Here is a sneak peek into the Modi government’s defence agenda in near future.

Major decisions and policy announcements aimed at beefing up the country’s defence are going to be on the front burner of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the next few weeks.

Multi-billion dollar deals for acquisition of submarines, attack helicopters, heavy-lift helicopters, missiles and fighter aircraft are on Modi’s radar screen.

In fact, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy in near term too will have heavy defence agenda, be it in terms of his forthcoming foreign visits to Japan and the United States or in-bound trips of leaders of major powers like Russia during the rest of the year.

Here is a sneak peek into the Modi government’s defence agenda in near future.

Submarines

This is a crucial sector and a major area of concern as the former defence minister AK Antony, the longest serving defence minister of India, did more harm than good to the cause of modernisation of Indian armed forces. To protect his image of "Mr Clean" Antony brought the defence armaments’ acquisition process to a virtual halt for a major part of his tenure and woke up to the crying needs of the armed forces only at the fag end, a classic case of too little too late.

After INS Sindhurakshak was lost to the Indian Navy due to a massive fire and multiple explosions in Mumbai naval dock yard on 14 August, 2013, and operational issues with several other aging submarines the navy has been left with just 13 conventional diesel-electric submarines, 11 of which are 20-27 years old.

Interestingly, it was the previous NDA government of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee which had approved in 1999 a long-term ambitious project, called Project 75i, aimed at adding 30 new submarines to the naval fleet by 2030. It is for the Modi government now to put this project back on the rails.

A major decision of clearing pending submarines project is awaiting the nod of the new Indian government. This pertains to issuing RFP (defence jargon for Request for Proposal) for six submarines. The project is going to cost at least Rs 50,000 crore, slightly more than $8 billion. The six-submarine project is part of Project 75i.

The UPA II government had issued RFI (Request for Information) for the six-submarine project towards the end of its tenure. The next stage of the acquisition process is issuance of a RFP (call for a global tender) and the UPA government failed to issue the RFP.

Clearing hurdles for acquisition of six new submarines should be one of the highest priorities of the Modi government’s defence policy.

Helicopters

This is another area where the Indian armed forces are feeling distressed for years but no decision could be taken by the UPA government.

The armed forces are in dire need of attack helicopters and heavy-lift transport helicopters. The US is the frontrunner for grabbing the deal for off-the-shelf purchase of these two types of helicopters — 16 Chinuk heavy-lift helicopters and 22 Apache attack helicopters.

The helicopter deal, likely to cost up to $3 billion, is going to dominate the India-US conversations in the coming weeks in the run up to Prime Minister Modi’s bilateral visit to the US in September this year. Modi is likely to hold a summit meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington on 30 September.

But then this won’t be an easy decision for the Modi government as several major foreign powers, including Russia, have been wooing India for this lucrative deal. Russia has even expressed its annoyance for India reaching out to the US for purchase of helicopters saying that it can sweeten the deal for India by offering similar product at much cheaper price along with Transfer of Technology which the US normally does not give.

However, the US this time may pip Russia to the post as Washington too has given signals that it would be transferring technology in case of the helicopters. Moreover, India has had spate of issues with Russia on maintenance and quality control aspects.

MMRCA (Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft) Project

This mega project, though awarded in principle to France by the UPA government in January 2012, is still in a limbo as final commercial negotiations with the French company Dassault are lingering on. The Modi government has to come up with its decision of ‘clearing’ the deal.

The project is going to cost a whopping $20 billion involving 126 fighter aircraft. The project is of utmost necessity for the Indian Air Force which is currently down to just 34 fighter squadrons as against a minimum requirement of 44 fighter squadrons.

All these acquisitions are the dire need of the Indian armed forces in view of India’s twin objectives of maintaining unquestionable superiority over arch-rival Pakistan and minimum deterrent for China.

Later this month, Modi is going to travel to Kolkata to commission INS Kolkata, the country’s largest indigenously-built 6700-tonne warship. Just a few days ago, Modi had boarded INS Vikramaditya in Goa and dedicated the aircraft carrier to the nation. INS Kochi and INS Chennai, sister ships of INS Kolkata, will be the next on the Prime Minister’s heavy defence agenda.

Clearly defence is going to hog a lot of time and attention of Prime Minister Modi.

The writer is a Firstpost columnist and a strategic analyst who tweets @Kishkindha.