DEFENCE NOTES

New Delhi, 12 June 2006

Kalam’s Daring Sortie

DOES IT MOTIVATE THE YOUTH?

By B.K. Mathur

Three happenings almost simultaneously last week concerning the Indian Air Force (IAF) were at once thought-provoking: President Kalam’s daring 45-minute sortie as a co-pilot on the IAF’s state-of-the-art SU-30 MKI fighter aircraft, a MiG crash about the same time that day and completion by the Hindustan aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) of its Jet trainer’s hot weather trials at Nagpur.  Most significant of them was indeed the 74-year-old President’s feat, which was just not a ceremonial occasion but a significant experience that established two records: First head of the state to fly a military aircraft and an oldest person ever to fly a fighter jet which went supersonic mid-air and broke the sound-barrier.

Incidentally, President Kalam had evinced keen interest in the Sukhoi fighters as the Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister.  The “Bhramchari missileman” as Kalam Sahib was known during his stint in the Defence Ministry was barred from flying the fighter aircraft as a civilian scientist.  But as the Supreme Commander of India’s armed forces he could fulfil his ambition of 1956 when he tried unsuccessfully to join the IAF and fly a military aircraft.  During his sortie last week, the President looked like an accomplished pilot and studied the on-board Indian computers.  He experienced gravitational force up to as much as 2G magnitudes.

The President’s sortie, which broke the sound-barrier by clocking up to 1.26 mach (one mach is equal to 340 metres per second) at a height of 7.5 km, is bound to motivate the youth to join the air force.  As Kalam stated after the flight: “There is a great opportunity for more youngsters to join the IAF and work in these hi-tech areas.”  The advice is indeed very timely at a time when the youth is not keen to join military flying and is looking for another career mainly because the risk to life involved due to lack of training facilities in modern, supersonic jet fighters. So many accidents have taken place in recent years, to the extent that the IAF’s MiGs have come to be described as “flying coffins”, stupidly wrong, though.

Unfortunately, however, President Kalam’s dare-devil feat in the skies, followed by his advice to the youth must have hurt the enthusiasm within minutes, when another IAF crash was reported. A MiG-29 trainer crashed into the sea off Jamnagar where the Marine National Park is situated.  No doubt the pilots ejected safely, but the very fact that a trainer aircraft was crashed raises the off-repeated questions: what is wrong with training? And, is there anything wrong with the aircraft of the MiG series made in Russia?  Two high-level committees have studied the causes of accidents in the last two decades and more – one headed by Air Marshal La Fontaine and the other by APJ Abdul Kalam, then in the Defence Ministry and now the President.

The Kalam Committee, as also the earlier one headed by Air Marshal La Fontaine, went into various factors causing IAF crashes. They included human error, technical defects, bird hit etc. The Air Marshal had also included indiscipline among the pilots and lack of training in man-machine coordination. The root cause of accidents has, however, never been spelt out, or made public so far.  There are only comments galore without going into the facts and real cause behind a crash which causes the nation dearly.  But before we go into the issue further, I hasten to clarify that the rate of accidents is not so high as it is made out to be, in view of the fact that the Indian fighter pilots fly much more than their counterparts even in developed countries.

Not only that, the IAF’s fighter pilots have to fly low, quite low, where the reaction time in distress is too little. This reminds me of Air Chief Marshal Nirmal Suri.  He had told me in 1991 as the Chief of the Air Staff that the professional growth in an Air Force like India’s is most important.  There is no limit to growth.  One can never remain satisfied with whatever one has achieved. But certain basic requirements to make the force operationally competent, commensurate with the latest trends and sophistication, are the bare minimum to be achieved on all three sides of the triangle – man, machine and environment, which includes the bird menace caused by increasing pollution around military airports.

In fact, when IAF accidents are enquired into, the approach adopted at present is wrong – and requires a change. After the accident, one tends to automatically ask: who was responsible for the accident?  But what needs to be investigated is: What is responsible for the accident?  In other words, the emphasis in finding out the real cause of an accident needs to be on “what” and not “who”.  This clearly requires more concentration of the authorities on air safety, including training of pilots on the present-day, highly sophisticated fighter planes. That really takes us for the umpteenth time to what should be described in the least the “criminal delay” in acquiring for the “conversion” sorties an adequate advanced jet trainer (AJT).  In this context, the HAL’s efforts to produce an Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT) is welcome.

