Ajay Banerjee
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 5

Weighed down by salaries and pensions, the defence budget announced today remains the same as the one announced on February 1. The allocation is 7.93 per cent of the Budget estimates of the last fiscal.

The budget for this fiscal will be Rs 3,18,931.22 cr ($44.74 billion), the same amount set aside in the interim budget in February, and a sum of Rs 1,12,080 crore has been allocated for defence pensions. The combined budget — for operations, salaries, pensions and capital — stands at Rs 4,31,011 crore, which constitutes 15.5 per cent of the government’s spending.

The budget for the last fiscal was Rs 2,95,511 crore and the hike is Rs 23,420 crore this fiscal.

The services are literally weighed down by bulging “establishment” costs -euphuism for salaries and pensions. The salaries of the three services and the civilians work out to Rs 1,19,620 crore and now form 37.51 per cent of the budget. In other words, salaries and pensions take up more money than what is allocated for modernisation.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who served as the Minister for Defence in the previous government, allowed exemption of basic customs duty on import of defence equipment not manufactured in India.

“This will have an impact of augmenting the defence budget by approximately Rs 25,000 crore on account of savings in expenditure on customs duty over the next five years,” the Ministry of Defence said tonight.

The budget has an allocation of Rs 1,08,248 crore as capital expenses meant for new equipment, weapons, aircraft, naval warships, Army vehicles. The MoD will spend around 31.7 per cent of the total Central Government capital expenditure.

The spending is way behind that of China. Data released by Swedish think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on April 29 titled “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2018” says: “China, the world’s second-largest (behind US) military spender, allocated $250 billion to the military in 2018, which accounted for 14 per cent of all global spending.”

Issue of disability pension also raised

In the last two years, 36 Members of Parliament purchased vehicles disposed off by the Army, the Ministry of Defence informed Parliament on Monday.

n the last two years, 36 Members of Parliament purchased vehicles disposed off by the Army, the Ministry of Defence informed Parliament on Monday.

The vehicles were made available to all the members who had applied. Eleven MPs were allotted vehicles from Vehicle Sub Depot Meerut, 15 from Ordnance Depot Avadi, three from Central Ordnance Depot Chheoki, two from Central Ordnance Depot Mumbai, two from Central Armoured Fighting Vehicle Depot Kirkee, and one MP each was allotted vehicles from 224 ABOD Jodhpur, Northern Command Vehicle Depot Udhampur and Vehicle Depot Panagarh,” the MoD said.

The Army has a policy of discarding old vehicles that are sent to depots almost as junk as they go past their prime. Army vehicles face heavy wear and tear as they are used in hilly regions with tough terrain and poor roads.

All the Members of Parliament got the vehicle from the same depot from where they had asked for.

This information was given by Raksha Rajya Mantri Shri Shripad Naik in a written reply to Shri Ajay Pratap Singh in Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Many of the cutting-edge platforms that we now operate are the outcome of lessons learnt 20 years ago

Ajay Banerjee in New Delhi

It was in the summer of 1999 that the Indian Air Force (IAF) was called into battle during the Kargil conflict with Pakistan. The outcome changed the thinking of strategic planners in New Delhi and added heft to the IAF war machinery to kickstart a new ‘era’. Many of the new cutting-edge platforms the IAF now operates are the outcome of lessons learnt 20 years ago.

The ‘Kargil War’ (May-July 1999) was fought at altitudes in excess of 15,000 feet in the Himalayas. The IAF was tasked to bomb the Pakistani army-occupied locations between 15,000 feet and 18,000 feet. No country, no air force and no fighter jet had been used to drop armament at such altitudes. “It was unique. It meant pilots were flying at 30,000 feet to hit at targets that were some 12,000 feet away. The rarefied air changes the dynamics and trajectory of the bomb,” said a senior IAF officer who, as a young pilot, was part of the strikes on Tiger Hill, a 16,000-feet high massif.

