Armed forces are identifying weapons & platforms that will be placed on an import ban list as Modi govt has announced a slew of measures to boost ‘Make in India’.

Addressing an online seminar organised by the Society for Indian Defence Manufacturers (SIDM), in partnership with the Department of Defence Production, Army Vice-Chief Lt Gen S.K. Saini said the negative list will help the indigenous industry and provide micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) the opportunity to fulfill the defence needs of the force.

He, however, assured that the import ban list will not restrict the forces from procuring niche technologies abroad.

As ThePrint reported on 16 May, the armed forces are identifying weapons and platforms that will be placed on an import ban list as the Narendra Modi government has announced a slew of measures to boost the ‘Make in India’ programme in the defence sector.

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Perceptible shift from OFBs to private entities

Lt Gen Saini said there is a perceptible shift of dependence in the Army, from the state-run Ordnance Factory Boards (OFBs) to private entities in terms of non-core activities and even in certain types of critical ammunition.

“It is hoped that other ammunition varieties including those that were being imported currently, based on the response of the defence industry, will also be added in the list of items to be manufactured indigenously,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence had in December 2017 approved manufacturing of eight select ammunition under the Make in India initiative.

This included the 30mm ammunition used by infantry carrying vehicles, 125mm armour piercing types and 40 mm grenades that can be machine launched.

Army sources said while eight have been identified for local manufacturing, more ammunition like the 40mm used by Air Defence and those for Anti Material Rifles continue to be imported.

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‘Finance minister’s announcement will have positive impact’

Lt Gen Saini echoed the call for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the defence production and policy announcements, made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 17 May, will have a huge positive impact on India’s defence acquisition and sustenance.

He said 80 per cent of the Army’s capability development and more than 92 per cent of its sustenance budget was based on indigenous products and services.

Lt Gen Saini urged startups and MSMEs to come up with sophisticated technical solutions to military challenges and advised that the use of these technologies concurrently in the civil domain will help bring down their costs, making them financially viable in the medium and long term.

He also asked larger enterprises to act as major hubs of R&D, manufacturing and integration, which in turn will provide impetus to the smaller MSMEs to provide them with ancillary support, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem in the long run.

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Soldiers engaged in hostilities on three border points would be ominous in almost any context except where India and China are concerned. Along the Line of Actual Control, it could mean an escalating confrontation that could spread into diplomatic and economic spheres. Or it could mean that another border incident has got a bit out of control. The reasons for escalation could be the ever-changing border infrastructure or a rush of blood by an individual soldier. If the latter, one can expect the status quo to be restored, but after much muscle-flexing.

The problem in Sino-Indian relations is that whether such incidents are motivated by the geological or the geopolitical is often unclear to either side. Much of the discussion at officer-level flag meetings or between diplomats in the twin capitals is about trying to determine at which level the wheels are turning. That, in turn, goes to a much deeper issue of distrust between India and China and opacity on the part of both governments, but with Beijing being the blacker box. The two countries now have four border management agreements, with a fifth in the works. But with new roads being built, better vehicles being deployed, and the strategic landscape forever changing along the border, each agreement starts becoming outdated as soon as the ink dries.

India and Chinese troops are face-to-face in Galwan Valley, Finger 4 and Naku La. China’s “all weather friend”, Pakistan, has turned up the temperature along the Kashmir border. But, at the same time, the People’s Bank of China’s licence to invest in India has just been renewed. Beijing has ensured emergency medical supplies are being sent, albeit with some quality control issues. In contrast to the rhetorical aggression that Beijing has shown to the West or Southeast Asia, the noises from China regarding India have been benign. This is all part of a long-standing dichotomy in the Sino-Indian relations, much competitiveness with many elements of cooperation. However, with the international strategic environment changing, this rough-and-ready way of handling bilateral relations needs to be replaced. The goal should be a framework where lines of communication, strategic red lines and dotted lines along maps are all better delineated. This is a task of a generation, but one that is essential if India and China are to ensure border flare-ups do not become something much larger and more dangerous.

The visit came a day after India rejected China’s allegation that Indian troops initiated tensions and crossed LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim sectors and accused the Chinese army of hindering patrols on the Indian side.

Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Friday visited Leh, the headquarters of 14 Corps in Ladakh, for a security review of the sensitive sector amid tensions between India and China along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC), two officials said on the condition of anonymity. He returned to Delhi later in the day.