There is, however, no denying the fact that the standard of fighter pilots is not the same as it was earlier in view of inadequate quality intake into the IAF which leads to poor training at the conversion into supersonic flying stage.   It is very necessary to understand that the quality of men behind the machines and their training prior to flying a supersonic single-pilot, state-of-the-art fighter aircraft are two main reasons that lead to air crashes.  Failure on both fronts leads to “killing” of our fighter pilots – the youngmen otherwise lacking in no way in the fighting spirit, valour and bravery.

The present state of affairs on the recruitment and training fronts, unfortunately, causes indiscipline among the fliers and the ground staff. That is also a matter of great concern.  Former Air Chief Marshal H. Mulgaokar had taken a hard line on this aspect during his tenure as the IAF Chief.  He was able to reduce the percentage of accidents due to human error from 43 to 15.6 – lowest level attained so far. Later Air Chief Katre had urged the need for a change in the training programme, commensurate with the requirements of the present-day flying hazards. Thus, there has to be an optimum efficiency of man-machine combination, without which one could justifiably ask: Does President Kalam’s feat motivate the youth to join the Air Force?---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

DEFENCE NOTES

New Delhi, 29 May 2006

Spend But Be Accountable

CAG FINDS FLAWS IN ARMS DEALS

By B.K. Mathur

Defence expenditure is one thing which has never been objected to by anyone in the country, including leaders of the Opposition parties.  It is a matter of national security, which can’t be compromised at any cost. But what is invariably questioned in Parliament and outside is misuse of massive budgetary allocations and lack of accountability.  Even if budgetary allocations of the Defence Ministry have not been discussed on the floor of Parliament for years, institutions and individuals connected with the Ministry’s policy and planning point out grave misuse of funds in military purchases.  Parliamentary Committee reports and scrutiny by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India highlight again and again financial irregularities.

In its latest report tabled in Parliament the other day, the CAG has pulled up the Government for its failure to exercise adequate care in negotiating huge armament deals with Russia, a country which even today is one of the major weapons and systems supplier to India.  The CAG has pinpointed three major defence deals from that country – Rs.6,500-crore agreement for the purchase of Sukhoi-30 multi-role fighter aircraft signed in 1996, Rs.3,000-crore deal to buy T-90 Main Battle Tanks concluded in 2001 and even the earlier agreement to acquire T-72 MBTs was flawed, observed the country’s financial watchdog and noted “there is need for the Government to freeze cost parameters, especially in cases of licensed-production.”

The CAG has cautioned that care need to be taken to ensure that transfer of technology for such expensive machines and systems should encompass the lifetime support system for the weapons.  Failure to do that invariably ends in a disaster. There has been an almost one hundred per cent cost escalation in the licensed-production of Sukhoi aircraft project. The indigenously-manufactured Sukhoi aircraft is presently costing about Rs.28.60 crore more than the import cost.  In the case of T-90 MBT kits, the supply has not been forthcoming, as time-bound clause has not been incorporated at the agreement stage.  The Assembly of the 186 tanks was to start by March 2005, but so far only 85 tanks had been delivered.

In this connection, remember, the stipulation of license-production at home was the main reason why the Indira Gandhi Government preferred to go in for modernized military armament from the erstwhile Soviet Union in late 1960s. Western equipment, though superior to the Russian machinery, was not preferred because the suppliers, including the US companies, were not willing to export technology for the production of their state-of-the-art machinery. Also, two other considerations weighed in favour of the Russian machinery – reliability for the supply of spares etc. and Rupee-payment for all the purchases.

Both reliability and Rupee-payment advantage are not really available for the induction of Russian machinery after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Only transfer of technology for indigenous production of the Russian machinery is still on offer.  And, importantly, India’s defence production units have by now become accustomed to handling or producing Russian machinery under licence.  The users too are now comfortable on Russian machines, be they aircraft, warships or mechanized machines for the Army.  The present UPA Government at the Centre has plans to induct several state-of-the-art military machines at high cost. Russian, American and European  companies have offered their produce.

In fact, the Service Headquarters had never had it so good as now, with Pranab Mukherjee as the Defence Minister. Official figures show that during 2004-05 India’s armed forces spent a staggering $6 billion to purchase from abroad weapons and weapon systems. With India going on a buying spree for military machines, defence industry in militarily advanced countries has got busy in marketing their produce in the country, as reflected in the foreign participation at the Def-Expo in New Delhi earlier this year.  As many as 20 armament majors had their eyes on India’s plan to acquire 126 multi-role combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force, involving a large expenditure of about $6.5 billion.  Negotiations for these are on, while France has already finalized contract for the $3.5 billion submarine project and the UK has completed deal for $1.8 billion Hawk AJT (advanced jet trainer) deal.

