Recycle, Repair and Refurbish when ever possible

Conventional wisdom says we should make best use of resources. That is twice as much true when one is talking about weapons. Weapons are not a cheap entity for them to be easily replaced like shoes and clothes. They need billions of dollars of investment and years of time to induct and operationalize. Hence the best method is to make maximum and best use of them. Having said that, care also needs to be taken so that these weapons do not become obsolete. The only way to keep them up-to-date and available to maximum extent is to have them repaired, refurbished and upgraded regularly.


Indian Navy should be commended in the first place for inculcating this in their operational procedures. They are still using the venerable Sea Harriers by regularly upgrading them to the latest standards. Ofcourse, they reached their final leg and time for their honorable retirement has come. Indias sole aircraft carrier is decades old. It is still being used by IN and is considered as deadly as anyother aircraft carrier of its type. Even as we are reading this, it is being upgraded with latest eqipment for it to serve IN for another 5-6 years. The successor of Viraat, the INS Vikramaditya is also a refurbished- for-Indian-needs type and is currently being upgraded in Russia, expected to join IN somewhere in 2012. The cost of buying an all new aircraft carrier will be way too much expensive for a growing country like India. With its growing maritime influence, India needs number to be present everywhere and to do that we need cheap at the same time potent ships. This can be acheived only by inducting new ones and also carefully maintaining and upgrading the older ones. IN has unmderstood that and kudos to them.


Indian Army is not behind either. You will be surprised to know that IA has not recieved a single artillery equipment since 2 decades. They are still depending on euipment obtained in 80's to safe guard their borders. They do so by regularly upgrading them to maintain their lethality. However, they let us down when they are reluctant to induct Arjun into their arsenals. IA should learn to fight effectively with what they have instead of what they want. They should have inducted the Arjun, keep in constant touch with its makers and have the deficiencies overcome gradually. That way, you can have an indigenous potent weapon. But unfortunately that didn't happen.


Indian Airforce is a different story all together. Actually I am a bit confused by their stand. On one hand, they are still operating the age old, very venerable MiG-21's by upgradinig them but are reluctant to do the same for basic trainers. Very recently they have placed proposal to buy them off the shelf trainers from foreign vendors. This is going to cost millions of dollars. Instead, they should start working with HAL in identifying the problem in the present HPT-32 and look for ways to mitigate them. Change its engine, upgrade it and use it. This way it can be quickly put into induction. Going for a new foreign origin trainer aircraft which is only used to teach basics of flight to rookies is just not worthy of it. IAF should have shown this same urge for replacing the MiG-21's which are very demanding and less tolerant to errors from trainee pilots. Why the lax there and why being serious here, that when the problem with the HPT-32 can be easily taken care of unlike with the MiG's.


Looks like our IAF need to get some lessons from IN Environmentalists.

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