NEW DELHI: The armed forces, already grappling with critical operational gaps on several fronts ranging from submarines and tanks to fighters and helicopters, have hardly got any funds to go in for new modernisation projects this year.
The Army has got only 60% of the funds it had sought for modernisation in the 2017-18 budget. The Navy and IAF, in turn, got 67% and 54%. Out of the coming fiscal’s total defence outlay of Rs 2.74 lakh crore, incidentally, only Rs 86,488 crore has been earmarked for modernisation. What makes matters worse is that the bulk of this capital outlay will be used to pay “committed liabilities” of earlier arms contracts instead of new projects.
Slamming the government for all this, the parliamentary standing committee on defence on Thursday said this kind of “ad-hocism”, “casual” and “lackadaisical” approach would adversely affect the country’s defence preparedness as well as hit the morale of the armed forces.
Take the case of the 1.3-million strong Army. As opposed to a projection of Rs 42,500 crore, the force got only Rs 25,254 as capital allocation. With committed liabilities to the tune of Rs 23,000 crore, it leaves the force with a paltry Rs 2,254 crore for new projects.
“The Army’s budgetary provisioning is critically short and is likely to affect modernisation as well as operational preparedness,” said the committee, asking the government to give at least Rs 13,000 crore additional capital acquisition funds to the Army because it faces critical shortages of main-battle tanks, artillery guns, missiles, helicopters, assault rifles, bullet-proof jackets, surveillance and monitoring networks.
- The revenue budget, too, is woefully inadequate. The Army, for instance, was sanctioned around Rs 64,000 crore for capability and Infrastructure development along the “Northern Borders” with China over eight years. But has got only Rs 4,000 crore till now.
The Navy plans to be a 212-warship and 458-aircraft force by 2027. But is making do with just 138 warships and 235 aircraft at present, with many of them on their last legs. “There are huge deficiencies in authorised ad existing level of ships, submarines and aircraft,” said the committee.As reported by TOI earlier, the IAF is also down to just 33 fighter squadrons when at least 42-44 are needed to tackle the “collusive threat” from China and Pakistan. The committee said the number of squadrons will go down to 19 by 2027, with the progressive retirement of MiG-21s, MiG-27s and MiG-29s, and may further reduce to 16 by 2032. Though there will be new inductions, like the 36 Rafale jets ordered from France for Rs 59,000 crore, but much more clearly needs to be done.
The situation of Navy and IAF is equally grim. The Navy, for instance, has been allocated Rs 18,000 crore as the capital budget when its pay-out for committed liabilities already stands at Rs 22,000 crore for 2017-18.