Parrikar priorities Submarines, Ammunition and Aircraft
After clearing the new defense procurement policy, Parrikar said that the government will focus three major aspects in the defense, which include buying more submarines, increasing the ammunition stockpile, and additional production line for new fighter jets. He also suggested that a new aircraft production line will be established with the support of private industry.
Indian Navy who is the biggest player in the Indian defense, who lack of submarines for under water escort and offensive mission. Submarine's are still one of the effective player in the modern battlefield, who can sneak through enemy defense zone and sunk the bigger warships using the heavy torpedo's.
India now only has revamped the Submarine acquisition program, by commissioning one submarine every year, with the help of P 75 project. India plans to produce nine scorpene submarines, where two of them already in the water for trails. Mostly these submarines can be used to escort duties only, since it's range and endurance is limited.
The SSN who is the one can operate as solo and conduct long range missions, hide under the water for longer periods. India have two bigger projects whose market is more than $20 billion. One is the P 75I project another is the SSN project, where private players keen to seal the project. Reliance is the one who front running the SSN project with Russian support.
If ministry fast tracks the submarine acquisition program, the dream of indigenous SSN can be reality in next fifteen years. building as SSN is as much as hard in the Indian defense industry who have no experience in building one. SSBN is other game, who is fat and slow, is not capable to maneuver underwater, SSN is the one can perform any tasks very easily and operate as solo for more than months.
Ammunition reserve is one of the most criticized issue in last some years, that the armed forces especially the Indian army who doesn't have ammunition to fight for 20 days. CAG is the one who revealed the information citing the 2013 auditing report and raises the alarm. CAG also reports poor standard of ammunition from OFB and poor storage capabilities in Army storage.
As simple, In foreign, Infantry soldiers can carry seven magazines each with thirty bullets for assault rifle and three 250 round magazine for light machine guns. Here the karma forced on the Indian soldiers "Ek Kholi, Ek Dushman" one bullet one enemy, and even with the use of iron sights.
Indian infantry units usually carries, three magazine each with 20 rounds for Assault rifle and three magazines with 30 rounds for LMG's. So the need of stocking small arms ammunition numbers also needs to be raised into maximum.
The new government bit sensible, that they orders more numbers of ammunition's from OFB, who license manufacture the ammo for variety of small arms, which include ammo for artillery and main battle tanks. The ministry must ensure that the OFB's ammo's should be in higher quality to last long.
Air force is in very bad shape, who having one assembly line for Su 30 MKI, and another assembly line for Tejas, first one can rolls twelve aircraft per year, another can rolls out eight per year. Ministry recently authorized another production line for Tejas to produce another eight, however the line will be operational only after 2019.
So the need of private player must for building another line of fighter jets, which can produce sixteen aircraft per year. It's either Rafale production line or some other minister's favored fighter aircraft. It's better Rafale under TATA production line is feasible option to get quality and higher standard Rafale as like in Dassault plant in France.
