Operations
Sindoor: Girding for the Consequences Prof. Prodyut Das
5 July 2025
Operation Sindoor has
two consequences:
i)
It
has shown that India can innovate game changing narratives on its own. The
“game changing” part is because it alters our dependence on imported weapons besides
a possibility of spoiling the markets for present firm favourites.
ii)
It
has brought India into direct confrontation with the Deep State i.e. the
Manhattan banks. Pakistan, i.e. its Army, was created as a tool (Note 1)
to suppress the growth of the entire region by preventing an economic union. We
have damaged their stirrer.
The damage to the prestige of the Pakistan Army
particularly vis a vis to the Pakistani people, is being repaired, but our
cocking the snook will not be forgiven and we must prepare for savage reactions.
We are at a war against
a highly intelligent and well networked State who is an “Indrajeet” i.e.
who use Pakistan as the “front”.
The losses
inflicted on Pakistan’s are mere numbers. Such losses have always been replaced.
(Note2) Our losses have to replenished by ourselves. Indian
weapons should cost about one fifth of international prices but we have
self-inflicted ourselves with a very inefficient weapons development programme
which denies us that relief.
The weakness is
self- inflicted because we keep up the pretence that abnormal delays are
normal. They are not. Our weaknesses are not due to the usual suspects- Inadequate funds, “Import Lobby”, Babus in
New Delhi not giving test beds etc. These do not explain why the Dhruv
helicopter is an admirable success whereas its contemporary Tejas is a most embarrassing
failure? (Note 3). Our delays are because the delays are dyed in the wool i.e.
inbuilt into the command structure.
The self-inflicted
injuries are inflicted at the top of the Pyramid
1.
The
poor quality of the top development leadership who select and approve concepts
and proposals that were unworkable.
2.
The
absence of knowledge that enables a decisive leader to recognize the symptoms of
failure and stop the nonsense started in 1. Continuing a bad programme is damaging.
It prevents search alternatives and drains resources.
3.
The
failure of the proposing Laboratories to think in Industrial terms with regards
to:
a)
Designing
for production.
b)
Organizing
for the testing required to validate a product to reasonable timescales.
There is a
cultural disinclination and a sense of grievance in the Labs at the scale of
testing required to validate an Industrial product. A simple, low TBO and TTL
engine like the Orpheus needed a total of 7000 hrs of testing. The F 35 went
through 17,000 hrs of tests to be certificated. The Kaveri and Tejas barely did
3000 hrs before having expectations. Our “labs” did not prepare the facilities
needed or tested them to the required thoroughness. Yet they expected the
customer to accept half- baked products and blamed them for preferring imports.
The present process of certification is best described as “Home- made”. It
generates a piece of paper so dear to the Babu Engineer but gives no
satisfaction to anyone else .
4.
Insisting
on a “high table” treatment for the PSUs and Laboratories though they lack the
required ownership, continuity, and speed.
If there is a
real import lobby it is in the above weaknesses. Faulty concepts leads to avoidable
delays leading to unavailable products or whose inadequate testing with emphasis
on “concessions” rather than eradication of defects leads to lack of customer
confidence. So everyone
ends up dissatisfied and aggrieved but the imports go through.
The average development period seems to be eighteen
years is unaffordable. The present Government interest – the previous
regimes were zero- should bring them down to about 7 to 10 years because of the
lack of a Sheth’s business knowledge- but that is not enough. You can’t hurry
up a wrongly chosen horse. The very first priority of reforms must be in the
re- examination of the process by which a development proposal is approved for
funding- do the powerful have the requisite wisdom and knowledge or can the
wise and knowing be given the power? They didn’t in the past.
We are planting bad seed. Reform the process of seed
selection -project approval- and the rest will fall into place.
Below are some assorted notes elaborating the points
mentioned above above.
The self-
inflicted injuries: The wrong
configurations
The following are
projects where a obviously flawed, prone to trouble configuration was approved
for development. Below is an indicative list of our failed projects, The root
of their failure was that “impossible” (in terms of being able to be developed
to a certain time scale) were sanctioned by the “ignorant Seth” who were
empowered to approve.
1.
Tejas;
The configuration selected is inherently difficult to develop. There is NO reason why a “safe” Tejas Mk2 configured
could NOT be chosen in the first instance.
2.
Tapas;
As above. The shortfalls in height performance and controllability can be
traced to the configuration which should have been cross questioned at the time
of design review.
3.
HJT
36. A ‘safe’ configuration (S 346), was initially proposed sanctioned to a full
scale “mock up”. Subsequently decisions were taken to shift to a configuration
which practically guaranteed that there would be spin recovery and
engine flame out problems.
