex than we usually make it appear. India is a very unique in a position where we have two adversities which have nuclear weapons and so does India have. These are the weapons of mass destruction and used for deterrents. Usually the phenomenon is when you have the Nuclear-armed countries, the conventional forces are usually reduced to a point because the nuclear weapons itself contribute to war avoidance. But what is unique about the region that we are talking about is that the 2 adversaries and us we also have a huge amount of conventional forces which are not only present but also continuously modernized. Therefore for us modernization of the armed forces is the most essential subject for the security of the country. And if you don’t pay additional attention to it, the security and existence would be at stake. So the key to modernization of any armed forces is military hardware on one side and training of soldiers on the other side. 

Air Marshal Sumit Mukherjee, “The fact of the matter is the requirements of the fighter squadrons dictating on a continuous basis have been in the news for quite some time.  We, traditionally, Air Force systems have a lifecycle of 30-35 years.  But there is no fighter that is made which don’t have an architecture built into it to go for an upgrade because we know for fact that we cannot suddenly go for a new system. And no country in the world can change from one.  System to the other. They need to keep upgrading the system progressively till it reaches the level where the architecture which is finite. In the Air Force, we have to important rather than buy because the systems are inherently high-tech. Because of the hi-tech requirements, we cannot wait for the match-up to take place to be able to feed the air force with the desired equipment.  With the level of technology that is required, the finesse in the completion of the item is very stringent which does not allow the Indian industry to catch up. So we need to target the areas of manufacturing research and development for the Indian industry meet the requirements of Indian air force.  We are already making a headway in the areas components and software technology. We do need to build up a culture of manufacture to precision, quality, because the essence of your quality is the fact that you are able to export. All these defence equipment has a gestation period and a development time and a make time. 

Shekhar Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Goa Shipyard limited, “We still do not have the resources as we will like to have to spend on any amount of modernization. Every government would like to go the whole hog with modernization and would put the best money in upgrading our capabilities as far as weapons are concerned.  We have to go the whole hog I in getting into the business of make-in-India. There is no alternative to it. Although there are opportunities in the Defence sector, the aspiration of the private sector is that the number of orders also meet the kind of investments that we make.   There are challenges and that is where the question of make and buy comes. So we have to gauge how we get into the option of make.  So it’s a mix of buy and make which is doing very good.  It is obvious that instead of buying 100% from outside, we go for 60% local sourcing and progressively move towards 80% indigenization. In the process, it will generate more employment opportunities. In the last 4 years, we have move from Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 1,500 crore. We are the largest exporter of ships. “