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The arms bazaar

The defence industry has a historic role to play in the growth of the economy of any country. In simple layman’s language, whatever is imported for defence requirements adds to the foreign debt and whatever is exported reduces trade deficits. Considering that a fair percentage of our annual budget has to be necessarily earmarked for defence, given our insecure geo-political situation and erstwhile enemies, the need for indigenous manufacture of defence material cannot be over-emphasised. In the recently concluded Defence Technology Seminar which has become an annual international event of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories, Wah, in collaboration with Moensch Publishing of West Germany, the President of Pakistan said more or less the same.

One of the major contributing factors leading to the take-off of the US economy at the beginning of President Reagan’s reign was the pumping of billions of US dollars into arms and allied industries. This increased defence spending accelerated industrial growth, creating employment and in turn generated additional consumer spending, more housing starts, increased car sales and it all multiplied so on. The economy rode the resurgent locomotive of rearmament to unprecedented prosperity, with better times reflected on the Stock Market as never before, perhaps unrealistically so at times. Pulling battleships of World War II vintage out of mothballs, Mr Casper Weinberger, formerly known as “Cap the Knife” for his budget-slashing days in the “Office of Management and Budget” became the ultimate in spending as the US Secretary of Defence, getting more bucks for the bang than any other incumbent before him. The end justifies the means and the fact that lends credence to this view is that Gorbachev, Master of the “Evil Empire”, as Reagan calls the Soviet Union, has perforce had to negotiate with the Americans on their terms. However, imminent cutbacks in defence spending has also contributed to a slow-down of the US economy besides trade deficits, budget deficits and general lack of confidence in the US dollar. The prime reason will remain the lessening of US dollar infusion into the arms industry.

The President of Pakistan has encouraged the need for an indigenous defence industry with the assistance of private sector participation but has missed the point of it all inasfar as his sincerity and willingness not been transferred to the “powers that be” in the selection of defence material and in the processing of it for local production rather than relying year after year on imports from abroad. If Indonesia can progress so far as to manufacture a wide range of aircraft under licence (albeit with parts mostly imported from abroad), Egypt and Turkey can acquire the latest tank technology for domestic production, what is the restraint on us, with a much wider base of skilled expertise and infrastructure from doing the same? To refer to Idris Shah’s Mullah Nasruddin enquiring from a shopkeeper who confirmed that he had nails, leather, twine and dye, “then why, for heaven’s sake, don’t you make a pair of boots?” The reason is known as ‘Motivated Indecision’. The world is changing over from 7.62 to lesser calibres for small arms at a breakneck pace, we are still in a state of benign indecision; new and modern armoured personnel carriers have emerged on the scene, our answer is to consign our soldiers to a technology that was obsolete almost two decades ago. The President of Pakistan, in all his sincerity, should make a physical example of exhorting the Defence Production people by refusing to lay the foundation stones for any establishment and agreeing only to the inaugural ceremonies of military-industrial complexes. The fate of consigning anything to Committee Decision is like subjecting them to James H Boren’s Guidelines for Bureaucrats: (1) when in charge ponder (2) when in trouble delegate (3) when in doubt mumble, or as a frustrated Werhner Von Braun, the father of the Space Age said, quote, “we can lick gravity but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming”, unquote. The long and short of it is that we have the capacity and the potential, it is the singular motivation which is lacking. A team of foreign technicians who came here recently to do one of the endless feasibility reports on transfer of technology, after assessing our industrial infrastructure asked us whether we could loan some of the rusting equipment to them. We must (and can) manufacture the latest equipment on a licensed basis with buy-back promises from the manufacturer we select to deal with. In this manner not only will our Defence Services get the most modern defence material produced indigenously but we will cut into our import bill by subsequent re-exports while economising on manufacturing by the numbers produced, not to talk of the employment which would be generated. It is not for laymen like us to indicate what the needs of the Defence Services are but the President should shrug off his present leniency and opt for a lasting legacy by sitting down with the technical and professional experts in each category and deciding what is best for the country in the course of a single day. We need a “Quantum Leap Forward” and we needed it yesterday, what to talk about tomorrow. As to the private sector effort, private entrepreneurs of various sizes and denominations will flock to the vendor industries once a solid form of defence manufacture items are selected, as has been the case in the nascent tractor and automobile industries. We are a nation of skilled craftsmen capable of producing any item or machinery with our hands, how come we have degenerated into a nation of spare-part importers and traders? The statistics are not available, but by the look of what is displayed on parades, the spare parts bill for the Defence Services must be horrendous. These are self-evident hometruths and need no elucidation.

