India's Abysmal Defence Procurement Planning That Leads to 'Poopcee Acquisitions'

Chandigarh: Much like a baby with a pacifier, India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) and its military often relied on ‘interim’ or ‘intermediate’ purchases to bridge operational gaps due to bureaucratic paralysis, unrealistic equipment specifications, developmental delays and corruption scandals blocking long-term solutions.

For decades, stopgap purchases have provided relief to all three services, but at a high cost to strategic planning, fiscal efficiency and self-reliance. They have also created a patchwork arsenal sourced from multiple overseas vendors that further complicates training, logistics, and equipment maintenance.

‘Poopcee acquisitions,’ meant as temporary stopgaps, last decades

A three-star IAF veteran wryly dubbed these interim buys ‘Poopcee acquisitions,’ naming them after a popular local baby pacifier brand and lamenting that though meant as temporary stopgaps, they often lasted decades, fostering comfort-driven inertia. Declining to be named, he added that this procurement pattern diverted funds from long-term modernisation, trapping all three services in a cycle of ad hoc purchases never intended to be permanent.

The IAF, for instance, currently operates seven combat aircraft types – three Soviet/Russian, two French, one Anglo-French, and one indigenous –  a number that will drop to six next month, with the formal retirement of two MiG-21 ground-attack squadrons in Chandigarh.

Consequently, such platform diversity ultimately hindered interoperability with other air forces, inflated life-cycle and logistic costs and strained operational readiness, especially during high-tempo missions, where streamlined support was vital.

“The responsibility for this platform mix was due entirely to the MoD’s lack of overall planning, its complex procurement labyrinth and procrastinating bureaucratese,” said a retired one-star Indian Navy (IN) officer. Spread across multiple departments, oversight bodies and approval layers, the MoD’s procedures routinely turned even the simplest of purchases into multi-year sagas, he declared, requesting anonymity.

Successive service chiefs, too, had warned that procurement delays ‘forced’ the armed forces into piecemeal, urgent buys instead of structured, long-term acquisitions. Ad hoc and panic-induced purchases, they had repeatedly cautioned, could not deliver the military competency needed in a crisis.

In May, Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh acknowledged that when signing contracts, the IAF was aware these systems would never meet delivery schedules. “Timelines are a big issue,” he said at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Business Summit in New Delhi, adding that he could not recall a single IAF project being completed on time.

Even Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh had surprisingly conceded that his ministry’s procurement system was ‘broken’ and was plagued by delays. Speaking at the Subroto Mukherjee memorial Seminar on "Atmanirbharta (indigenisation) in Aerospace: The Way Ahead" in January 2025, Singh declared that it was no secret that India’s military procurement policy had, for long, been damaged.

“The timelines we’ve given ourselves (for acquisitions) are too luxurious,” he was quoted by Business Standard as saying. Even something as basic as drafting Requests for Proposal (RFPs) in time, even before seeking the MoD’s mandatory Acceptance of Necessity (AON) approval, he admitted, was ‘inoperable’ .

Editorial limitations restrict enumerating these multiple ad hoc purchases, but a handful of instances outlined the armed forces' aforementioned ‘Poopcee-acquisition’ phenomenon.

A long history of procurement timelines not being met

For years, the IAF has been seeking 114 multi-role fighter aircraft (MRFA) to check the steady decline in its combat squadrons, which by mid-September would have dipped from their officially sanctioned strength of 42.5 squadrons (of 16-18 platforms each), to just 28-29 squadrons.

But the proposed MRFA buy, estimated at $25-30 billion, was a ‘stopgap’ move to plug fighter squadron shortfalls, while India’s indigenously upgraded and under-development Tejas Mk2 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and the 5th generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) were designed and series built, 2035 onwards.

The MRFA April 2018 request for information (RfI) had elicited responses from seven overseas fighter manufacturers, offering eight fighter types, but no further progress had ensued thereafter. This, in turn, had prompted  ACM Singh last October to castigate the MoD for dragging its feet on the MRFA purchase, first initiated in 2010, by straightforwardly declaring that these fighters were needed by the IAF as of yesterday.

And, in April, the MoD signed a Rs 63,000 crore deal for 26 French Dassault Rafale-M (Maritime) fighters for the IN for embarkation aboard  INS Vikrant, the indigenously designed and built aircraft carrier. These too were deemed by the IN as ‘interim buy’, until the indigenous Twin Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF) was commissioned sometime in the late 2030s, assuming that development and production timelines proceeded as planned, which rarely ever were.

Earlier, in 2001, the Indian Army (IA) began inducting Russian T-90S ‘Bhishma’ tanks after the indigenous Arjun MBT programme lagged badly. Initially intended as a stopgap, the T-90S has since become the Army’s mainstay MBT with about 1,200 in service and a target of  deploying 1,600 of them by the early 2030s. Around 124 Arjun Mk Is entered service in the early 2000s, and an equal number of Mk2 variants were awaiting induction, following which the indigenous MBTs assembly line at Avadi is likely to be terminated.