A restrictive mandate was to not cross the Line of Control (LoC) — the de facto 749-km boundary between India and Pakistan. Enemy troops had occupied winter-vacated posts all along a 168-km Himalayan ridgeline that forms the Drass-Kargil-Batalik-Turtuk axis of the LoC. Conditions are tough, rugged, tree-less, desolate, undulating and punishingly cold.

How Kargil was fought

Between the 1971 Indo-Pak war and Kargil, an interim of 28 years, technology had progressed while geo-strategic alignments were being reworked after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92. India was facing sanctions from the US in the aftermath of the May 1998 Nuclear tests and terrorists like Osama Bin Laden were still not on the hit list of the US. Satellite imagery was just making its debut in India.

Besides the several technological handicaps, India lacked precision weapons. The existing 1,000-pound ‘dumb bombs’ were hurriedly retro-fitted with a ‘kit’ within 12 days. India had purchased the ‘Paveway’ bomb from the US; the first tranche had come in 1997, but the imposition of sanctions following the Nuclear tests had left the integration incomplete. In stepped the Israelis to fit the kit, hence making the first precision bomb drop for the IAF.

IAF Chief Air Chief Marshall BS Dhanoa, speaking at an event at Gwalior on June 24, described the air strikes at Tiger Hill and Muntho Dhalo as “turning points of the Kargil War; it helped ground forces in their advance.”

In the middle of May that year, the Chief of IAF Air Chief Marshall AY Tipnis flew into Srinagar and asked two young pilots if the attacks could be carried out. The answer was: “It can be done.”

By May 25, a MiG 21 fighter squadron (consisting some 16-18 planes), commanded by then Wing Commander Dhanoa, had been re-located from Bathinda to Srinagar. This was augmented with another MiG 27 squadron. Two Mirage 2000 squadrons were forward located from Gwalior to Ambala and Adampur. On May 27, the IAF lost two fighter jets, both hit by shoulder-fired US-made Stinger missiles. One pilot, Squadron leader Ajay Ahuja, lost his life.

On May 28, four IAF personnel lost their lives as a Mi-17 copter was hit. These were our last losses. The IAF went on to carry out 578 strikes, 462 combat air patrols and 149 reconnaissance sorties during the Kargil conflict.

One of the toughest parts was accurate photo imagery. The Mirage used to have a film-based camera that needed to be flown back to the base for the black & white film to be watched over by a group of pilots. Today, the images and videos are beamed live in high definition. At one stage, the iconic MiG 25 — the Soviet-era super high speed plane with the ability to fly at 70,000 feet — was pressed into service over Mushkoh valley, west of Dras to take pictures as it could fly well out of range of Pak fighter jets and ground-fired missiles.

The big changes since

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the strategic community ‘woke up’ to new realities. Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd), who is now the Additional Director General of the Centre for Air Power Studies, says, “The very first need was to have a helicopter that can fire armament at those altitudes.” The Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) made by Hindustan Aeronauctics Limited had the latest Shakti engine (jointly produced by Turbomeca and HAL). One of the key parameters was its ability to fly high (up to 21,500 feet) and launch missiles at that kind of altitude, he says.

Twenty years after Kargil, we have top-class precision weapons. The Mirage 2000 pilots dropped precision-guided armament from 80 km away to strike Jaish-e-Mohd terror training camp at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on February 26. In these years, India has also developed its own beyond visual range (BVR) missile, the Aastra, made by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The IAF also uses a European-origin BVR missile and one that is Russian-origin.

A series of mountain radars dot the Himalayas, providing real time update of the incoming threats. India has acquired air-borne early-warning aircrafts that were effectively used during the four-week combat air patrol launched after the Pulwama terror attack on February 14 and the subsequent air strike on Balakot.

In these 20 years, the IAF has become a fully networked force — its planes send live feeds and videos, satellite, UAVs and radars track live targets. The upcoming S-400 missile from Russia will further change the paradigm.

A flight controller sitting at a monitoring node at Barnala, Punjab, was coordinating the air duel over Nowshera on February 27 and the entire air space and was being fed a live feed from air-borne radars and UAVs.

