Appreciate but do Adopt

The recently released U.S National Security Strategy[1] under the signatures of President Donald Trump has been well received in India. The Government of India (GoI) has hailed the policy document and Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said[2]"We appreciate the strategic importance given to India-US relationship in the new National Security Strategy released by the US. As two responsible democracies, India and the US share common objectives, including combating terrorism and promoting peace and security throughout the world". Further, the document also refers to India as a “leading global power” which is a source of immense satisfaction for the GoI.

However, going beyond the platitudes, there are a lot of meaningful and implementable aspects that can be extracted from this document especially from the ‘Pillar II and III’ of the four pillars (i.e. Promote American Prosperity &Preserve Peace through Strength) on which the strategy is based upon. This article therefore, shall restrict to issues related to technology and armed forces modernisation spelt out in these two chapters.

Research, Technology, Invention and Innovation

The strategy says

“To maintain our competitive advantage, the United States will prioritize emerging technologies critical to economic growth and security, such as data science, encryption, autonomous technologies, gene editing, new materials, nanotechnology, advanced computing technologies, and artificial intelligence. From self-driving cars to autonomous weapons and the field of artificial intelligence”

And goes on further to state that

“We will encourage scientists in government, academia, and the private sector to achieve advancements across the full spectrum of discovery, from incremental improvements to game-changing breakthroughs. We will nurture a healthy innovation economy that collaborates with allies and partners, improves STEM¨education, draws on an advanced technical workforce, and invests in early-stage research and development (R&D)”.

This is an area where India has been seriously lagging behind. We have not been able to retain the sea of talent in India and have allowed most of it to drain into the U.S. Various surveys are available with respect to the Nos(particularly about the IIT graduates) leaving India for higher studies and then taking up jobs in the U.S, Europe, Middle East or the Far East. While the No of such graduates leaving for foreign shores seems to have come down, the ones who chose to stay back do not seem to have joined the GoI. While the Defence Research and Development Organisation boast of 52 laboratories with state of the art infrastructure &instruments it does not seem to be attracting the cutting edge scientific talent.  This is a serious lacuna and can be directly attributed to the bureaucratic mindset. If the GoI wishes to engage these bright young minds in pure research, it needs to make it more attractive than the private sector. There is not even a need to match the multinationals dollar for dollar, but just enough to make the offer an acceptable &comparable one. Project based engagement, with auditable milestones could also be considered. But so long as the seniority based progression continues in the R&D establishments of the GoI, not much is going to change on the R&D landscape. The thought process articulated in the strategy is instructive:

“The U.S. Government must improve our collaboration with industry and academia and our recruitment of technical talent. We will remove barriers to the full use of talent across Federal agencies, and increase incentives for hiring and retaining Federal STEM employees. Initiatives will include rapid hiring, swift adjudication of national security clearances, and offers of competitive salaries. We must create easier paths for the flow of scientists, engineers, and technologists into and out of public service.”

Armed Forces Modernisation & Acquisitions

About force modernisation the strategy states that

“Ensuring that the U.S. military can defeat our adversaries requires weapon systems that clearly overmatch theirs in lethality. Where possible, we must improve existing systems to maximize returns on prior investments. In other areas we should seek new capabilities that create clear advantages for our military while posing costly dilemmas for our adversaries. We must eliminate bureaucratic impediments to innovation and embrace less expensive and time-intensive commercial off-the-shelf solutions. Departments and agencies must work with industry to experiment, prototype, and rapidly field new capabilities that can be easily upgraded as new technologies come online.”

And with regards to acquisition, following is the stated position:

“The United States will pursue new approaches to acquisition to make better deals on behalf of the American people that avoid cost overruns, eliminate bloated bureaucracies, and stop unnecessary delays so that we can put the right equipment into the hands of our forces. We must harness innovative technologies that are being developed outside of the traditional defence industrial base.”

The Indian thought process of going about the modernisation and acquisitions is absolutely in line with what is given above but with diametrically opposite results. Large No. of GoI committees have examined these issues and have given their recommendations.  Further, various other think tanks, idea groups, independent researchers and services themselves have put forth reasons for the lack of modernisation and tardy pace of projects in acquisition. However, the situation on ground has not improved. In fact, as reported today, a parliamentary committee has pulled up the GoI for simply not doing enough to ensure military modernisation despite India facing myriad challenges[3]. The parliamentary standing committee on defence chaired by Major General B C Khanduri (Retd), in two reports tabled in Parliament on 19 Dec 2017, criticized the government for neither providing adequate funds for proper military modernization, nor fast-tracking defence procurements to plug operational gaps. Despite the fact that GoI has taken several new initiatives such as Make in India and brining out a new Defence Procurement Policy (DPP), various modernisation projects  in respect of all three forces remain ‘on file’.

So while we welcome that American National Security Policy has termed India as a leading global power with a leadership role in the Indian Ocean, we need to get our act together and fast. Discussions and brain storming has been done ad nauseam, now it is time to act else we would have again missed a great opportunity to break free from the regional geo-political quagmire and emerge as the ‘leading global power in its true spirit.