The inherent Handicaps of the DRDO Labs                                Prof. Prodyut Das

5^th July 2026

 

The DRDO has produced some very remarkable products. I have in mind the Sonars developed by Cdr. Paul Raj. It was ahead of world standards at its time. The GTRE Kaveri engine- even the bench test models- was a remarkable achievement. It came close to its design dry thrust rating without too many “mods”- if it was not “lucky”- it is a tribute to the masterful use of CAD/CAE by the engineers concerned and augurs well for the future. The slander done to the INSAS reflects more to the limitations of the calibre rather than in technical quality of the design by ARDE.   

The failures of DRDO need dispassionate study for correction. The usual din is that funding/ Govt. backing /molly coddling was inadequate. This rumble tries to cover engineering incompetence of the Leadership above the Project Engineer. Sure the Govt. didn’t give a FTB (the idea!) but who closed down the project when it was so close to success. The Tapas BH failed because of a lack of engineering knowledge and lassitude in program management. Its design violated basic principles of structural engineering resulting in a visibly untidy airframe possibly too large for the job and overweight to boot. Had these been corrected the original piston engine proposal just may have done the job. It is also disturbing how everyone in the review Committee overlooked the simple fact that a single stage supercharger/ turbocharger would not give 10,000 mts. The proposal should have been sent back for revision. The poor quality of decisions by the Burra Babus/ scientists starts the delays because we had to do everything twice- firstly wrongly and then spend time and money rectifying mistakes that could have been avoided.

The TAPAS project failed – I am not commenting about the telemetry part- it was because of the condemnable standard of the design review. The hurry seemed in getting the proposal passed rather than create something useful. It appears the presiding deity of the TAPAS BH project was a “dyed in the wool” avionics man who lacked the necessary engineering experience to have spotted and guided a vehicle design project. It spent money, wasted time and failed to do what, clearly, as at the time of approval, could not be done.  It is also reported that the said person during his tenure has re- focused the establishment as a software design. Promotions and rewards are necessary for the deserving but it should not result in fitting round pegs into square holes.

The hidden reefs.  

Even if DRDO were to get its personnel policies in order it will still suffer from inherent disadvantages that will delay development because a DRDO Lab is, by nature of its mandate, cannot handle industrial developing of platforms. Taking 15 yrs. to develop a so-called successful project is NOT acceptable a pace. Prolonged delays cause problems like the Tejas engine situation. It would not have happened had the Tejas had, as declared, reached its present state in the 1990s. Some of the hidden handicaps of a DRDO Lab. are :

1.      The Vendor base.

A DRDO Lab trying to develop a complete products draws on a poor vendor base, GTRE, for example, probably has a yearly capital budget of 1000 crores, much of it spent on buying imported test equipment. Even if we assume that the entire 1000 crores was spent on local vendors it does not compare with Godrej Limited . With an annual turnover of Rs.19,000 crores if we assume that Godrej buys Rs.8000 crores from its vendors can you imagine difference in the quality, network, clout, depth width and power of the Material Manager of Godrej compared to GTRE? Its effect on the speed and quality of development would be exponential- more so if the number of parts is large .

 

2.      The varying concept of “success”; Labs have no idea about the degree of completeness required for Industrial production. They leave a job half done and, in their lack of Industry norms, feel aggrieved and unappreciated when criticized. What constitutes success for a project by a Lab. would be considered just a beginning in the Industry but who is to tell?  

The people in ADA may genuinely believe that they have done a great job. The thinking is legal:

ADA was given to design an aircraft and they have something flying, never mind it is delayed by forty years, cannot be produced, is lacking in performance and will always be vulnerable to US intervention. It is flying, no? Their job is done! Psychologically this smugness also makes corrections difficult, It does not get into their heads that they have got us into an aeronautical quicksand and will do the same again. They clamour for more projects instead of focusing on getting things right with the Mk1.

 

The atom accelerator

 

An example of how widely the idea and standards of success varies with the nature of the design team is that of the Cockcroft proton accelerator. The original model, exhibited at the Imperial Science Museum. London, is just a set of Glass tubes held together by braces and looked, for all the world, like a school science project. Yet when it worked, Cockcroft ran down the streets of Cambridge exultantly shouting “We have done it”. To him it was success but to an Engineer? My favourite set of pictures on this subject of the difference between lab and Industry show the first prototypes of the accelerators- a mess of Columns, jury struts and untidy festoons of wires all over the place and a rather tense looking man sitting inside what appears to be a wooden crate, fiddling with the controls. By comparison an industrially manufactured accelerator looks like a spaceship in a Sci-fi movie all gleaming stainless steel and no cabling anywhere. Cockcroft was elated with his contraption but the industry needs are of a level inconceivable to the Lab. person who never grew up in the corresponding Industry or Service. Result? Delay, redundant re- design, wastage of time.

