An unprecedented public firestorm has erupted between the Indian Army and its principal supplier of ammunition and weaponry, the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).
India Today’s exclusive newsbreak on Tuesday uncovering a damning internal Army report on how sub-standard ammunition had accidentally killed 27 troops, injured 159 and cost a staggering 960 crore since 2014, has triggered a fuming rebuttal from the OFB, one that promises to raise temperatures significantly with its chief customer.
Claiming not to have seen the Indian Army report, which was reported widely in the media after India Today’s newsbreak, the OFB claims it is, “not in possession of this report” and that it “does not accept these figures”.
While the Army in its report, shared with the Ministry of Defence (MoD), says there have been 403 accidents since 2014 attributable to low quality ammunition supplied by OFB facilities, the OFB claims in its two-page statement that only 19% of accidents that occurred between January 2015 and December 2019 could be attributed to the OFB directly.
In another claim, the OFB says 2% of the casualties (27 dead and 159 injured since 2014) are attributable to OFB-supplied ammunition.
The OFB’s sense of embarrassment and anger over the Army report has led to it taking a rare pot-shot at the Army’s own internal processes, including gun maintenance and firing protocols — dangerous territory, especially considering that the Army is the OFB’s single biggest customer, and a captive one for decades.
THE STATEMENT
“Accidents are complex phenomena and can have multiple causes such as poor gun maintenance, faulty firing drill, unvalidated design changes in the weapon, faulty ammunition design, among others. The defect investigation is carried out by a committee headed by the Authority Holding Sealed Particulars (AHSP) which is the custodian of the manufacturing documents. The committees include representatives of all the stakeholders including the user. The investigation carried out by these committees are seldom holistic in nature despite the fact that the OFB has been insisting on such an approach,” the OFB statement says.
Incensed by what it sees as the Army picking on the quality of OFB ammunition alone, the OFB also points out that between 2011 and 2018, the Army has experienced 125 accidents involving ammunition procured from sources other than OFB, both Indian and foreign.
And in a final defence against the Army’s huge claim that financial resources expended on sub-standard OFB ammunition could have been used to purchase 100 medium artillery guns, the OFB takes a pot-shot saying, “The same logic, if applied to the faulty Krasnopol ammunition imported [by the Vajpayee goverment] during the Kargil war amounting to 522.44 crore could have financed another 55 artillery guns.”
A reaction is awaited from the Indian Army on the counter-claims that have been made by the Ordnance Factory Board.
Corporatisation of OFB
The OFB’s fury over the Indian Army report, unsurprisingly misdirected at the media, is not difficult to understand. Just this month, the Ministry of Defence appointed a KPMG-led consortium to advise the government on how to modernise the OFB, strip it of its age-old legacy socialist bureaucratic structures and to corporatise it.
OFB unions at factories across the country have aggressively opposed the corporatisation drive despite a concerted drive to engage with unions and explain to them that the old ways of working are no longer acceptable in a competitive market place.
The Indian Army is unlikely to engage in a public slugfest with the OFB, but is known to be fully supportive of the corporatisation effort — anything that will break the legacy loop of its status as a captive customer who has little choice in the matter.
And as enunciated recently by top officers amidst the extended standoff with China in Ladakh, the need for foolproof supply lines of reliable ammunition have never been more strongly felt.
In anticipation of such requirements, several small and large private defence companies have stepped forward with the willingness to invest in ammunition production capacity.
In the foreseeable future, it is the Army’s hope that competition will improve the quality of ammunition, no matter where it procures it from.
Also Read | The panic buys
Also Read | Money burnt on faulty ammo could have bought us 100 new Howitzers, fumes Army
Also Read | First visuals of Indian Army’s tanks battle-ready to take on China in Ladakh