It is a 'strategic thought and a welcome decision' to involve the Indian Armed Forces as stakeholders in Defence Projects to be developed by the DRDO. This will check 'free wheeling' by certain agencies and put an onus on all the Defence Establishments to make India self-reliant and self-sufficient; a target that has been eluding Us for variety of reasons. Also the main Users, the Indian Armed Forces, would feel obliged to 'accept' home-developed systems. It is 'Users-Industry-DRDO/Govt.' that need to work in total sync to achieve something substantial by the Indian Defence Industry, and make it competitive globally. My congrats to DAC !! The news reads like this:
'The DAC has agreed in principle that such(DRDO) projects should be funded in a 70-20-10 per cent ratio: 70 per cent by the DRDO, 20 per cent by the industry partner that will manufacture the developed product; and 10 per cent by whichever of the three services the product is being developed for”.
We need to increasing involve 'operational armed forces personnel' in the developmental projects rather than greatly depending on military staff loaned to DRDO, DGQA and Other set-ups that support the Dept. of Defence Production(DDP)/MOD which at best gets outdated after 1 year of tenure in DDP Agencies. You need to mesh-in current operational thinking in the Armed Forces in the developmental projects--'file pushing' and 'I am an indep agency/boss' attitude would not help. Could achieve it through the DAC!
We should accept no argument contrary to this decision; bottom line is that it is in our national interest. Defence Offsets could be suitably utilised in such projects.
Brigadier (Retired) Sukhwindar Singh
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