Before going into the controversies about the charges of slush money in the AJT and Scorpene deals, let us first understand that the defence industry is quite different from any other production unit.  State-of-the-art military machines cannot be produced under one roof, because each one has hundreds of components, big and small, many of which are to be imported.  It is never economically viable to set up a separate unit for their production, and hence the easy option of direct import. That also helps the people in authority to not only travel abroad frequently but also to make money, call it slush money or bribery. Take the case of the AJT deal at the end of which India agreed to pay about Rs.800 crore more than the Price Negotiations Committee, (PNC) had finalized. Later the, then, Defence Secretary told this writer that extra money had been agreed to for “spares and other services.”

The latest controversial deal that constitutes part of the present Government plan of induction of sophisticated weaponry in the three military services is the Scorpene submarine deal involving as high an amount as Rs.18,798 crore.  This deal has many disturbing elements, involving massive kickbacks as revealed by the NDA Government’s former Defence Minister, George Fernandes. The NDA has claimed that the recent exposure  is one of the biggest corruption scandals of the UPA Government which, as the Navy itself has now admitted, has gravely jeopardized India’s national security. This includes the infamous “War Room Leak” at the Naval Headquarters in New Delhi.

Worse, certain foreign and Indian nationals have been charged of involvement in the deal, leading to illegal entry of middlemen. A four per cent commission on the contract amount, between Rs.500-700 crore, has reportedly been offered to make the deal through by the Thale, the French company known internationally for bribing political leaders all over the world. The company, which has been blacklisted by the World Bank for its questionable dealings, has offered to the Indian agents and other concerned people the biggest-ever amount as bribery, one that is far bigger than the much-publicised Bofors gun deal, which caused the fall of a Government at the Centre.  The amount in that deal was a meagre chillarh, Rs.64 crore by the present standard.

One can go on and on describing how vested interests have finalized major defence deals in utter disregard of the national security interest. Demand for bribery means lacunae left in final agreement.  These have been repeatedly pointed out, and for years, in this column, in Parliament and outside.  But anti-national practices to serve self interests do not seem to be ending. What the CAG has pointed out in its latest report requires a serious thought.  Defence planners must exercise care in negotiating huge armament deals. Failure to do that will surely be at the nation’s peril.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

DEFENCE NOTES                                

1 May, 2006, New Delhi

Attack From Within

ALARMING TREND IN ARMED FORCES

By B K Mathur

Once an envy of militarily advanced countries for their valour and discipline, India’s armed forces personnel are at their nadir today. Increasing reports of their acts of indiscipline and corruption, like war-room leaks, espionage cases, fake encounters and continuing shortage of officers and lack of quality in-take make one sit-up -- and perturbed about the alarming trend in Defence Services. During the 1950s and the 60s, could one ever think of military men increasingly challenging their own General Court Martial (GCM) decisions in civil courts with their differences with their controllers, commanders and systems to break India’s established  military traditions.

How frustrating is a report that over 10,000 serving and retired defence personnel have approached different civil courts, challenging actions against them. A senior officer has been quoted by the Times of India as stating that “it’s now almost become second nature of all officers denied promotions to file statutory complaint with the Defence Ministry. If that does not work, many approach courts, unlike (in) the past when it was considered bad form.” Wonder why the military personnel, at times senior commanders, increasingly feel hurt by the judgement of their seniors and their own courts. Importantly, don’t those who take their complaints to civil courts demoralize the Armed Forces?

The men in uniform have to be disciplined with a firm code of conduct and a fool-proof command and control. They need to be stopped from getting involved in a rut of civil courts and in an administration where respect for authority is fast diminishing.  At the same time, it must be ensured that injustice is NOT meted out to them by the seniors in command. The armymen are now educated people, unlike the illiterate jawans in the British Indian Army, and are gradually becoming conscious about their rights. They have thus begun to find umpteen lacunae in the military justice system. Naturally, therefore, they rush to seek justice from civil courts, at the cost of military ethos the world over.

The growing trend is undoubtedly affecting the discipline of the forces. But the remedy does not lie in doing away with the present court martial system; it lies in removing the lacunae. There are so many cases which could be quoted when senior commanders in field formations have punished their juniors on flimsy grounds. In such circumstances the procedure of the GCM is required to be changed. As the, then, Chief of Army Staff and later a Member of Parliament, Gen. Shankar Roychowdhary, stated in 1996 at a conference in New Delhi of Deputy Advocate Generals, the Army Act and Rules should be reviewed. In fact, this needs to be done time and again as military environments change.

