Thread by @cvkrishnan

9 years back China didn’t have a single aircraft carrier, now it’s building 3rd. IAC-1 has been under construction on CSL docks for more than 9 years.

China’s 3rd aircraft carrier is in advanced stages of development while India’s shipbuilding stammers!
swarajyamag.com/defence/how-ch…

Trying to address the reasons for the perennial delays in Indian defence shipbuilding at Defence shipyards. Ofcourse the usual PSU work culture, unions, and very malignant issue related to a DPSU comes in. But there's more to why our shipyards specifically are too slow!

In any large product mfg, especially those that are complex & few in numbers(unlike tanks/artillery guns), production planning is very critical to get the fastest build out time. Some critical subassemblies might take twice the time to build compared to the superstructure itself.

These are called as the long lead items i.e products that take huge lead times to manufacture. There is no Just In Time(JIT) mfg assembly line for these. Like the propulsion system of the ship, the Missile systems, the radars etc.

The US Navy overcomes this issue by ordering the long lead items & giving up front payments to these suppliers years before the actual keel of the ship is laid by the shipyard. This ensures that by the time the super structure is complete, the subassemblies are ready to be fitted

In IAC's case the GE gas turbine engines, the gearbox, the propeller shafts, the VLS system for Barak-8s, the MF-STAR radar, the L-Band Volume search radar and the aviation complex are all imported and these are all long lead items. Meaning all of these take lot of time to build.

The Indian govt, MoD being the best procurers and with habit of "spreading the costs" over several years, never tend to place the orders on time and do upfront payments to these long lead item suppliers. That leads to the first step in delay of the subsystems.

Also since these are not indigenous companies, there is little control over their supply schedules wherein the govt can push to prioritize production of these items and ensure procurement of secondary and tertiairy raw materials and subsystems for on time production and delivery.

So this further adds to the delay in supply of the subsystems. Now as many would've read, the GE engines, the powertrain system, the Russian aviation complex have all been delayed by various suppliers. The superstructure was just sitting in the shipyard idle.

This is the main reason for the long delays in Indian defence shipbuilding. Ofcourse apart from this the usual day to delays of the DPSU have to be accounted for including errors, occasional thefts(?!!) or fire incident etc.

Where does China scores against us? They build all their subsystems indigenously within China. Hence the Chinese govt has complete control over the full mfg ecosystem and ensures that the subsystems are delivered on time to match the superstructure get completed in the drydock.

The Americans build it ofcourse having all domestic firms but also by placing orders upfront for the long lead items to ensure on time delivery. Even then they encountered few years delay in the building of the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft carrier.

Unless the MoD's procurement policy changes, unless the annual capex budget of the individual services track the procurement necessities of the services for that year rather than a Ministry of Finance offered random number, this delay in shipbuilding will persist.

It is not enough to build the superstructure and then outfit it with all imported items. For timely delivery, we need to build them in India in our time frame to our satisfaction. True aatmanirbhar means to have full control over the mfg of the product in quality and delivery.

This is from the US govt's Congressional Research Service where they have a specific line item for such procurements called as Advanced procurement funding, that'll focus on long lead items and DD/NRE costs of the ship itself.

The procurement sequence and priorities are pretty clear. Orders and funding for such long lead line items are placed few years even before the actual order for the ships are placed. For the USS Enterprise, the AP funding came in 2016 while the actual order for it came in 2018.