The fighter fleet has a new jet, the twin-engine Sukhoi 30 MKI, a powerful air dominance fighter; 250 of them are serving right now. The fleet of MiG 29 and Mirage 2000 is being upgraded. The first of the Rafale is expected to be in India by September. Strategic lift planes, the C-130 J from Lockheed Martin of the US and the C-17 from the Boeing, have been added to the ageing Russian-origin AN 332 and Il 76 planes. The US planes provide huge advantage in lifting men and machines.

New heavy lift helicopters, Chinook, have been inducted at Chandigarh. These can deliver to mountain tops small body of troops who would otherwise need to climb, hence bringing pace to operations. Another few weeks and brand-new advanced attack copters, the Apache 64 E, will join the IAF.

Singh said that as and when required the HAL borrows from banks to meet its working capital requirements.

The HAL has concrete orders to manufacture Su30 MKI, Light Combat Aircraft Tejas, Dornier, Advanced Light Helicopter, Chetak, Cheetal helicopters among others and defence services have paid the aerospace major Rs 8,140 crore in the last six months, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said June 24. Arrears of Rs 868.14 crore are outstanding with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for its contractors, he said.

“The present capacity available in HAL is adequate to fulfil the existing orders, projects in hand. Currently, HAL has firm orders to manufacture platforms like Su-30 MKI, LCA, DO-228 (Dornier), ALH, Chetak and Cheetal helicopters,” Singh in a written response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

He said that as and when required the HAL borrows from banks to meet its working capital requirements.

Just before the polls, the Congress had launched an offensive against the government alleging that Dassault Aviation, the makers of Rafale fighter jet, overlooked the PSU and gave the offset contract to another private company.

Last month, HAL has posted an all-time high turnover of Rs 19,705 crore, registering a growth of 7.8 per cent in 2018-19.

Lt Gen Baljit Singh (retd)

The skin prickles with a sudden rash of goose bumps, the heart pounds in the ears above the roar of engines straining to terminate the flight on the constricted, ad-hoc landing strip and when the aircraft comes to a juddering halt (momentarily in an exaggerated nose-down tail-up profile), one’s body is drenched in a shower of cold sweat; an indelible experience of every landing on the Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) at Mechuka. Anyone on the passenger flight who may hold a contrary view ‘is either a liar or a Gorkha’ — borrowing from Field Marshal Manekshaw’s inimitable exposition on the instinct of fear in battle.

But why in the first place go to Mechuka? Well, even though India and China had emerged as sibling republics, within days of the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the restive PLA first flexed its muscles to ignite war on the Korean Peninsula, and once Gen McArthur prevailed successfully, the PLA switched focus to annex Tibet. So, what for aeons had been the acknowledged as an open Indo-Tibet boundary was to metamorphose by 1954 into a bitterly disputed Sino-India border.

It was against this despondent backdrop that the policy of ‘showing the flag’ along our northern border was put in place, which in the extreme Northeastern segment translated into posts at Mechuka, Longju and Kibithoo, separated from one another by almost inaccessible terrain. As recent as 1987, it took soldiers marching from Sadia 12 to 16 arduous days to reach Mechuka.

Of course, none of these isolated posts sited on express security purposes would have been viable, but for the highly motivated and skilled crew of the IAF who manoeuvred their magnificent flying machines through highly challenging ground and aerial environment with aplomb. Even though the ALG at Mechuka is about 800 metres, its 30-km proximity to the Sino-Indian border and dominant mountaintops, inhibit pilots from making a circuit to descend and ease on the throttle. Nearing the middle of the strip, the aircraft ‘drops’ down with a thud in the hope that the brakes would hold fast!

My friend Air Marshal KC Cariappa (retd) confirms that it was a scary last 20 minutes to approach the Mechuka bowl. The valley was very narrow, steep and thickly wooded. ‘Whenever we flew in it was with a prayer that the engine and a/c would be ok….’