Before considering the Army Act and the Rules, one needs to know the existing procedures of the GCM. The Court Martial proceedings are carried out in three stages. One, a “Court of Inquiry” is undertaken by an officer deputed by a local commander. Following this, a “Summary of Evidence” is prepared by the same presiding officer and, finally, Court Martial proceedings start on the basis of the Summary of Evidence, prepared by one who is nominated for the purpose by the local commander or even a Corps Commander. What it amounts to is that the whole exercise can be “rigged” by vested interest. If the local commander is unhappy with his junior for whatever personal reasons, he can manipulate punishment for him and spoil his career, which only the civil court can save.

The GCM rules and procedures in the interest of military discipline are today only things of the past. This is indicated by numerous judgements of civil courts when militarymen have gone in appeal against the GCM proceedings and findings. Actually, the military justice system is a legacy of the Raj with, of course, a continuous process of amendments to the original Indian Army Act of 1912. A Department was established in 1841 with the appointment of three JAGs (Judge Advocates General). The native armies merged into one on January 1, 1885, leading to the centralisation of the Army judicial system. A Judge Advocate General was accordingly appointed for the whole Army. That set-up continues till today.

In 1947, the Department comprised a meager 27 officers, a legally qualified cadre headed by a Brigadier.  Today this strength has swelled to about 300 officers, headed by a Major- General. The JAG carried out about a decade ago a thorough reappraisal of various provisions of the Army Act 1950, Army Rules 1954 and the regulations for the Army in 1987 with a view to identifying the areas requiring improvements. As many as 22 Sections of the Army Act were amended through a Parliamentary legislation, called the Army (Amendment) Act, which came into force from September 6, 1992. Some more amendments are now under the active consideration of the Government.

The JAG Corps is also striving to uphold the traditions of the military justice system. To begin with, the 1937 edition of the manual of the Indian Military Laws has been completely revised. A bilingual new manual of military laws has been published in Hindi and English in three volumes. The regulation of the Army Act 1962 has also undergone a thorough revision by a special cell that comprised officers of the JAG Corps under the supervision of the JAG itself. He has also launched in 1990 a new approach for the disposal of the military disciplinary cases by providing and extending legal advice at the grassroots, so that commanders in field formations have prompt access to legal aid in times of their doubts and their difficulties while finalizing the disciplinary cases.

All very fine. But the real flaw that continues to exist in the GCMs’ procedures has not so far been removed. At present the GCM is conducted by a “Bench” comprising all military officers and headed by a senior officer (Brigadier for JCOs and ORs and Major-General for Officers) can be influenced by the concerned Corps Commander or even the Army Commander (both Lt.-Generals) and even the General, the Army Chief, as happened, remember, in the court martial cases of some 14 Corps officers. After all, don’t forget India’s armed forces are no different. These, too, are deeply steeped in the “civil pollution” of a corrupt and irresponsible society.

What, then, needs to be done? Civil courts need not be bothered for deciding matters and GCM decisions. The best would be to set up military tribunals, comprising a mix of military-civil legal persons. Such tribunals have to be free of local commanders’ influence. The Supreme Court has already recommended the constitution of such tribunals. The Government too has been talking about them for a long time. The idea is to keep the institution of JAG and Court Martials alive with required amendments. Appeals against its decisions as well as complaints against administrative decisions should be handled by the tribunals. These need to be constituted at the earliest. Any further delay would be at the nation’s peril. --- INFA

 (Copyright, India news & Feature Alliance)

DEFENCE NOTES

New Delhi, 17 April 2006

Sharing The Spoils

FAULTY AWARDS SELECTION

By B.K. Mathur

Another annual ritual, the Defence Investiture Ceremony took place in the Rashtrapati Bhawan the other day.  As usual, scores of military personnel were decorated with medals by the Rashtrapati, who happens to be the Supreme Commander of the armed forces.  The list of recipients every year raises several questions: who gets the award; who selects the awardees; what is the criteria for selection; how do so many people get selected even in peace time; and, importantly, what do the awardees get?  The list also highlights, rather concernedly, that most of the personnel who get medals for gallantry, for valour and courage are Officers of the three Services, giving an impression that only the Officers are gallant and not the Other Ranks (ORs) or the Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs).

