The standoff in Ladakh has set in motion emergency procurements ranging from assault rifles, to light tanks, missile systems, and precision guided munitions, to fighter aircraft. It needed a crisis to speed up acquisition of operationally critical weapons, but at best it is a short term quick fix solution. Clearly the planning process has proved inadequate to equip the services with weapons and ammunition needed by the fighting arms, especially the ground forces, which are the first line of defence for the threats faced by the country particularly along the hostile border.
The five years Services Capital Plan Acquisition (SCAP) as per DPP should indicate the list of equipment to be acquired keeping in view the operational exigencies and likely availability of funds. The plan is based on some growth assumptions over the baseline budget, but there are no commitments of finances. Allocations continue to be made as part of annual budget exercise.
The five year plan and the annual acquisition plan (AAP) ultimately becomes an aggregation of demands rather than a well thought out document reflecting prioritized needs of each service and availability of the required budget projections. The AAP caters for attrition during processing and factors in a 200% buffer so that there are enough cases in the pipeline. Consequently whichever service is able to speed up the stages and finalise the contract gets the funds. With an expenditure driven strategy to utilize maximum budget allocations before the Revised Estimate stage, so that allocations do not get reduced by Finance Ministry, the hierarchy of operational needs takes a backseat. This has a spiralling effect as the contract also builds up the committed liabilities for the next year and eats into the funds for new schemes. The process was referred to as akin to a T20 match where individual score of a batsman is not important; the team must win for which the scoreboard has to keep ticking.
Ammunition which is a critical requirement is invariably in short supply despite norms fixed for maintaining a War Wastage Reserves (WWR) and is always on the list for emergency procurements. Ammunition is provided funds from the revenue budget but is included under the common budget head ‘Stores’ which consists of rations, engineering, medical, clothing and ordnance items as well as spares for maintenance of equipment. With budget cuts due to austerity measures announced by Ministry of Finance being a common feature the resources for ammunition get further curtailed. Ammunition which gets expended during operations has to be replenished on a regular basis to maintain the stockpile to ensure operational preparedness; therefore ideally it should not be clubbed with other stores. It is time that there is a separate budget head ‘Operations’ and ammunition should be under that head. This head also needs to be excluded from the austerity cuts as it is a critical requirement for military operations.
Now more than ever there is an urgency to build up domestic capacity for production of ammunition which meets global quality standards. Clearly the Transfer of Technology model with the Ordnance factories has not been able to deliver timely and quality ammunition. It is time for a new model.