Inside Indian Industry’s Big Defence Play

Every fortnight, when Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) completes assembling the airframe for Pilatus Aircraft Ltd’s PC-12 aircraft at its Hyderabad factory, it undertakes an even tougher task – transporting the airframe safely through bumpy and crowded roads to the nearest port from where it can be shipped to its Swiss manufacturer.A tiny bump on the road can damage the airframe, which leaves the facility to be turned into a $3 million aircraft, delay the plane’s assembly and compromise customer commitments made by Pilatus.

The solution Tata Advanced Systems has hit upon is to buy special air suspension trucks and retrofit them with equipment to provide a better cushion against jerks.

“We are buying the trucks and retrofitting them with special systems. It’s like the system in Volvo buses (more cushion) you have a similar system here. There are very few of those trucks in the country,” said a Tata engineer as he showed a noisy hangar-like facility full of green Pilatus airframes being tooled together. The engineer did not want to be named.

A Tata Advanced System facility

Tata Advanced Systems, which plans to increase its Hyderabad output to three Pilatus airframes a month from the current two, can’t take chances with the strict quality requirements demanded by customers. Even the smallest component is fully documented and can be traced back to the raw material stage in case of any problems later on.

This level of quality control may sound daunting, but for India’s emerging defence and aerospace industry the opportunity over the coming years is so big it is actively looking for solutions to the problems and pushing for more business.

Companies such as Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), Tata group, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd (M&M), besides recent entrants like the Reliance and Adani groups, are hoping that the appointment of a full-time defence minister in Nirmala Sitharaman will help propel their defence manufacturing mission.

“Till one-and-a-half years back we didn’t even have a level-playing field – that was brought in by then defence minister Manohar Parrikar in the form of new DPP (defence procurement procedure). However, he moved out within a year of that with many reforms and policy changes nearly complete but awaiting implementation. Now that Sitharaman has come in as a full-time minister it’s time for urgent action given that there is just one-and-a-half years left before the country readies for next general elections, and we are very hopeful that she will,” said Jayant Patil, head of defence and whole time director of L&T, referring to the defence public sector units which still control most of the defence business in India.

The private sector in India has less than 5 per cent (which is about Rs 5,000 crore annually) share of direct orders from the Defence Ministry for manufacturing and is gradually moving towards 10 per cent in tandem with the Make In India initiative. The expectation, says Patil, is that the private sector’s share will rise to 20-25 per cent in the next three-four years as major defence contracts in the decision pipeline enter the execution phase.