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Thursday March 28, 2024

India raises vice chiefs of three forces’ financial power

By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
November 09, 2018

ISLAMABAD: Indian government has enhanced the financial decision-making powers of the vice-chiefs of three forces “by five times” to ensure the armed forces can build up ammunition stocks and undertake other projects through revenue procurements.

According to Indian media reports, the vice-chiefs will now be able to take decisions up to a limit of Rs500 crore as the “competent financial authorities” under this greater delegation of financial powers. The Indian defence minister took this step to augment the arms and ammunition reserves of the armed forces and enhance their operational preparedness,” said an official in Indian capital on Thursday.

Incidentally, contracts worth around Rs20,000 crore for ammunition, spares, engines and other reserves have been finalised over the last two years, mainly with Russia and Israel, to ensure adequate stocks for at least 10 days of “intense war-fighting” as was earlier reported. It was after the attack at Uri in September 2016 that the government had been rudely jolted out of its slumber on finding that the armed forces had crippling operational shortages of several different kinds of ammunition.

Though the conventional norm is that the armed forces should have adequate war wastage reserves (WWR) to last 40 days of “intence fighting”, the Indian government has decided that as a first step emergency procurements should be undertaken to build stockpiles for at least 10 days.

Under the 19 contracts worth Rs11,740 crore finalised for the Army, for instance, the force will get Smerch rockets, Konkurs anti-tank guided missiles, 125mm APFSDS (armour-piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot) ammunition for its T-90S and T-72 tanks and other ammunition in the 2019-2020 timeframe.

The government is also finalising a Rs15,000 crore long-term plan + to get the domestic private sector to manufacture seven different types of ammunition to gradually remove the country’s heavy import dependence in this arena.