NEW DELHI: The Government is looking at "substantial changes" in the existing model of developing advanced defence products, Defence & Research Development Organisation (DRDO) chief M. Natarajan said on Tuesday.

"We have therefore proposed greater involvement of stakeholders by sharing project expenditure and management. DRDO is not a manufacturer. Its primary job is to create capacity. The industry is also realising that this would be possible if there is some mechanism of assured minimum quantity and there is some partnership with foreign entities," he told a seminar on defence finance and economics here.

The DRDO was under fire for delays in developing missiles, fighter planes and tanks. While agreeing that cost and time overruns were "disturbing us," he said the fine print of such criticism was "uninformed reporting."

Interaction with foreign weapons and sensor builders "clearly" indicated an opportunity for building products for the Indian and overseas markets.

The problem was that the armed forces and the public sector became used to the "comfortable culture" of licence production and foreign purchases.

The Indian defence sector was good in repeat manufacturing and tooling but research was necessary for advanced products.

The industry, however, was preoccupied and had little time for in-house R&D. Test and evaluation facilities were totally absent in many areas, leading to snags in the complete range of the development cycle.

Cost overruns

On cost overruns, M. Natarajan gave two instances to deflect the current criticism. The first of a weapons system that was developed from 1976 to 1998 at an original cost of Rs.16 crore at 1973 prices.

It finally cost Rs. 320 crore. But in real terms Rs.16 crore would have meant over Rs.500 crore at 1998 prices. On the efforts to develop the light combat aircraft (LCA), he said would cost Rs.120 crore against over Rs. 200 crore for imported planes.

The DRDO chief also referred to the funds crunch and the need for defence finance to consider the intangible benefits of R&D.

Indigenous research

Two-thirds of the current year's defence R&D budget were for strategic systems, wages of technical personnel and infrastructure development.

This left just two per cent for an entire spectrum of R&D activities from life sciences to LCA.

M. Natarajan strongly supported indigenous research as otherwise the Indian defence sector could fall into one of the "triple traps" — what is developed abroad may not suit local requirements, what is suitable may be denied and what is not denied could be unaffordable. In the early 1980s, the DRDO took up R&D in a range of weapon systems because the Government felt that after a decade of experience in reverse engineering, ordnance factories were not generating new designs.

"Capacity building in systems concept and designs for better understanding and execution of projects can't be done on an imaginary plane. This was the rationale for going forward with development of capabilities in main battle tank, LCA, electronic warfare systems, integrated guided missile development programme and strategic systems."

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