Chinks in the Armour

Why Indian armed forces are fighting with outdated weapons / Military Affairs

- SUSHANT SINGH

In April last year, as India was in the midst of parliamentary elections that saw Narendra Modi return to power with a bigger majority, the former vice-chief of the army staff Lieutenant General Sarath Chand formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Since many top military officers have joined the ruling party immediately after retirement, another one joining it within a year of hanging up his uniform should not have come as a surprise. But Chand had made news in February 2018, a few months prior to his retirement, when he told the parliamentary standing committee on defence that most of the equipment with the Indian Army was in the vintage category.

“Typically, any modern Armed Forces should have ... one-third of its equipment in the vintage category, one-third in the current category and one-third in the state of the art category,” Chand told the standing committee. “As far as we are concerned, the state today is 68 per cent of our equipment is in the vintage category, with just about 24 per cent in the current, and eight per cent in the state of the art category.”

Chand’s testimony lifted the lid on a problem that has not been solved since. While poor decision-making, dependence on imports and legacy issues are often blamed for the state of the army’s modernisation, the situation has been exacerbated in recent years by inadequate funding provided for modernisation of the equipment by the BJP government. Several reports of the standing committees on defence over the past decade have tried to highlight the issue but the pleas have fallen on deaf years. With a conflict with China looming on the borders, India is forced to confront a sobering reality of its own making.