The visit came a day after India rejected China’s allegation that Indian troops initiated tensions and crossed LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim sectors and accused the Chinese army of hindering patrols on the Indian side.

Soldiers on both sides are showing restraint and efforts were underway to de-escalate, said one of the officials cited above.

India and China have deployed additional troops, especially in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley, after a face-off near Pangong Tso on May 5-6. India bolstered its troop levels after the Chinese side brought in reinforcements and also reportedly pitched tents and erected temporary positions in the Galwan Valley as part of its efforts to establish a presence there.

China’s foreign ministry first accused Indian troops of trespassing across LAC on Tuesday, saying Beijing had to take “necessary countermeasures” after the Indian army allegedly obstructed normal patrols by Chinese troops.

A government spokesperson on Thursday said, “Any suggestion that Indian troops had undertaken activity across LAC in the western [Ladakh] sector or the Sikkim sector is not accurate.”

HT was the first to report on May 10 about tensions flaring up between India and China in north Sikkim, where 150 soldiers were involved in a standoff a day earlier. Four Indian and seven Chinese soldiers were injured during the confrontation.

Scores of soldiers from the two countries clashed near Pangong Tso on the night of May 5-6 and a few were injured in the scuffle that involved around 250 men. While a flare-up was avoided as both armies stuck to protocols to resolve the situation, tensions spread to other parts of eastern Ladakh, including the Galwan Valley.

Talks between local commanders have failed to ease tensions and diplomatic channels are at work to end the standoff, officials said. The current situation along LAC marks the first major flare-up since the 73-day standoff between India and China at Doklam near the Sikkim border in 2017.

The number of Chinese patrol boats, sources told The Indian Express, have gone up three times — they had earlier been using only three boats. The Indian Army also has a similar number of boats to dominate the 45-km long western portion of the lake which is under Indian control.

While there have been tensions about the limits of patrolling by the two sides on the northern banks of Pangong Tso, sources said the Chinese “forcefully insisted a couple of days back that the Indian patrols stop at Finger 2”. (Express archive photo)

Two weeks after Indian and Chinese troops came to blows near Pangong Tso, a lake in eastern Ladakh, the Chinese have stepped up patrols and deployed more boats on the lake. They are also objecting to Indian construction of a vehicle track, and patrols beyond a certain point.

The tensions in Ladakh, officials said, can worsen the situation elsewhere along the Line of Actual Control.

The number of Chinese patrol boats, sources told The Indian Express, have gone up three times — they had earlier been using only three boats. The Indian Army also has a similar number of boats to dominate the 45-km long western portion of the lake which is under Indian control.

“Nearly one-third of Chinese transgressions in the western sector (of the LAC) happen in Pangong Tso. Not only have they substantially increased the number of boats on the lake, their patrolling behaviour is increasingly more aggressive. It is not a healthy thing when you consider what has been going on in the Finger Area since late April,” sources said.

The mountains on the lake’s northern bank jut forward in major spurs, which the Army calls Fingers. India claims the LAC is co-terminus with Finger 8, while the Chinese claim that the LAC passes through Finger 2. The area between the two differing perceptions is the territory which both armies try to dominate through regular patrolling.

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While there have been tensions about the limits of patrolling by the two sides on the northern banks of Pangong Tso, sources said the Chinese “forcefully insisted a couple of days back that the Indian patrols stop at Finger 2”.

Since the Indians physically control the area up to Finger 4, this was a “provocative move” by the Chinese following the “disengagement” after a physical altercation between troops of both sides near Finger 5 on the night of May 5-6.

The Chinese, sources said, have been objecting to construction of a vehicle track by Indians in the same area.

While Chinese soldiers patrol the area in light vehicles on a motorable road built in 1999 when India was busy evicting Pakistanis from the Kargil heights, Indian soldiers patrol on foot till their perception of the LAC.

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“Yes, tensions have been high. We are doing construction in our area. Also, the Chinese road is rather narrow and has very few turning points. So, when our patrols challenge their patrols and ask them to go back from our area, they physically cannot turn their vehicles and it leads to more acrimony,” sources said.

“There is a situation on the LAC in the Hot Springs sector, which is an ITBP sector. An Army company had moved closer to PP14 and PP15 in 2015 after a minor incident, but this has always been a settled area between us and the Chinese. It is worth considering if the Chinese posture there is linked to incidents at Pangong Tso, just as Depsang was linked to Chumar in 2013,” sources said.