The Saras and the Hansa programs also show the
same proclivity to choose wrong configuration. With so many examples there is
grounds to examine if this is organized.
Should the NIA investigate?
The repeated pattern
is the Committee empowered to authorize development invariably chose the most
difficult to develop configuration for development. Once selected it is
almost impossible to correct and it wastes time and money. It could indicate
the people leading were completely unfit for the job. The other possibility is of
some “influencer”, a foreign “consultant” perhaps, who directly or indirectly swung
the decisions in the obviously wrong directions to keep their market for their
own product, Only the Government can find out.
One of the
strong points of the Private sector is that the “Shetji” is extremely canny
about the business and he is there because from his youth he has been backing
the right horses.
Walking away
from “US” specifications
Firmly reject US
thinking on Military doctrines. It has nothing to do with war winning. From the
1950s the US Deep State, having invested in the War Industry during the WW2, pushed
for “technology Rich” specifications even when the threat was nonexistent -an
example being the F 102 and F 106 interceptors designed to destroy Soviet
Bombers carrying nuclear bomb at a time when the USSR did not pose, in terms of
number of bombs and bombers a credible threat and, unlike the US, simply too
exhausted by the war to pose a threat.
The method was
simple. Get the US Government to fight wars (usually for “Containing Communist
Domino effects”, “Democracy”, “Women’s Liberation”, suspected possession
of WMDs etc), using over specified weapons, the point of overspecification
being solely to justify to justify the high price. The specifications may have been
actually counter- productive (Note 4) but the motive was not to win
wars but to continue them. A war quickly won is a market lost.
The failed outcomes
of the over specified weapons were passed off as the vagaries of “assymetric”
warfare. No one explained how disadvantage of “assymetric” remained when
indiscriminate slaughter of the other side’s civilians and destruction of
property is permitted. Of course, a huge “advertising” campaign was done via
the media and the Universities to sell the wasteful technology as sine qua
non- usually to usher and justify and the next generation of products. The
early Seventies saw FBW, Composites. essential for Airliners, was the subject
of a media blitz to expand these technologies into the Military domain where
they were less urgent. The advertising campaign used every media including a
worldwide seeding of “experts” and influencers, learned papers in the journals
and in the popular media and in seminars. What was said was not untrue but
neither was it the whole truth. The reason was thus:
Shutting down
the competition
The observable
result of the over rich specifications was it gradually shut down competition. Over a period of time flourishing aircraft
Industries of Canada, Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain lost their ability to
develop independent Combat aircraft. The story of the “technology rich” Tejas
and the decline of our Fighter production and Air Strength reflects the same
trends noticed in the European Industries.
The debilitating
effect of following US specifications is also seen present situation with the
Tejas. The AMCA also refers. The US (over) specification for 5th generation
fighter requires super cruise at M 1.6. It is illogical. If available for free
I too would have specified it but if not, it means exactly the same high
probability of supply chain issues and uncertainties in development.
The Hybrid 5th
generation: What would walking away from US 5th, generation give?
Summarizing in
“telegraphic language” the realistic opposite approach would be “None of the aircraft in Sindoor went supersonic or
crossed borders SO if super cruise or long range is neck or nothing, let
the bloody missile do the super cruising”. If we apply- after a panchayat-
the above approach to the AMCA it is possible to develop a “hybrid " AMCA
of the same payload and range as the present but as a smaller aircraft with
lower RCS with an empty weight of around 8500 kg, disposable load of 13000 kg,
and needing only powered by two 50-60 kN engines i.e. of the Kaveri technology.
Costs? My estimnate is about Rs.3800 crores for the first prototypes and
initial tests
Assuming
Failure for the start.
We must give up
the ostrich attitude pretence that the present situation is hopeful and ADA
will deliver. It won’t. We must plan simply must have more than the present one
submission for the AMCA programme. That is the wise things to do. Even the US,
whose skill in the technicalities of weapons development cannot but be admired
and copied, had for their JAST programme four submissions.
The Official thinking
at ADA is that if one sits in front of a computer screen long enough one will
arrive at the pure truth. Unfortunately, Governor, it doesn’t work like that,
leastways in Industries with a high “refresh” rate as in Aviation. There is also
the tripwires of “unknown unknowns” eg. the certification of the F 35B was held
up because the buggers got the location of the arrestor hook wrong! Can you
even believe the USN getting that wrong?! The solution is to expedite
the hardware.
The need for multiple
proposals
The ADA Tejas proposal
of 1987 had more holes per sq. inch than a flute. Supposing there was an
alternate proposal by, say HAL. If the ALH succeeded under the same conditions
and constraints allegedly suffered by the ADA LCA, that project would have also
succeeded.
Understanding
costs.
