The government has prohibited Indian manufacturers of military drones from using components made in China. The decisions after serious concerns over security vulnerabilities, according to a report by Reuters.
The report quoted four defence and industry officials. They said that the country’s security leaders were worried that intelligence gathering could be compromised by China-made parts drone communication features.
The decision to restrict China-made parts came amid military tensions between India and China, the two nuclear-armed neighbours, especially after skirmishes between the Indian Army and The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA-Chinese Army) along the LAC (Line of Actual Control) in Eastern Ladakh in May 2020.
Three of these people and some six government and industry figures interviewed by Reuters spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media due to the sensitivity of the topic. The report by Reuters further suggests that two meetings held in March and May 2023 were convened to discuss drone tenders in the country.
There Indian military officials told the potential bidders that equipment or sub-components from countries sharing land borders with India would not be accepted for security reasons, according to the minutes interviewed by Reuters This essentially means China-made equipment and subcomponents.
Reasons Involved
The defence and security figures said that the Indian Security leaders were worried that intelligence gathering would be compromised by Chinese-made parts in drone’s communications functions cameras, radio transmission and operating software.
According to one tender document, the drones with Chinese parts said that such security subsystems had security loopholes that compromised critical military data and called for vendors to disclose the origin of the components.
The Manufacturing Hurdle
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to build Indian drone capabilities to thwart perceived threats, including from that of China, whose forces have clashed with Indian soldiers along the disputed border in recent years.
India has set aside 1.6 trillion rupees for military modernisation in 2023-24, of which 75 per cent is reserved for the domestic industry. But the ban on Chinese parts has raised the cost of making military drones locally by forcing manufacturers to source components elsewhere, government and industry experts said.
The founder of Bengaluru-based New Space Research and Technologies, Sameer Joshi, has said 70 per cent of the goods were being manufactured and made in China. Joshi’s organisation is a supplier of small drones for the Indian Military.
“So, if I talk to, let’s say, a Polish Guy, he still has its components coming via China,” he said. Switching to a non-Chinese pipeline pushed up costs dramatically, Joshi said, adding that some manufacturers were still importing materials from China but would white-label it and keep the costs within that frame,” he said.
Technology Gaps
India relies on foreign manufactured for parts of its drones and entire system as it lacks the know how to make certain types of drones. A government funded program to produce a Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Systems is delayed by half a decade, said Y Dilip, the director of the state-run Aeronautical Development and Establishment.
The platform known as TAPAS has met most of its requirements but needs further work to fulfill the military’s goal of a drone that can reach an operational altitude 30,000 feet and remain airborne for 24 hours, Dilip said.
“Primarily, we were constrained by engines, he said, with the neither those domestic and international models were available to India up to the job.
Apart from TAPAS, which is expected to begin military trials this month, the ADE is focusing and working on a stealth unmanned platform and a High-Altitude Long Endurance platform, but both are years away. To fill in these gaps, India announced in June that that it would buy 31 MQ-9 Reapers from the US for over 3 billion USD.
A Drone expert in the MP-IDSA (Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses) said that there has to be a coherent national strategy to fill in the technology gaps to deliver commercially viable products.
Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister of India pledged that in February 2023, one quarter of this year’s 232.6 billion rupees budget for defence research and development would be for the private industry.
Still Narang said there was little investment in research and development by India’s private sector companies. Joshi said that venture capitalists eschewed military projects because of long lead times and the risk orders may not eventuate.
The senior defence officials said India will need to accept higher costs to boost domestic manufacturing. “If today I buy equipment from China but I say that I want to make in India, the cost will go up by 50 percent, he said. We as a nation need to be ready to help build ecosystem build here.”
