Defence Estate Department has a very large inventory of land having no use for the military. Military possesses huge land and related infrastructure unwanted or most sparingly used - that cost a great deal in terms of manpower and expenditure to maintain. Airfields uneconomical are owned and maintained by the Air Force. The military possesses large useless inventory that has been criticised by CAG. Weapon systems beyond useful life are maintained at extraordinary effort and cost since they are not replaced in time. We operate at least four different aircraft and use five different engines that had become obsolete and do not fly anywhere else in the world! Upgradation of the Air Force fleet comes at the near end of the life of a weapon system when there is no replacement in sight - to give it a fresh life. This is a bad strategy. The West talks about mid-life upgrades and never an upgrade at the end of life! Our MIG-21 upgrade, the BISON project has still not been completed. It is now a race to complete the upgrade before the technical life gets over! There is plenty of scope to improve interoperability between the three services. Many systems used by the three services have many commonalities. Currently, the logistics systems followed by the services are not linked. A spare which one service needs may be in surplus with another but there is no way to know it. Facilities are duplicated or even triplicated without being aware. Besides improving efficiency, costs and manning could be significantly reduced through integration among the Services.
Air Chief Marshal (Retd) S Krishnaswamy, PVSM, AVSM, VM & Bar,
Fellow Ae Sl is Member, National Security Advisory Board.
(Vol 22.2 September 16th, 2007.)
Extracted: IDR: Shaping of the Indian Military
Comment: Well articulated about the Defence Estate Department. This is one arm next only to MES in the scale and scope of corruption in the Armed Forces. Literally a Mafia (no guns of course) organisation dealing with politicians, local thugs, money laundering and palming off defence lands stealthily in connivance with MOD bureaucrats. Huge unwanted lands of the Military need to be assessed on ground and properly accounted for and utilised for Nation Building and not given away to real estate sharks for a song.
Filling the submarine gap
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