In fact, the distribution of military awards is increasingly turning into a farce.  So also the Republic Day awards which the President of India announces every year for defence personnel.  Prior to independence detailed examination of performance and gallantry was undertaken before bestowing high military honours. Imagine, sometime back, a Param Vir Chakra was announced to a jawan “posthumously” only to clarify later that the hero was very much alive.  Earlier, the highest military award was reserved for only a select few whose deeds were subjected to the strictest scrutiny.  More significantly, most of the gallantry awards went to the fighting men, that is, the jawans as they are the real brave personnel who risk their lives in a battle.  Remember, after the II World War, of the 28 Victoria Crosses awarded to the Indian soldiers only two went to the Officers.

The Officer-men ratio remains about the same as in the British Indian Army during the II World War: 20 to one. It was the same during the Kargil operation in 1999 where about 10,000 troops were deployed for what can be described as a minor operation.  Surprisingly, in accordance with the practice since independence about 85 per cent of the gallantry awards went to the Officers.  Undoubtedly, the Officers in the Indian Army always lead an operation but the jawans, twenty or twentyfive of them, are ready to sacrifice their lives behind one Officer.  They do not watch the operation from the sidelines or do not show any courage. Give them their due, please.

The present system of distributing gallantry awards obviously shows that awards are given by policy makers for valour and devotion to duty according to the rank in the Indian Army.  How else can one explain the lopsided distribution of gallantry awards mostly to Officers. The situation is invariably worse in the case of the Republic Day honours where there is near-absence of ORs (Other Ranks) more often than not. And what the gallantry honour means? The Param Vir Chakra, the nation’s highest wartime medal for “most conspicuous bravery” carries an allowance of Rs.1500 per month; Ashoka Chakra Rs.1400 p.m.; Mahavir Chakra Rs.1200; Kirti Chakra Rs.1050; Sena Medal Rs.250.  Just a pittance, indeed.

At once this reminds one of some very interesting observations by former Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral J.D. Nadkarni made after his retirement about the manner in which gallantry awards are distributed to the armed forces personnel.  For the first time in independent India, all the three defence Services, the Army, Navy and the Air Force participated in the 1971 war against Pakistan.  The Government of the day was so keen to claim victory that it began to announce gallantry medals even before the war got over . To make matters worse, Nadkarni disclosed, each Service began to demand its own and proportionate share of the honours. In each Service various Commanders wanted their own share. The Navy wanted exactly the same number to its Western and Eastern Commands.

Worse, Nadkanri further disclosed, the entire process of awards was turned topsy-turvy when the awardees were selected first and the Citations were written afterwards to suit the awards.  The terrible hurry about announcing the awards led to some “hilarious” situations.  The Navy bestowed an award to an Officer believed to have gone down with the INS Khukri only to discover later that the Officer had been hospitalized and was not on board when the vessel sank.  My own younger brother, then a young Captain in the Army, was “informally” informed of an award he was to get for his gallantry in 1971.  Alas, his name could not be recommended because he passed away in a sailing accident at Okhla within days of his Regiment’s return to Delhi from the War theatre after the Pakistan Army’s surrender.

One can go on and on narrating instances when gallantry awards, both wartime and peacetime, have been recommended to connected Officers and some favourite Other Ranks (ORs).  Worse still, deserving personnel, (JCOs) and ORs, are left behind simply because the recommending Officer does not like them.  This growing trend ultimately demoralizes the armed forces, which are already facing problems concerning recruitment of boys of required calibre in military training academies. The forces are at present suffering not only in quality but also in quantity. There is at present shortage in the Officer cadres  of all the three defence Services.

Senior military Officers and Instructors at the academies and training Centres invariably quote the immortal words inscribed at the famous Chetwood Hall at the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun: “The country comes first each and every time, and the men you command come next.  Your own comfort and wellbeing come last each and every time.”  Unfortunately, what the advice preached is rarely followed even at the time when the military Commanders get the opportunity to show that the country cares for India’s jawans, sailors and airmen and awards them for their services and sacrifices for the nation.  It is a matter of great concern that those in authority serve their own interests first and those of the men they command and the nation next.

It is high time now that policy-makers in the Union Government took greater interest in honouring its gallant men and Officers. At present the selection process is greatly flawed. An award for gallantry needs to be offered for a major action in time of war or war-like situations as border conflicts.  It must be understood that gallantry awards for minor action would amount to devaluing them – and, worse, no one would care to win them.  Also, the number of such awards needs to be limited so that their value increases. The increased value of a gallantry medal will actually be all the more greater if the monthly allowance that goes with each category of awards is increased substantially. These are important, not minor, things to attract talented youth for the armed forces.  In regard to the military awards, it is perfectly possible that a gallant soldier may just not care to share the spoils!---INFA.

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)