50% of India's weapon systems obsolete, another 35% on its way there

On Friday, CII-KPMG released an insightful report that said amongst other things that 50% of India's weapon systems are obsolete and 35% of the technologies have "matured". However the categorisations are suspect since its last and third category said that 15% of equipment is "state of the art". Since there has been no significant procurement in the last few years and with the state of OFB production being the way it is, it is hard to imagine one in seven pieces of equipment being "state of the art".

Some suggestions it made were that procedures should allow single source bids where appropriate ie. why unnecessarily tender when a known product/technology is desired. According to its survey, respondents complained about the high cost of bidding for tenders. The report has a good section on taxation issues applicable for the defence sector.

A panel discussion was organised and the one thing to take away from that was Mahindra Defence's Brigadier Hai's statement that given the opportunity India would make very good weapons because of its strengths in 'frugal engineering'. Though the world only became aware of this strength after Tata's Nano, he said that this was amply re-inforced at the recently concluded auto show in Delhi.