Subsequently, in 2016–17, the IA had acquired 145 BAE Systems M777 Ultra-Light Howitzers via the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) route, after its indigenous artillery modernisation had stalled for nearly three decades, jeopardised by the Bofors corruption scandal in the late 1980s. These 155mm/39-calibre M777 howitzers, capable of being transported by helicopters, have become a permanent fixture, and like other ‘stopgap’ purchases bought to bridge a gap, have ended up becoming the main road itself.

The IA’s assault rifle saga is yet another masterclass in how a quick fix in India’s defence procurement can quietly settle in for the long haul. In 2019, the Army rushed through the purchase of 72,400 SIG Sauer 716i 7.62×51mm rifles from the US, under the MoD’s fast-track programme, to replace inefficient and much maligned locally designed Indian Small Arms System (INSAS) rifles.

The SIG-716i was billed as a mere interim induction, holding the line until the joint Indo-Russian state-run AK-203 project at Korwa in Uttar Pradesh went on-stream. But, even in this instance, ‘temporary’ proved elastic and AK-203 delays saw the IA ordering additional SIG-716is.

A laborious procurement process

Defence industry officials and analysts maintain the chronic problem lies in abysmal defence procurement planning, the MoD’s glacial procurement system marked by interminable file notings, meetings without end, shifting goalposts, and inter-departmental point-scoring, all of which stretch acquisitions across decades. By the time a ‘planned’ platform finally limps out of the pipeline, the stopgap bought in haste has grown roots, supply chains, and an air of permanence that the MoD’s slow grind is only too happy to preserve.

Over the years, The Wire has flagged the MoD’s laborious procurement process spread across 12 complex stages, each one of which has the potential to interminably delay or derail the entire enterprise. Consequently, the procurement process can, and often does, take twice, or at times even three times as long as 74-118 weeks mandated in successive Defence Procurement manuals, to conclude.

Former Army Chief of Staff General V K Singh – later a federal minister – corroborated this procurement malaise. During his tenure as army chief that ended in May 2012, Gen Singh aptly compared all domestic materiel procurements to a game of Snakes and Ladders, an ancient Indian board game, known originally as Moksha Patnam.

He asserted that all files dealing with military purchases slipped back to the start from the top, just as the end appeared imminent, much like the counters slid sharply down in Snakes and Ladders, following a roll of the dice. He also said that in this process, there was no ladder, but only snakes, who jeopardised the acquisition process by ‘biting’, after which the entire process slid back to the beginning.

India’s laborious material procurement system, as detailed in the latest 2020 edition of the Defence Acquisition Procedure manual of over 600 pages, is cumbersome and clumsy and liable to be disrupted at multiple stages, like Gen Singh warned.

It kicks off with the respective services issuing an Rfi to vendors-local or overseas, or, at times, even both for assorted items, following which the service qualitative requirements or SQRs for equipment were formulated, based on their responses.

Each officer concerned in the process felt compelled to suggest additional accompaniments in an endeavour to display industry. The ball remained in play till the SQRs were approved by the service-specific equipment policy committees, headed by the respective deputy or vice chiefs of staff, after an inordinate amount of time.

Successive parliamentary committees on defence and the Comptroller and Auditor General had castigated the withdrawal or termination of diverse tenders due to implausible SQRs. Even late Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had mocked the services at a public function in Delhi in 2015, for fashioning fanciful and implausible QRs, which he claimed were based on ‘Marvel Comics’.

An Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) is then accorded to most of the high-value proposed purchases by the MoD’s Defence Acquisition Council, headed by the Defence Minister. The AoN, which, in effect, is merely a procedural move by the MoD, invariably receives excessive official and media attention, thereby creating, for the uninitiated, the mirage that the particular acquisitions were well underway.

Nothing, however, could be further from reality, as the interminable heavy lifting is yet to begin.

Postponements in equipment delivery

This commences with the issuance of an RfP, followed by a technical evaluation of the responses. Field trials follow, which were lengthy and at times could even take several years. This was especially so for the IA that tested most of its kit, like small arms and howitzers in assorted terrain and environments like the northern Punjab plains, western Rajasthan desert regions and in Himalayan heights in Kashmir, Sikkim and Ladakh.

A staff evaluation committee then assessed the trial outcome reports and shortlisted the participants. This too was arduous and could take long, as the scope for ‘subjective’ evaluations was vast, said industry officials.  It also elicited a flurry of objections from rival contenders, with complaints over ‘unduly favouring’ rival systems.

After that, the commercial bids, submitted at the time of tendering for the contract, were opened and negotiations launched with the L1, or lowest priced of the selected bidders. Contract approval by the Competent Financial Authority was then secured, and in purchases of Rs 3,000 crore and above, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by the Prime Minister, sanctioned the buy, after which the deal was finally inked.

The matter, however, did not end even then, as the purchase was monitored by the respective service headquarters, causing further delays. The involvement of several associated departments, like the Director General of Quality Assurance (DGQA), only added to the prevailing miasma, perpetuating postponements in equipment delivery and perpetuating ‘Poopcee-acquisitions’ as a quick-fix solution.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.