During his first year in office, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar gave a free hand to the army to act pro-actively on the Line of Control (LoC). He led from the front and worked closely with the leadership of the armed forces, the bureaucracy and his counterparts in the other ministries to put defence preparedness back on the rails and give a fillip to the stalled process of military modernisation. He put to use his management skills to set the right priorities for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the armed forces and the results have been good. However, defence preparedness and military modernisation continue to need his urgent attention.

The foremost item on the Defence Minister’s agenda for the NDA government’s remaining years in office should be to hasten the process of addressing the ‘critical hollowness’ plaguing defence preparedness – a term used by General V. K. Singh, the COAS, in the letter he wrote as COAS to the then Prime Minister in May 2012. Major operational voids in the war establishment of the three must be made up early in order to optimise combat efficiency.

Large-scale deficiencies in ammunition and important items of equipment continue to hinder readiness for war and the ability to sustain operations over anticipated time periods. The army reportedly has some varieties of ammunition for barely ten days of conflict and it will cost Rs 19,000 core to replenish stocks. It will be recalled that during the Kargil conflict in 1999, as many as 50,000 rounds of Bofors ammunition had to be imported from South Africa. The occurrence of such a situation during a time of crisis must be avoided through a prudent replenishment and stocking policy.

Modern wars are fought mostly during the hours of darkness, but most of the infantry battalions and many of the armoured fighting vehicles – tanks and infantry combat vehicles – are still ‘night blind’. Warships, submarines, fighter aircraft, light helicopters, artillery guns, ground-based air defence, command and control, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, are either held in inadequate numbers or bordering on obsolescence.

Among the structural reforms that need to be implemented in an early time frame the most important issue is the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). This appointment was first recommended by the Arun Singh committee on defence expenditure in the early 1990s, and then by the Group of Ministers led by Mr. L. K. Advani that reviewed the recommendations of the four task forces on the management of national security, assembled following the submission of the Kargil Review Committee report. This crucial appointment has been hanging fire due to the want of a political consensus and differences within the armed forces. Recently, the Naresh Chandra committee has recommended the appointment of a permanent Chairman of the CoSC as a more acceptable alternative.

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