CAG flays DRDO, IAF for botched EW suite

The Defence Ministry wasted more than Rs 150 crore of the taxpayer’s money while trying to develop an indigenous electronic warfare suite for MiG-27 fighters despite knowing that the EW suite – even if it comes up on  time – will have limited use as these fighters are on their way out.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation, which was to develop the system by 2009 in collaboration with Israeli firm ELTA, could manage to start the trials of Takshak EW system only in January, 2011.

In the same month, IAF foreclosed the project realising that the indigenous system could not meet a large number of technical specifications and it would take at least another three years to induct the Takshak in the MiG-27 fleet, which was to be phased out from 2014 onwards.

Interestingly, even though the IAF foreclosed the project in January, 2011, the Defence Ministry did not have a clue as it informed the Comptroller and Auditor General in June, that Takshak would be available for the IAF from 2012, the CAG said in its report tabled in the Parliament last week. “It was a factually inconsistent statement from the defence ministry,” said the CAG.

The ministry originally planned to develop the EW suite for 38 MiG-27 platforms at a cost of Rs 312 crore, out of which DRDO was to contribute Rs 280 crore and IAF’s share was Rs 32 crore.

By the time, the project was abandoned, two arms of the Defence Ministry spent Rs 156 crores that CAG described as “unfruitful” expenditure.

The government watchdog questioned the very idea of sanctioning the project in the first place as the IAF knew all the time that MiG-27 fleet could not be sustained beyond 2012-16 because of the limited life of the aircraft. It was an “injudicious decision” on the part of the IAF, it said.

The auditor chided the air force for poor upkeep and maintenance of several air force stations including Bareilly where two squadrons of Su-30 fighters are based to tackle any Chinese threats as well as Leh, Pune, Nal, Bamrauli and Halwara. In Bareilly, the runways were resurfaced in 2007 at a cost of Rs 36 crore.

Within three years, it deteriorated so rapidly, that Su-30 fleet ran the risk of getting damaged while taking off or landing. Again in October, 2013 repair work began costing Rs 15 crore.

The strategically important Leh air force station still does not have a proper lighting system for night flying and still using solar goose neck flares, which were used during the World War-II.