A Halting Turn: India’s Military Transformation

Carnegie India  |  Anit Mukherjee

India’s military transformation faces persistent institutional friction despite seven years of structural reforms initiated since the August 15, 2019 creation of the Chief of Defence Staff post. Although the Department of Military Affairs improved procedural jointness among the army, navy, and air force, inter-service opposition continues to stall mandatory joint theatre commands.

Bureaucratic inertia and historical service rivalries continue to preserve legacy single-service structures, limiting political intent from realizing deep structural integration. Concurrently, defense industrial policy shifts have catalyzed public-private partnerships, expanding exports from $60 million to $4 billion over twelve years. White labelling remains a critical weakness. Local firms frequently rebrand imported foreign systems, undermining true self-reliance under aatmanirbharta while facing slow, archaic procurement processes. Scaling up civil-military fusion requires state agencies, including the Defence Research and Development Organisation and Defence Public Sector Undertakings, to build transparent partnerships with civilian technology sectors and academia.

Comment

The persistence of white labelling in private defence production reveals a structural gap between assembly output and true indigenous technological absorption. While policy shifts enabled private firms to capture a record share of domestic defence production, critical subcomponents remain dependent on foreign supply chains. Foreign original equipment manufacturers continue to retain intellectual property rights over core subsystems, leaving domestic firms operating primarily as system integrators rather than primary innovators.

This structural dependency manifests acutely in the acquisition framework of the Defence Research and Development Organisation and its fifteen DRDO Industry Academia Centres of Excellence. Rigid Defence Acquisition Procedure protocols penalise technological iterations and fail to accommodate startup risk models, forcing emerging vendors to import pre-certified assemblies to meet delivery timelines. Consequently, the rapid expansion of DPSU procurement backlogs stems directly from testing regimes that treat modified foreign components as indigenous designs.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If rigid testing regimes under the Defence Acquisition Procedure continue to incentivize the import of pre-certified subcomponents, which factor will dictate the real rate of technological absorption—reforming DRDO Industry Academia Centres of Excellence or altering DPSU procurement standards?

The available evidence points toward reforming DPSU procurement standards as the decisive leverage point, given their immediate control over production contracts and supply chain auditing. While DRDO Industry Academia Centres of Excellence build long-term research capacity, current procurement protocols actively incentivize white labelling to meet tight operational delivery timelines. Without modifying Defence Acquisition Procedure compliance metrics to penalize foreign subcomponent reliance, academic innovation will remain decoupled from serial defence manufacturing.

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