DRDO 'failures' come under scanner

Stung by criticism of its performance, the Department of Research and Development Organisations (DRDO) today said that though less than 5 per cent of the defence budget was spent on defence R&D, 95 per cent of the discussion on India's defence drawbacks was about the alleged failures of DRDO.

Speaking at the international Defence Finance and Economics seminar, both KG Narayanan, now teaching at IIT Kharagpur but associated with India's defence aeronautical industry and M Natarajan, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister said that sole reliance on technology to win wars was a mistake.

Both in Vietnam and the result of the Iraq war that was designed to create shock and awe, had proved that there were limits to technology. Technology also had high incremental costs on account of higher scientific specifications.

Given other demands on India's economy, this was something for policy makers to mull over.

Natarajan was more blunt. Delivering the keynote address, he said whether it was the Main Battle Tank or the Light Combat Aircraft or India's Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, these were all created by a small group of scientists who might not have had the expertise when they started but were nevertheless courageous enough to start them. "Today we lack experience but not expertise" he said. The way to evaluate R&D, he said was to evaluate product improvement. This was already happening.

The problems with the evolution of R&D in India, he said was an inadequate scientific base. The infrastructure existed for products manufactured through R&D and the capability was good but quality was an issue. There were problems with systems integration and time overruns. There was absence of stakeholding in the development of products, which means the services sometimes didn't know what they wanted, and couldn't decide on exact specifications.

Natarajan said the DRDO's work was hampered because of financial approvals - these should be on the basis of tangible end products but also intangible products.

He said a policy objective was more important than procedural compliance.

Speaking to Business Standard, Natarajan recalled that the though the first version of the MBT was tested a decade ago, India's first car with an Indian-made engine (the Indica) was made just a few years ago. The LCA ran its test flights many years ago. An Indian passenger plane is yet to be developed.

Natarajan said a public private partnership in defence R&D was good but he visualised DRDO as a testing laboratory rather than a factory to make boots and gloves.

Defence analyst Ravindrapal Singh's suggestion that an outside agency should evaluate defence R&D in India so that DRDO's role was not that of the judge and the jury, met with a frosty response. Natarajan said the DRDO did not have the freedom when it was asked to develop a combat aircraft, to choose its partners.