The explanation given for not having multiple proposal
and prototypes is cost and resources. The truth is costs and resources are
trivial in the beginning and they tend to go up once the aircraft clears the
initial tests as a platform and tests for service acceptance begins. About 85%
of the costs begin when that stage is reached Our failure of the Tejas is in
the failure of the ADA platform built over a period of 20 yrs requiring two
sets of funding of 560 crores (1986) and 1560 crores (1993). By comparison Y.
Kumar’s team at HAL built the HJT 36 platform in a period of 3 years at a cost
of Rs.386 crores. The 10 times difference in costs adjusted to a common value
base is indefensible.
The above shows that having US style multiple
proposals to fly off is sound common sense. In fact you cannot not have
Multiple proposals. Let’s begin with the AMCA. ADA’s work of the past 20 years
is probably replicable in two.
Note 1.
The Deep State/Pakistan
Army – possibly with collaboration of our previous “non- sovereign” Governments
and “Intelligentsia”- has unfailingly stepped in to disrupt any reproachment. Ayub
stepped in when a popular Democracy began to take roots, he stepped in again
with “Operation Gibraltar” when India had a independent Prime Minister in
Shastri, Kargil followed Vajpayee’s Lahore bus trip and Nawaz Shariff
reciprocations to Modi’s outreach resulted on his ouster and of course the recent
ouster of Hasina. The continued martial Rule of Pakistan is not the result of
overambitious generals. Our hope is that Regime Changes is a learnable skill
and given our Panchatantra traditions, we may also play it with skill.
Note2
In the 1965 war
the Pakistan Air Force lost about 33 aircraft including about 18 F 86 F Sabres.
By February of 1966 a batch of 90 ex Luftwaffe CL 13 B Sabres, a much better
version of the Sabre was promptly sent “for overhaul and repairs” to
Iran (of all places) who, equally promptly, sent them on to Pakistan and, after
making the usual noises, were absorbed into the PAF to replace lost equipment,
expand squadron strength.This was done at a time of an “impartial embargo”
applicable to both sides. The Sabres were in addition to second hand Mirage III
which “fortuitously” became surplus and provided to Pakistan with payment in
installments!
(Note 3)
It must be amusing
to neutral observers that two projects the HAL ALH Dhruv and the ADA Tejas
started their journeys together. The Dhruv now been produced in numbers greater
than 400 (making it the most produced aircraft of Indian design so far), and
with some 300,000 hours of all India deployment service across three services
and the CG and BSF under varied and challenging conditions and is a thoroughly
acceptable and useful aircraft. By contrast the ADA Tejas has given us a litany
of excuses, a bunch of unusable “near prototypes”, restricted to one airfield,
and 43 yrs into setting up of ADA no one can say what will be the production next
month!
I cite this
comparison because it shows that our sustained “failures” are
“project-specific”. “Bad leadership” and “absent oversight” rather than
systemic defects and shortages is the cause of the failure of ADA, ADE and GTRE
to deliver. As cited above the commendable technical success of the
Dhruv, the Pinaka, the Rajendra Radar, the Netra, Aakash and the various jugaad
development of weapons underline the capability though the average
development time period of 18 years is clearly unacceptable and possibly
a time period of 6 to 8 years should be possible with new management systems.
Note 4
An example of
overspecification to push up the price was in Tank range finding. In the 1950s
the M 48 had a “stereoscopic” rangefinder and a mechanical computer to aid the
shooting, On paper it looked vastly superior to the T 55’s stadia metric
ranging i.e. estimating range from the size of a known object. In practice it
was found that part of the population of gunners lacked “stereoscopic” vision
and the computer required fiddling and even in the US Army, gunners were
willing to bet a month’s pay about hitting a target with eye estimation of
range than relying on the stereoscopic rangefinder and mechanical computer
combination. The T 55, which by a more profound approach about war -winning did
not lack for necessary sophistication. It had a bigger gun, two axis
stabilization, deep fording capabilities and a diesel engine which permitted it
to make an un-refuelled dash the equivalent of from Elbe to the Channel coast.
And it cost one fourth of a M48.
Note 5
Demanding
facilities without a sense of “earning” the right to do so, there are at present screams for a 60K ton press which is a
good example of a “sophisticated” excuse to cover one’s own organizational
deficiencies without revealing it to the “Maalik”- in this case quite likely a
Babu from Animal Husbandry. One may certainly need a PM turbine disc- and hence
the 60k ton press- if wants to build an engine of 3000 hrs TTL and a 98
kN engine with a10:1 t/W ratio. A 60kTon press is NOT needed to prove the
design will give a certain thrust. That can be alternatively verified . If
self-inflicted wound at 1 is corrected the Scientists would be sent packing to
find feasible alternatives.Ditto requiring forgings for the AMCA
prototype.
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