Future Shock

The Indian Army’s ambitious Rs 60,000 crore Future Infantry Combat Vehicle was launched nearly a decade ago. Ten years later, it has not even crossed the first stage

- Sandeep Unnithan

For more than a decade now, the project to build an armoured vehicle for Indian soldiers has pinballed through South Block’s bureaucratic maze like a driverless car. Since 2009, the Rs 60,000 crore Futuristic Infantry Combat Vehicle (FICV) project has been launched twice, each time with great promise, but sputtered and stalled even before the steel to build the first prototype had been cut.

The ICVs are tracked armoured vehicles which carry mechanised infantry into the battle. They are not only armour-protected but also equipped with a cannon, anti-tank missiles and a heavy machine gun to support the dismounted infantry.

The FICV project, however, hasn’t crossed its first battlefield yet: the bureaucracy. The project was started in 2009, scrapped in 2012, resurrected in 2015, and, as of March 2018, awaits a nod from the MoD’s Defence Production Board (DPB). The DPB is yet to decide development agencies (DAs) or select two from the five private sector firms that have submitted bids and are eligible to build two separate FICV prototypes in collaboration with the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).

The MoD invited 10 firms, six companies responded to the ministry’s expression of interest (EoI) in 2015: L&T, Mahindra & Mahindra, Pipavav Defence, OFB and consortiums of Tata Power SED-Titagarh Wagons and Tata Motors Ltd, and Bharat Forge Ltd. Last November, the MoD shortlisted five firms. Three meetings of the DPB have taken place since then—in September, November and March this year—but the two firms are yet to be finalised. The project remains where it was: yet to start.