BY : Shankar Roy chowdhury ( former Chief of Army Staff)
“Shootout at the OK Corral?” The Indian Army would undoubtedly frown at such frivolity, but scattered media reports and Internet chatter indicate that during the recent comparative trials pitching a squadron (14 tanks) of Russian T-90 tanks, currently the mainstay of the Army’s armoured forces, and an equivalent number of India’s indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT), the latter is said to have “performed creditably” and “outshot and outran” its Russian competitor. Details available in the public domain are understandably sketchy, but even allowing for journalistic hyperbole, these comparative trials should be of landmark significance as an indicator of the giant strategic strides by indigenous defence research and heavy engineering, something with which the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Heavy Vehicles Factory (HVF) Avadi would finally have reason to be pleased with themselves. For their part, the Indian Army and its Armoured Corps who had been extremely firm and demanding users accepting no compromises in standards of performance, now perhaps require to revisit their stand, and approve the current successful model of the Arjun for series production and induction into service as the country’s principal Main Battle Tank. It is to be sincerely hoped that when the time comes to take a decision the Indian Army will select the indigenous MBT vis-a-vis the T-90 as the replacement for the T-72 fleet, now well on its way to obsolescence.
The long and intensely tortuous development process of the Arjun has earned it considerable notoriety as a landmark case study of bad project management which crystallised and hardened cynicism amongst the user community, and though the tank still remains technologically contemporary, its prolonged gestation has already made it due for midlife upgradation. This is not unusual in series tank production, but with Arjun this will have to be incorporated on the production line with the very initial batch itself as and when series production commences, again only if substantial orders flow in from the users. In this context, it is understood that the DRDO would like an initial production order of 300-500 numbers of Arjun tanks to be placed, instead of the present 124, understandable as well as justifiable, because a larger run of initial production will facilitate rectification and upgradation on the production line. Generations of armour officers (now mostly superannuated) still shudder at recollections of the Vijayanta where an unproven and basically unsatisfactory design procured in a hurry turned into a highly defect prone tank which had to be intensively modified along the way on the production line until the later models were quite different from the initial batches (but nevertheless remained unsatisfactory!). Transfer of technology is also dependent on production numbers because foreign vendors refuse to transfer their best technology for limited production series if further production appears unlikely.
However, the sunny side is that the development processes has already stimulated growth in small but very high technology manufacturing agencies even if production lines for prototype models have been quite limited. These agencies are of course capital intensive, but have mainly come up in the medium and small scale private sector which is surely encouraging.
Retention of user confidence in the Arjun requires a sustained process of engineering and quality control by the DRDO and the ordnance factories which has not been their strong point so far. Unless the government succeeds in enforcing accountability on its agencies, for continuous technological upgradation of the tank while on the production line as well as quality control standards, MBT Arjun, a tank of contemporary design, will again loose the confidence of the user community. It is evident that MBT Arjun is emerging as touchstone case for the DRDO and HVF Avadi to prove their detractors wrong!
There is a requirement for government to break the mould of its traditional mindset and associate the considerable talents and capacities of the private sector as well as technological academia with the development and production of the Arjun. The private sector is better aware of the importance of continuous quality control for market survival amidst intense competition, something to which ordnance factories, used to assured monopoly markets over the armed forces, are not accustomed, and often accept lower quality standards because their commercial survival is not a factor.
At the end of it all, the Arjun remains a good standard design, extremely badly executed so far which can still be rescued but only if the ministry of defence can enforce accountability on the DRDO and the Ordnance Factory Board for technological upgradation, design rectification and enforcement of quality control within a laid down timeframe and as an ongoing process. This did not appear to be the case earlier, when the initial production batch of five tanks were formally handed over to the Army with much fanfare, and then immediately retrieved by the factory after the ceremony to rectify quality shortfalls as demanded by the exasperated users! These and other negative experiences have hardened user cynicism, but all that must become water under the bridge now, and users must accept Arjun as a Mark I version to be upgraded and improved during further production into a Mark II and beyond. The extension of the MBT programme into variants and derivatives based on the Arjun chassis must also begin to take shape, such as the planned “Bhim” self-propelled 155mm tracked artillery system for which earlier trials to adapt the T-72 tank chassis “on the cheap” had failed signally. (Similar ill-judged experimentation with the T-90 would be best avoided!).
In a wider national context, fielding the MBT Arjun is important for India’s contemporary and future strategic leadership as well as nascent military-industrial complex. Indigenous capabilities for development and production of sophisticated capital defence equipment are vital strategic capabilities for which Arjun, Tejas, Agni and the ATV (advanced technology vessel) have to be seen in their true geopolitical perspective as statements by an India seeking a world presence in the 21st century
Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament
