(This story originally appeared in on Nov 26, 2019)

NEW DELHI: Hit by a severe fund crunch, the armed forces are either slowing down modernisation projects or slashing operational requirements, while also delaying payments to defence PSUs and foreign armament companies for contracts inked earlier.The grim situation can also be gauged from the fact that arms acquisition cases are piling up in the Cabinet Committee on Security without being cleared due to the prevailing shortage of funds. The armed forces, in fact, have told defence minister Rajnath Singh and top defence finance officials that there is a “critical requirement” for additional funds during the ongoing financial year, said sources on Monday.TOI in mid-September had reported the over 15-lakh strong armed forces had projected an additional requirement of around Rs 80,000 crore more for modernisation, plugging critical operational gaps and paying “committed liabilities” at the revised estimates stage in December.“While the entire Rs 80,000 crore may not be possible, at least 40% (Rs 32,000 crore) of the amount is now critical for the armed forces. IAF and Navy have already spent over 85% of their allocated funds. Payments to defence PSUs are being progressively stopped, and may come to a complete halt by December,” said a source.Given the budgetary constraints the three Services are being forced to curtail their operational necessities on several fronts. The Army, for instance, has cut down its long-standing requirement for 5,719 new-generation sniper rifles by two-thirds to just about 1,800 guns now. Earlier, in April 2018, the force had gone in for a Rs 5.34 crore emergency purchase of 32 long-range advanced sniper rifles for troops deployed along the Line of Control with Pakistan Similarly, the Navy has been told to halve its requirement of 10 more Poseidon-8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft, which are packed with radars and weapons for anti-submarine warfare , at a cost of over $3 billion from the US. The Navy had earlier ordered 12 P-8I aircraft, with eight of them inducted and the rest four slated for delivery by 2021-2022.The defence ministry is also likely to delay the actual inking of the virtually finalized deals with the US like the Rs 13,500 crore one for 24 multi-role MH-60 ‘Romeo’ helicopters for Navy and the Rs 4,168 crore acquisition of six Apache attack helicopters for Army, said the sources.Officers acknowledge that a big problem is that the ballooning revenue expenditure (salaries and day-to-day running costs) is eating into the capital outlay for modernisation for the manpower-intensive armed forces year after year. The overall defence outlay in the 2019-2020 budget was Rs 3.18 lakh crore, with Rs 2.10 lakh crore earmarked for revenue and just Rs 1.08 lakh crore for capital expenditure.