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In New Delhi, Army officers, however, maintained that the incidents in Pangong Tso are “typical LAC activity witnessed during summer months” when “some new units have been inducted” and “operational familiarisation and occupation of winter-vacated posts” take place. They called these incidents “localised” in nature due to “different perception of the LAC by the two sides”.

Last week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled some major structural reforms in India’s moribund defence sector, as part of a coronavirus disease (Covid-19)-related macroeconomic stimulus, and the increase in foreign direct investment in defence manufacturing to 74% is radical. However, these are all policy changes that have “potential” and need to be implemented effectively before their outcome can be objectively assessed.

In the interim, India’s military security challenges, both current and long-term, came into unintended focus in this month even as the nation is grappling with the pandemic and its tragic impact on millions of citizens.

In early May, the Handwara terror attack saw the Indian Army losing a colonel and other personnel, pointing to the abiding tenacity of the low-intensity-conflict (LIC) that has been simmering in Kashmir. This is a complex proxy war where the external Pakistani stimulus has permeated the internal security strand with all its corrosive communal elements. It is unlikely to end soon.

Currently, India is managing an anomalous territorial challenge exigency, albeit of a low order. The eastern Ladakh sector saw a stand-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Pangong Tso sector. While it is well below Doklam, media reports indicate that stones were used and it is encouraging that no ordnance was exchanged, as has been the pattern for well over three decades. But the long-festering territorial dispute with China, remains alive on the national security radar.

The more intriguing element is that Nepal summoned the Indian ambassador on May 11 to lodge a protest against the construction of a road by India in an area (Lipu Lekh pass to Dharchula in Uttarakhand) that Kathmandu claims lies within its territory.

To add to the spectrum of challenges, reports have emerged of China enhancing its Indian Ocean (IO) footprint in an island proximate to Male in the Maldives. Thus the possibility of a Hambantota kind of facility/access for the PLA navy in the IO cannot be ignored by Indian security planners.

And to cap this opaque security challenge, May also symbolises India’s complex nuclear-missile anxiety. The regional strategic environment became rough for India when China acquired nuclear weapons in October 1964; the subsequent Sino-Pakistan weapons of mass destruction (WMD) covert cooperation presented Delhi with a sui generis security conundrum. The Pakistani nuclear weapon that Beijing had enabled was being used to help terrorism stoked by religious fervour — what one had described as the nuclear weapon-enabled terrorism (NWET) dilemma.

India sought to assuage its latent WMD anxiety in May 1998 through the Shakti nuclear tests under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s watch on May 11. Two decades later, the regional WMD-terror nexus has become muddier and the techno-strategic permutations are bewildering.

Does India have the wherewithal to deal effectively with this complex spectrum of national security challenges — one part of which is further aggravated by the current domestic political-ideological orientation? The answer is no — and for years experts have been pointing out that the annual defence allocation cannot sustain the kind of human, material and inventory profile that India needs. The last defence budget (excluding pensions) was Rs 3,37,000 crore. The amount available for modernisation of equipment and new acquisitions was shrinking to about 32% from the optimum of 40% of the budget.

In the backdrop of Covid-19, India’s macroeconomic challenge will worsen. The fiscal deficit is set to breach the recommended 3.5% limit; the only question is how high it would go. On May 8, the government pegged central borrowing for 2020-21 at Rs 12,00,000 crore — a significant increase from the budget estimate of Rs 7,80,000 crore. This fiscal stress will have a bearing on sectors earlier referred to as “non-plan” in the budgetary allocation, of which defence is a visible component. Thus, it is unlikely that the armed forces will receive anything close to Rs 3,50,000 crore (approx $46 billion). There are also unconfirmed reports of a budget slash in defence allocation due to Covid-19, ranging from Rs 40,000 to Rs 80,000 crore.

Given that the Covid-19 challenge and its accumulating debris of economic devastation and human destitution will be the higher national priority for some years, India will have to embark on a radical review of its security challenges and the road map to deal with this complex spectrum. Many nations are facing a similar predicament, but some abiding elements in the Indian context must be noted. Strategic geography and its attendant security exigencies will not change due to the pandemic. The low-intensity conflict stoked by Pakistan and the internal security fabric will be turbulent and the political apex will seek to assuage national sentiment in this regard.

