Leading by Example

The BrahMos partnership can show the way for successful Make in India programmes

A Force Report

Brahmos Aerospace, The Makers of Brahmos supersonic cruise missile, which completes 20 years on February 12, has many firsts to its credit. It is the first successful joint-venture between India and Russia; it has met manufac­turing and delivery time-lines, a rarity for the Defence Research and Develop­ment Organisation; it has been accepted by all three defence services — the navy, army and the air force; with its super­sonic speed of 2.8 Mach, it is difficult to intercept; given its speed, weight and accuracy, its enormous kinetic energy would blow depth targets to smithereens making it a strategic weapon with con­ventional warheads; with Indian joining the Missile Technology Control Regime club, its advertised range of 290km can be increased to 600km and so on.

supersonic multi-role cruise missile (MRCM)

The question which begs an answer is this: can BrahMos be called a Make in India project? While the short answer is yes, some explaining on the 2014 Make in India policy as elucidated under the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP-2016) is necessary to qualify the assertion.

To begin with, there is a sea differ­ence between Make in India and Create in India. The latter, as the name indi­cates, is about creating from scratch including design (based on general staff requirements of defence services), making and testing of prototypes, cre­ating the desired eco-system by involv­ing the national defence industry (to include both public and private sector companies), and most importantly, to continue with research to ensure that the system remains competitive glob­ally with high-end, cutting-edge or best technologies. The ultimate proof of a successfully created weapon system lies in its exports. Since basic research is fundamental to creating and staying on top, it might be interesting to know that China in 2017 earmarked about USD nine billion for Artificial Intelli­gence alone, while the total research al­location of the DRDO in the same year was a mere USD 2.2 billion.

Make in India, on the other hand, is about progressive indigenisation of pro­cured weapon systems. According to the DPP-2016, two basic criteria must be met. One, minimum 40 per cent indi­genisation should be assured; this may or may not include technology transfer. And two, under the Foreign Direct In­vestment (FDI) rules, the Indian compa­ny should be the majority partner. This requirement pre-supposes little transfer of core technologies’ — which in any case few counties would part with — know-why to the recipient country.




Given this, the need is to create an ecosystem for the low and medium lev­el technology absorption, which would generate employment, have offshoot uses in other defence programmes, and which, overtime, could help Indian in­dustry become part of the global supply chain. A recent example would help ex­plain the requirement. India is expected to buy the Russian Ka-226T helicopters under the Make in India programme. Given that the proven helicopter has been flying since 2003, the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) would be required to progressively indigenise mutually agreed components only.

Against this backdrop, BRAHMOS missile system is more than Make in India programme. Initially, most of the weapon system came from Russia. Ac­cording to Russian experts, if Russia was not in dire need of finances, it may not have parted with its system which came to be named BRAHMOS. To be fair to the DRDO, since there was little under­standing of cruise missiles, making this purchase was prescient in itself. Soon, it was realised that indigenisation was re­quired for two reasons: to save revenue for the country, and to use the devel­oped hardware and materials in other indigenous missile programmes.

With this objective in mind, the DRDO started the PJ-10 programme in 2003 with the mandate to develop hard­ware and materials in a step-by-step approach and thereby create manufac­turing vendors within India. Two sets of documentation, namely, ‘Build to Specifications’ and ‘Build to Print’ were procured from the Russian partner. In the BOS category, India got technical specifications including Know-How of design, drawings, and materials. With this, BrahMos Aerospace has been able to build guidance system, onboard com­puters and booster; Ananth Technol­ogies in Hyderabad having played the key role. Moreover, the entire airframe of BRAHMOS is made in India by Godrej and Boyce. So too the complete ground support systems including launchers, cannister, command, control and com­munication centre and replenishment vehicles.

In the BOP category, there has been indigenisation of about 27 types of steel, seven types of aluminium, five types of non-ferrous alloys, 75 types of cable assemblies including connectors, 28 types of composites and so on with the involvement of both public and private sector companies. On the one hand, the indigenisation has saved cost for India besides generating employment. On the other hand, these components are available for a variety of programmes including Akash, LR-SAM, MR-SAM, Air Defence programme, Light Combat Aircraft, Nirbhay and especially the Agni series of missiles which, for example, use the same cannister as BrahMos.

It could, however, be argued that cer­tain core technologies like propulsion and seeker are imported. On seeker, the DRDL, by organic research over eight years appears to have made the break­through. The indigenous seeker was re­cently successful on the BRAHMOS air launch version test-firing in November 2017. Confirmation test-firing on BRAH­MOS is expected in February. Indigeni­sation of the propulsion is the challenge on two counts. One, domestic market does not provide economy of scale for the venture to be successful. And two, the project would need huge invest­ments, and hand-holding, which Russia is willing to do.

The irony about exporting BRAHMOS is that about 10 overseas customers are willing to negotiate, and Russia, as the joint-venture partner has cleared them as friendly nations. Yet absence of a cen­tralised agency to conduct export talks, including promotional activities, on be­half of BrahMos Aerospace is hampering progress. The countries, as disclosed by former defence minister Manohar Par­rikar include Vietnam, Singapore, Chile, South Africa, UAE and certain other Middle-Eastern nations. The defence ministry, which has a director general for acquisitions, does not have a corre­sponding position of director general for exports or a foreign office for sales.

The DRDO boss, Dr S. Christopher had told me in an interaction that India was willing to export a variety of weap­on systems including Prithvi and Akash missiles, Arjun tanks, LCA, AEW&C etc. According to him, BrahMos could be the negotiating enterprise for this. This is unlikely to work since BrahMos cannot handle legal issues involved in global trade.

Let alone becoming part of global supply chains, companies involved in indigenisation would be dreading the prospects of limited orders, which in turn, would not inspire investments and research to stay competitive. In such a situation, India would be unable to take the leap from Make in India to Create in India.

 

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