The takeoff is another magnificent experience, and at the same time, somewhat chilling. There is no apprehension of air violation of the international border, but uncomfortably close to the southern tip of the ALG is the looming wooded mountaintop. The takeoff is weirdly dramatic; as the engines of the aircraft in its stationery mode are revved to full throttle to develop maximum thrust, the AN 32 literally starts bucking upon the ALG like an unbroken rodeo horse, and on climaxing it zooms forward like a shooting star, lifting above the mountaintop within kissing distance of its treetops!

Our Correspondent

Anantnag, June 20

Army’s Northern Command Chief Lt Gen Ranbir Singh said on Thursday that operations in the state were being conducted in a professional and dedicated manner.

He was speaking after renaming an Army Goodwill School in Wuzur Kulgam after Ashok Chakra awardee Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani. Singh was answering a question regarding inconveniences caused to general public on the national highway during convoy movement and a recent incident in Srinagar wherein a traffic cop was ruthlessly beaten up by Armymen.

“We have a very strong code of conduct which values human dignity,” Singh told reporters in response to the question. “Our operations are being conducted in a very dedicated and professional manner”. He assured that whenever there are actions to be taken, they are taken at appropriate levels.

Earlier in his speech, Singh praised Wani and said the slain soldier was an example of bravery. He complimented Wani’s wife, also present at the function, for being strong and unflinching in the face of adversity. “It is a matter of great pride for all of us that we have assembled here today to pay homage to our martyr, Nazir Ahmad Wani,” Singh said.

Wani was killed on November 25 last year during an anti-militancy operation in Batagund village of Kulgam district. He became the first Kashmiri to be awarded the prestigious Ashok Chakra award on January 26 earlier this year.

Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh also made a reference of other achievers and heroes of Kashmir, such as Umar Faiyaz and Inspector Arshad Khan, SHO of Anantnag, among others.

Also present on the occasion was the family of Rauf Ahmad Dar, who died recently while rescuing tourists from a rafting mishap in Pahalgam. Singh said Dar was an example of what India stands for and the Indian Army saluted his bravado.

“This is what all of us stand for. He laid down his life without even thinking who the tourists were or where they had come from. He is a role model for all of us,” Singh said. The ceremony was attended by the students of Goodwill School, Wuzur. Singh advised the children to work hard and do something worthwhile for Kashmir and the nation.

Tribune News Service

Ropar, June 8

Paratrooper Karamjeet Singh, who was killed in an accidental fire from his own gun in Kashmir, was cremated with full military honours at his native Hafizabad village near here on Saturday. Karamjeet was attached with the 23 Para Regiment.

On Friday, when he, along with a party of his regiment, was returning from patrolling in Shopian in a Gypsy, a bullet fired from his weapon accidentally led to the tragedy.

His father Satnam Singh had died four months ago. Karamjeet is survived by his mother and two sisters.

Local MLA and Cabinet Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and SAD leader Simranjit Singh Chandumajra also reached the village to pay tributes to the martyr.

Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa on Wednesday received the baton of Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee from outgoing Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba who retires on Friday. The Chiefs of Staff Committee comprises chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and the senior most member is appointed its chairperson. “Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa will be the Chairman COSC with effect from May 31 consequent to relinquishment of charge by Admiral Sunil Lanba upon superannuation,” a defence ministry spokesperson said. The Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee is tasked with ensuring synergy among the three services and evolve common strategy to deal with external security challenges facing the country. Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa is a Kargil war veteran and top rated fighter pilot with over 3,000 hours of flying experience. An alumnus of Rashtriya Indian Military College and the National Defence Academy, he was commissioned in the flying branch of Indian Air Force in June 1978. The Air Chief Marshal has primarily flown the MiG-21 aircraft with flying experience across the entire spectrum of fighter aircraft of the IAF. During the Kargil war in 1999, he was the Commanding Officer of a frontline ground attack fighter squadron. He has led many coveted operational and staff assignments that include command of a frontline fighter base and director of the fighter operations and war planning at Western Air Command. He was the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of South Western Air Command and has also been the Vice Chief of the Air Staff.