As regards expansion, we have raised nearly three lakhs of other ranks last year and in the last 14-16 months, about 10,000 officers. The number possible may look small but the tremendous efforts that they represent is not small. To recruit three lakhs means screening of nearly 10-12 lakhs of people; recruiting 10,000 officers means screening and examining nearly 4-5 times that number. It is a commendable work done by our recruitment organisation, it is a tribute to the nation also, as that means that in one year there were nearly 14-15 lakhs of men and nearly 40-50,000 young men who offered themselves voluntarily to join the Army. This country never thought of any conscription because we always depend upon the patriotic urge of the people to come forward and join the Armed Forces. We have only started the process of modernisation. Some hon. Members referred to the report. In order to introduce new weapons, we have to identify them and standardise them and if necessary develop them further. That is another aspect of strategy. The production system also becomes part of the national strategy. When we want to introduce a particular type in our Army and when it is not produced in the country, we go to the international market and we find possibly that it is not produced anywhere because other’s defence production is related to their defence strategy and defence requirements. Possibly, very advanced countries do not think in terms of producing guns to be used in infantry; they have gone to more sophisticated systems of weapons.
......The problem of expansion and modernisation of our Air Force is a serious problem and the House will excuse me for not giving more detailed information about the nature of planes, the number of planes we propose to have, etc. but we have decided on a certain size of our Air Force taking into consideration the nature of the threat that will have to be faced.
The major points that guide us about the composition of the Air Force strength is; firstly, giving some sort of a close support to the fighting formations of the Army, secondly, to intercept and attack the incoming enemy aircraft, thirdly, to provide for movement of troops and cater to logistical requirements and fourthly, to provide communications. These are the guiding tasks. The production of Gnat is on. Two other planes, HF 24 and Mach-1 have reached the stage when we can establish their production in case of Mach-2 we have yet to find out an engine which could give the desired results and our efforts unfortunately have not been successful. We had decided to get some engines from Soviet Russia but that also has not the desired power. Our efforts have reached 1.4 or 1.5. We are now trying to collaborate with the UAR Government who are developing a very good engine. Possibly they can take our air frames and we can take their engines. This is still at the stage of proposal and we are going to negotiate this matter with the UAR Government.
We reached this situation because we have to depend upon other people. When we take a particular type of aircrafts from somebody, we have to depend upon them for spares and by the time we want spares, possibly they have given up production of that aircraft and have gone on to something else. That is the difficulty that we come across every time. How are we going to meet this difficulty ? If we do not have spares for aircraft after five or six years of their purchase, we reach a stage which, Shrimati Sharada Mukerjee described the other day, was : some aircraft without spares and some spares without aircraft. If at all we have to meet this situation, the only thing that we can do is to establish production of our own in this particular matter.