Do not tamper with DRDO

On the very day that ISRO’s Vikram lander made it to the south pole region of the moon, another event took place that got much less publicity. I am referring to the launch of an indigenous air-to-air missile (AAM) by an indigenously developed fighter aircraft, off the coast of Goa.

Both the AAM, called Astra Mk1, and the fighter, Tejas, have been developed by DRDO and are currently in serial production, with enhanced versions on the anvil.

As such, the fact that more than Rs 4 lakh crore worth of equipment (not including nuclear delivery-related systems) from DRDO’s wide-ranging product suite has, as on date, either been inducted or approved for induction ultimately stems from a pivotal decision taken in New Delhi decades ago. Alarmingly though, there are indications that this decision might be reversed.

It was in 1980 that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi agreed to create a Department of Defence Research & Development (DDR&D) within the Ministry of Defence, at the insistence of the then head of DRDO (simply called Scientific Adviser to Raksha Mantri at the time), Raja Ramanna, the pre-eminent nuclear physicist.

This decision, which basically turned DRDO into a departmental undertaking, brought the organisation out of the ambit of the Department of Defence Production (DDP), thereby cutting through layers of red tape. This, in turn, made mission-mode projects, which are defined and guided by the military, possible.

Having spent years as Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), before being tasked with heading DRDO as Scientific Adviser, Raja Ramanna understood better than anyone else why institutionalised access was so important for strategic S&T endeavours in India.

Of late, however, there are reports that the government is thinking of divesting the Chairman of DRDO (which is what the head is now called) from the post of Secretary, DDR&D, and even let the post be held by someone from a non-scientific cadre.

These reports must be taken seriously because just last month, the government set up yet another high-powered committee to review DRDO (a second in just three years) whose key terms of reference includes “restructuring and redefining the role of DDR&D and DRDO, as well as their relationship with each other and with academia and industry”. 

Any move to separate the posts of DRDO Chairman and Secretary DDR&D will in no way “unburden” DRDO as some proponents are claiming, but would rather serve as a demotion and demotivator for defence R&D pursuits in India as a whole.

And encumbering the DRDO chief by putting somebody over that individual’s head would be tantamount to the kind of the mistake made in Pakistan, where generations of scientific cadre have been hemmed in by military overseers.

What is surprising is that such restructuring is being mulled at a time when DRDO has crossed the threshold in terms of delivery, in areas ranging from missiles, electronic warfare systems, radar, sonars, torpedoes and a host of sub-systems.

Indeed, DRDO’s performance is pound-for-pound superior to either that of DAE or ISRO. For one, DRDO does not come directly under the PMO, as DAE and ISRO do. Indeed, during the recent Chandrayaan-3 success, the support that ISRO received from the highest office was palpable. More importantly, both ISRO and DAE essentially specify and qualify their own systems.

Contrast this with DRDO’s case: it has to compete with imports based on specifications from a demanding user community. In fact, the late Manohar Parrikar, when he was Defence Minister, described service requirements for indigenous weapons systems akin to something taken out of Marvel Comics!

Comparisons notwithstanding, DRDO has played a vital role in supporting some of DAE’s and ISRO’s high-visibility national security programmes. For instance, it is DRDO that developed the explosive lens and trigger explosives that were used in the fission device tested at Pokharan in 1974.

And for ISRO’s Gaganyaan effort, various DRDO labs, from different clusters, are developing vital inputs ranging from space food, space crew health monitoring and emergency survival kit, radiation measurement and protection, as well as parachutes for the safe recovery of the crew module.

DRDO is able to make such contributions because it controls a gamut of labs that are made to work together to develop sub-systems. No defence company in India can boast of a comparable ecosystem. Now, the latest committee will also look at the “rationalisation of laboratory structures and their performance evaluation process”. It should be noted that some DRDO labs have already been shuttered, and it is doubtful whether further rationalisation is feasible. Generally speaking, there should be no aim to unbundle DRDO’s clusters into different entities. Hopefully, lessons have been learnt from the recent unbundling of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) into seven different PSUs, only for New Delhi to seriously consider re-merging five of those into a single company that can compete in the export market!

Speaking of exports, India’s defence export surge is being led by DRDO-developed systems, such as the Pinaka MLRS. Importantly, these exports are happening with private entities being the lead integrators. Contrary to conventional wisdom, DRDO works very closely with the private sector in India and has seeded the growth of over a thousand small and medium enterprises through various projects.

Foreign collaboration, too, has been leveraged much more effectively by DRDO than it has been either by the DPSUs or private companies. A clear example would be the Brahmos missile itself, where indigenous content levels by value have risen from a mere 13% to 76% today. India is today also competitive in a range of solid-state radars, the technology for which was initially developed in collaboration with Israel. Back home, through initiatives such as ‘Gas Turbine Enabling Technologies’, DRDO has utilised domestic academia to solve critical problems in the realm of jet engines.

Finally, conventional wisdom aside, DRDO cannot be turned into an Indian DARPA. The DARPA is a contract R&D outsourcing outfit that leverages the highly pedigreed US military R&D ecosystem. No such ecosystem exists in India, with neither the DPSUs nor the private sector having credible design capabilities beyond a few areas. Given this milieu, the new committee should focus on IP-sharing structures and the ways in which DRDO can help industry pursue iterative development of systems for which knowhow has already been transferred to them by the organisation. This actually requires giving more resources and attention to DRDO. However, do not fix what is not broken in the name of reforms.

(The writer is Chief Editor, Delhi
Defence Review)