The Indian government’s reluctance to forcefully condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine has woken leaders in Washington to an age-old problem: how to wean India’s military from its reliance on Russian weapons. According to Bloomberg News, the US is considering a defense package of $ 500 million for the purchase of American weapon systems for India.
While half a billion dollars may sound like a lot of money, it really isn’t in comparison to the scale of the problem. Until recently, India had bought almost all its front line weapons from Russia. Researchers at the Stimson Center have calculated that India’s major weapons are still overwhelmingly – about 85% – of Russian origin. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says “new orders” [from India] As for Russian weapons of various types in 2019-20 … perhaps in the coming five years there will be an increase in Russian arms exports.”
It will take time to fix the problem. And it won’t happen unless the Indian defense establishment is willing to make some tough choices. Like all developing countries, New Delhi faces an impossible trinity: it cannot simultaneously achieve autonomy, affordability and quality.
For example, moving toward buying more Western weapons and reducing its dependence on Russia would strengthen India’s autonomy. But the country will have to sacrifice power, so it will not be able to buy that much. India is spending $5.5 billion on Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile platform. The US-made Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense System costs about six times as much and is not that versatile either.
Suppose India wants both affordability and quality? Well, some countries have historically gotten by with fewer but more powerful weapons, often because they are closely allied to the West or China and benefit from the protective shield of their allies.
But India—a thorny neighbor to its north and a smaller but still nuclear-armed neighbor to its west, and a continent away from continents that could help in the conflict—is unlikely to rely on anyone else for essential defense needs. . In its last full-scale war with Pakistan, in 1971, India found itself short of artillery shells and had to secretly import mortars from an Israel that it did not even recognize at the time.
Defense planners have long memories. Inadequate weapons in hand represent a loss of autonomy that no Indian government could possibly have done.
For decades, India has attempted to establish a local defense industry, manufacturing its own battle tanks and jets. Unfortunately, our army hates the results – the Arjun tank and the Tejas fighter. The Indian Army complains that Arjuna could not be part of any war plan on the canal-heavy, militarized border with Pakistan: it weighs about 70 tons and would demolish most of the bridges in Punjab. In contrast, the Russian T-90 tank weighs less than 50 tonnes. Meanwhile, the Indian Air Force has a long list of reasons why the Tejas fighter jet isn’t enough: its payload is smaller than the F-16, the aircraft takes much longer to service, and so on.
In the short run, indigenization provides affordability and autonomy at the cost of quality. The question is whether India has the patience and political will to fight the initial stumbling blocks. The Chinese government invested for decades in the Shenyang J-8 fighter jet, which was significantly less sophisticated than other interceptors of its time. Indian defense analysts say it was only after decades of buying a large number of subpar equipment that China finally built the Chengdu J-20 stealth jet, which could be a “close equivalent” of US fifth-generation fighter jets.
Of course, Chinese leaders didn’t have to deal with constant leaks from an angry air force to the free press. And then there’s the fact that, in India at least, you have to produce many, if not most, of these new jets and tanks and ships in the private sector. Are Indian politicians—and more importantly, voters—willing to accept the delays and ambiguities associated with a large defense industry?
Oddly, it is politically safer to have a literal boatload of cash with Russian or Western defense companies than to pay a much smaller amount to some Indian oligarchs. The toxic relationship of the Indian state with the private sector is one of the biggest obstacles to indigenization of weapons.
Nevertheless, this is what needs to be done. If Indian leaders want a reliable and affordable pipeline of decent quality weapons that arrive early enough to deter an aggressive China, they must fund domestic defense companies, convince voters of the need for larger military budgets, There will be failures and scandals, and field less powerful weapons until they develop better ones. The task will be messy and politically difficult. India should probably start over.
Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion Columnist, Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and author of ‘Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy’.