Age Exclusive: How India lost 6 years on T-90 tanks

New Delhi: In a telling commentary on the state of affairs in India’s defence manufacturing, a defence ministry internal report has pointed out that the production of the Russian origin T-90 tanks, a mainstay of the country’s Armoured Corps, was delayed by six years on account of inability to translate documents from Russian to English.

This is one of the several systemic failings to indigenously manufacture the T-90 tanks listed in a 55-page internal report of the defence ministry prepared in May 2016 and now with the minister.

Shocking and bordering on the absurd is the finding that while India started receiving the documents from Russia in installments 2001 onwards, the translation could be completed only in 2007, a staggering six-year-long delay in absorbing transfer of technology (TOT) by India’s Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF) in Avadi, Tamil Nadu, and the ordnance factory boards (OFB), commissioned to roll out the tanks.

The report says: “The documents were in Russian and OFB efforts to get these documents translated into English failed. These documents were received between September 2001 and January 2003 following which HVF Avadi concluded four contracts between September 2003 and September 2006 for translation of these documents. The documents were completed by July 2007 after the expiry of scheduled delivery period of the first phase of 15 indigenous tanks by 2006-07. Thus translation of TOT documents from Russian to English language took almost six years.”

The report also states that though ordered to manufacture 945 T-90 tanks for the Indian Army, HVF/OFBs could churn out only 227 tanks by 2014-15 — less than 25 per cent of the target in 13 years. This despite the fact that the OFB failed substantially to indigenise and even now 70 per cent of the material (by value) is being imported. Indigenous production of T-90 tanks was to start in 2003-04.

“Due to serious slippages in production and delivery targets, HVF has been able to deliver only 227 tanks as against 945 tanks ordered by the Army and against their own cumulative capacity of 1,300 tanks (from 2003 to 2016) …As such HVF has been able to utilise only 25 per cent of their production capacity in the last 13 years,” the report says.

The poor rate of production and delivery has forced the Army and the defence ministry to rely on import of T-90 tanks from Russia. While the cost of an imported T-90 tank works out to Rs 14 crore apiece, the average cost of production and supply of a T-90 within India is at least Rs 21 crore, the report adds.

On November 7, the defence ministry had okayed the purchase of 464 T-90 tanks at a cost of Rs 13,448 crore under the “Buy Indian” basis from the HVF/OFBs. All tanks are produced at HVF, a dedicated departmental undertaking.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar is understood to have asked state-owned PSUs to put their act together. At an event a few months ago, Mr Parrikar had slammed the work culture at PSUs and had asked them to step out of the “cocoon of comfort”.

The report also points out that TOT documents in respect of some critical assemblies were not transferred by the original manufacturers even after a lapse of 12 years, that is till July 2013. An important component was the T-90 gun system for which the design was not received till May 2014.

India has a mix of T-72, T-90 and Arjun tanks. After nearly three decades of relying on Russia-made T-72 tanks, 2000 onwards the government decided to gradually substitute T-72 tanks with the next generation T-90 in the Army’s tank regiments, as the DRDO-made main battle tank (MBT) Arjun was only reluctantly and partially accepted by the Army. T-90 continues to be the mainstay.

The government’s overall objective has been to import a few number of tanks and produce the bulk balance within the country through the dedicated PSUs.