Our Armed Forces send detachments for training in various fields to a great number of friendly Islamic and other third world countries, some of whom make major annual arms purchases many times that of our total annual import bill. If we were to manufacture the most modern arms and equipment, we could export them to these countries which coupled with the buy-back provisos from manufacturers who would benefit because of our cheap labour, would be quite an addition to our exports. Not that we have been exactly sitting on our backsides, our developing defence co-production programmes with China and Turkey are a real feather in the cap of our Defence Production people. It is just that we have not gone far enough fast enough to invigorate the economy, creating employment and reducing trade deficits.

An imperative need arises for a strong Defence Production Board that should (a) assess the requirements of the Defence Services for the short, medium and long term particularly with a view to standardization wherever possible (b) arrange production accordingly including licensing, transfer of technology etc (c) arrange buy-backs and exports of manufactured items (d) coordinate the private sector vendor industry to support the public sector effort (e) arrange financing for requisite manufacturing units on an “as required basis”. In order to make the Defence Production Board effective and successful, all Defence purchases from abroad or within the country should be channelised through an arm of the Defence Production Board. All Research and Development in the defence field as well as allied production units must be concentrated under this one pivotal corporate aegis, unlike the present frittering away of money on totally useless projects. In short, the need exists to appoint a Defence Production CZAR, to give him standardized requirements for the three defence services for at least upto 2 decades (wherever possible, particularly transportation) and with support from the various Ministries concentrate them under one head i.e, all the wherewithal, and you will get the desired results. The Defence Production Board can be headed full-time by the Minister of State for Defence and have senior (three-star) representatives of each of the Defence services as full time members. The President will have to find someone like the previous Federal Ombudsman for the Defence Production field, an intelligent man, militarily professional, dedicated, totally incorruptible, objective-oriented and totally relentless in the pursuit and accomplishment of the AIM.

One of the important considerations in indigenous manufacture must be strict quality control by well qualified personnel. At this point of time the products of POF, Wah, have excellent quality and therefore can be — and are exported. The key to purposeful Defence Production contributing significantly to our exports will be quality par excellence. Any hint of shoddy goods would drive customers away in droves. Only active participation by the manufacturer in any project, if not in a joint venture capacity, at least in the form of buy-back basis for a few years would ensure that the qualities are at par with their original standards.

Our geo-political situation is not a happy one, our allies not as dependable as one would like them to be, albeit out of their own strategic and ideological considerations. In such an acutely insecure environment, the ability to defend oneself can only be based on the capability to wage war for sometime without any help from an indifferent world. This self-reliant capability can only be steeped in an inherent military-industrial potential to not only produce the weapons and equipment necessary but to maintain a sustained production during the time of need. The motivation to defend the sovereignty of one’s country must be translated into the means of accomplishing self-sufficiency. An action-oriented programme nurtured by those with proven organisational capability needs to be instituted. We desperately need to shake off the history of inaction which has led us to a sorry state where we have been reduced to being mechanics and technicians maintaining a diverse range of equipment imported from abroad. The lines of a newspaper is no place to discuss the matching of defence equipment to tactical and strategic concepts but it is not beyond the reach of the better than average mind, provided there is a motivation to produce results within a limited time span. The lasting legacy that Field Marshal Ayub Khan left us was industrialisation and even his various detractors agree that whatever is available to us in the form of the military-industrial public sector is derived from the same era, an infra-structure which is surviving on its own momentum, while the Committees deliberate! It must be said in all fairness that some important additions have been made since 1971 and 1977, (and some really viable enhancements), but not much and not enough.

We should reserve the US dollars we earn (or borrow) for high-tech stuff that is presently beyond our capacity to manufacture and concentrate on spending locally raised funds on indigenous manufacture only.

Maybe we can make this into a NEW YEAR’s resolution !

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