 

Documentation 

The Germans say that the work is not done until the documentation is complete. The more jocose but resigned British say that the job is not done until the weight of the documentation equals the weight of the aircraft. By the way, I am reliably told presentation slides do not count as documentation. In the Industry any development engineer absorbs the process from an early stage. Changes are marked on drawings thus “Location C dimension “x” was “y” or “Matl. Was S 126 changed to S 136 following fractures”-   see change note B date xx/yy/zz”. The purpose of documentation is to keep a record and traceability so that inevitable field failures can be quickly traced. and rectified. A Laboratory does not get enough practice even if it is supposed they have the process. Some of the delay in our projects is caused by poor documentation.

 

Prototype Security? Abwehr?

 

Prototypes have considerable commercial value in terms of future potential. Our track record of Security by the Labs’ during trial is appalling. The barrel burst of the 155/52 during trials, the sand in the Arjun’s gear box, the crash of the Saras Mk1 prototype, the propeller flying off the BHEL Swati light aircraft on its final pre-delivery flight all indicate possibilities of sabotage. Most countries are paranoid about prototypes safety but here any random bench of Parliamentarians gets more security than a weapons prototype, critical Scientists and Engineers.

 

The NAL SARAS crash is well documented. The aircraft entered a flat spin from which it was unable to recover. There is, however, absolutely no indication in the otherwise comprehensive report about safety protocols. The crash report raises disturbing questions. It was a rear engine aircraft which flown empty the CG moves back reducing the stability margin and making spin recovery difficult. On the day of the crash the aircraft was unladen and though the crew noted problems in trim they were light-hearted, If for arguments sake, one was to put forward the case that the CG and even maybe the crew health was tampered with prior to the fatal flight one cannot be sure, from the report, if adequate precautions were taken and sabotage was not the cause. Sabotage may not have happened there is no details to rule the possibility out.

 

Funds facilities NOT the cause. It is the structure.

 

The example of NAL illustrates that the usual excuses- funds, support, customer callousness ( long list)  cited are NOT the cause. This organization, NAL , under the aegis of DST, is similar to DRDO in all but the nouns and goes through the same project approval process. It has been working on aircraft design since 1990s. Funds have not been a problem.  There was no harassing urgency, the technical requirements were nothing to write home about and were de facto self-written, there was no “shifting of goal posts”:  i.e. all the causes cited for the Tejas delays have been absent.

What has been the results? Thirty-four years to design a badly overweight, poorly engineered, light aeroplane, the Hansa. It may be all composite but thirty four years and still kuccha is just not acceptable for what is de facto a homebuilt. The Saras Mk1 was configurationally a “Brooklyn Bridge” sale of a unpromising configuration, put out of its misery by an unfortunate crash after 25 years.

To have better results it would be necessary to trace the process by which this awful configuration was recommended for funding and by whom/ what level. The Saras Mk2 is a wrong aircraft at the wrong time. Even if it succeeds technically and in timescale, it will fail commercially. As a note for thought it is surprising the very active Technical Centre of DGCA which gave us a number of gliders and light aircraft was shut down in the 1980s. It is not Technology or funds. The wrong projects and organizations are being backed and the performers were shut down. That is a pattern that the GOI must look up.   

 

Conclusions

 

Many reasons are forwarded for the failures of the “Lab” type organizations in developing products for the Armed Forces. What I have tried to show is that the Lab. Type organization inherently suffers from many small deficiencies which in series lead to great bad. Hae nugae, in serie ducent mala!

The leadership for weapons development projects must be left to the industry and the customer. It is not that the Forces or the Industry or the private sector are inherently better. It is simply their practical experience and resources are infinitely better and they “self-correct” very fast. They simply cannot tolerate sustained failure and Corrections take place quickly after a debacle. This doesn’t happen with required rapidity in the Labs and the Administration. For progress the Labs. must accept the role of the vendor for that particular technology only rather than the project overall e.g. if we proceed at all with the AMCA the Project Management should be – Private Sector, IAF, HAL and ADA as the advisor for whatever stealth techniques developed. We see the result of “amateur” leadership in the case of Tejas. We cannot afford another replay. There will be no Air Force left after the inevitable failure.

 

Epilogue

 

1.      India had a vibrant aeronautical Industry that far out stripped the Chinese uptil the 1980s.

2.      The ironically named ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency) in the 1980s marked the rapid decline. Fron 800 Indian aircraft of 10 different types in the period 1950 to 1980 we went to 25 barely serviceable aircraft in the next forty-six years.

3.      What this decline revealed is the vulnerability of our development structure to interference by “external” influence. External influence includes officials who have no business to be in a position of authority because they are untouched by the disastrous consequences of the decision. The deciding management must rest between the customer and the Industry with the Labs and the Babudom “doing the needful” rather than over ruling what the “people in contact” indicate. This has been the disaster of the Tejas,

4.      India lacks for nothing in terms of people, funds and facilities, Direct confrontation is most unlikely and we have the means to tide that threat. It takes perhaps five years to completely transform the present depressing chaos, there is no need for panic decisions and foreign collaboration proposed.