What kind of military capability India needs, its technological contour, and how this can be both nurtured and sustained in an affordable manner in a post-Covid-19 world needs careful and objective assessment. Against this backdrop, some of the sweeping remarks attributed to the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, justifying lower defence spend and suggesting that the military may have been misrepresenting its requirements are perplexing, to put it mildly. One hopes this is not the distilled wisdom of Modi 2.0 in the security domain.

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 22

The Vice Chief of Indian Army, Lt Gen SK Saini, on Friday said the proposed ‘import ban’ list of military hardware will not restrict the forces to procure niche technologies from abroad.

Addressing a webinar organised by the Society for Indian Defence Manufacturers, he said a large number of indigenous industry and micro small and medium enterprises would be given opportunity to fulfil the defence needs of the Army.

The General said there was a perceptible shift of dependence of the Army from OFBs to private entities in terms of non-core activities and certain type of critical ammunition. He expressed hope that other ammunition varieties, including those that were being imported currently, based on the response of the defence industry, would also be added to the list of items to be manufactured indigenously.

He said 80 per cent of the Army’s capability development and more than 92 per cent of its sustenance budget was based on indigenous products and services.

New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) Thursday observed the second death anniversary of Air Chief Marshal (ACM) Idris Hassan Latif, the man who chose India over Pakistan and went on to become the 10th chief of the IAF.

Latif led the first fly-past over New Delhi after India became a republic in 1950. He was instrumental in procuring Jaguar, MiG-23 & MiG-25 aircraft for the IAF.

A highly-respected officer in the military circles, Latif was the pilot who led India’s first fly-past over New Delhi after India turned republic on 26 January 1950.

A World War II veteran, he also went on to become the governor of a state and a diplomat after retirement.

He even played a key role in the procurement of the Jaguar strike aircraft, still in use with the IAF, and the fleet of the now-retired MiG-23 and MiG-25.

‘He was very clear that his future lay with India’

Born on 9 June 1923 in Hyderabad in the erstwhile Deccan, Latif joined the Royal Indian Air Force in 1941 at the age of 18 and was commissioned in 1942.

During 1943-44, the officer was one of the few Indian pilots to be seconded to the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom where he underwent training with modern aircraft like the Hurricane and Spitfire.

On his return to India in 1944, the young officer took part in the Burma campaign, flying the Hawker Hurricane for Number 3 Squadron.

Though later posted to Madras, Latif joined the Number 9 Squadron in Burma, again flying the Hawker Hurricane.

He was good friends with his Commanding Officer Squadron Leader Asghar Khan and another flamboyant pilot, Flight Lieutenant Noor Khan.

Both the Khans later went on to become chiefs of the Pakistan Air Force.

“When Partition bought with it the division of the armed forces, Latif as a Muslim officer was faced with the choice of joining both India or Pakistan, but there was no making up of minds for him,” the IAF wrote in his official profile.

“He was very clear that his future lay with India. Even though both Asghar as well as Noor Khan called him up to persuade Latif to join them in the fledgling Pakistan Air Force, Latif made it clear that for him, religion and country were not interlinked. It was no surprise that Latif made his way to become the first Muslim chief of Air Staff of the Indian Air Force,” it added.

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Awarded Param Vishisht Seva Medal in 1971

In 1961, Latif was sent as the Air Attache to the United States and he returned in 1965 just before the India-Pakistan war broke out.

Latif eventually moved to the Air headquarters as the Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Plans), a newly created post, in the rank of Air Vice Marshal in-charge of modernisation plans.

He was awarded with the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) in 1971 for his work as the ACAS (Plans).

During the 1971 war, Latif was still the ACAS (Plans) and was involved with the monitoring of the air assets and their best utilisation.

He later became the vice chief of Air Staff, a post he held until 1978, when he took over as chief of Air Staff.

“As the first Muslim chief of Air Staff of the IAF, Latif was involved fully in the re-equipment and modernisation plans of the air force. He convinced the government to approve the procurement of the Jaguar strike aircraft, a proposal which was lying dormant for over 8 years,” according to Latif’s official profile.

As the IAF chief, he also held negotiations with the Russians, and inducted MiG-23 and later, the MiG-25 aircraft into the IAF.

After his retirement in 1981, Latif held posts of the governor of Maharashtra and Indian ambassador to France.