Create a Faster, More Accountable Defence Procurement System

A modern military cannot depend only on how much a country spends on defence. It also depends on how quickly military requirements can be translated into equipment that reaches soldiers, sailors and air personnel.

Defence technology is changing rapidly. Drones, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence, sensors, communications and autonomous systems can evolve within a few years. A procurement process that takes too long risks delivering technology that is already approaching obsolescence by the time it enters service.

India has repeatedly attempted to make defence acquisition faster. The Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020 introduced measures including delegated approvals, simplified trials and a single-stage Acceptance of Necessity process. The draft Defence Acquisition Procedure 2026 goes further, explicitly making speed of acquisition an objective. It proposes monitoring timelines beginning with the Request for Information, greater delegation of decision-making, involvement of subject experts in requirements and trials, two-stage trials, and faster procedures for emerging technologies with short development cycles.

These reforms are important. But changing procedures alone will not solve the problem unless individual acquisition programs are also held accountable for time, cost and outcomes.

A major defence program should not be able to move through years of approvals, changing requirements and repeated evaluations without clear visibility into where delays occurred, why costs changed and who is responsible for getting the program back on track.

India needs a procurement system that combines speed with accountability—not speed at the expense of scrutiny.

India should establish a time-bound, digitally tracked defence acquisition system in which every major procurement has a defined schedule, accountable program leadership, and measurable cost and performance baselines.

Set a Timeline for Every Major Acquisition

Every major acquisition should begin with a published internal schedule covering key stages such as:

Military Requirement → Approval → Request for Proposal → Technical Evaluation → Trials → Commercial Evaluation → Contract → Delivery

Different categories of equipment will require different timelines. A fighter aircraft cannot reasonably follow the same acquisition schedule as a drone or communications system.

But every program should have a target completion date for each stage.

When a deadline is missed, the responsible authority should record the reason, revised timeline and corrective action.

Give One Program Leader Clear Accountability

Major acquisitions often involve military services, acquisition officials, finance, technical experts, testing organizations and manufacturers.

Multiple participants should not mean unclear responsibility.

Each major acquisition should have a designated Program Manager or Program Management Office responsible for coordinating the program from requirement definition through contracting and initial delivery.

That office should be accountable for maintaining the program’s schedule, cost baseline, technical requirements, risk register and decision history.

Authority should accompany accountability. Routine decisions should be delegated to the appropriate program level rather than repeatedly moving through senior committees when higher approval is not necessary.

Bring Technical Expertise in Earlier

Technical experts, operators, engineers and industry knowledge should be incorporated when requirements are being defined—not primarily after specifications have already been established.

Requirements should distinguish between:

What military capability is essential and how industry must technically deliver that capability.

Where possible, the military should specify the operational result it requires and allow competing manufacturers to propose different technological approaches.

The draft DAP 2026 already proposes involving subject experts in finalizing requirements and overseeing trials. This should become a core principle of the acquisition system.

Stop Requirements From Continually Changing

Military requirements will sometimes need to change because threats and technology change.

But unnecessary changes after procurement begins can create delays, additional costs and repeated trials.

Once an acquisition enters formal competition, significant changes to requirements should require documented justification showing:

– why the change is operationally necessary;
– its expected effect on cost;
– its expected effect on schedule; and
– why the requirement could not reasonably be incorporated in a future upgrade.

This would not prevent legitimate changes. It would make their consequences visible.

Create Different Procurement Paths for Different Technologies

India should not use one acquisition process for every type of military equipment.

Major platforms with service lives measured in decades require extensive evaluation.

Rapidly changing technologies such as drones, software, AI, communications and electronic warfare require much faster development and procurement cycles.

The draft DAP 2026 already recognizes this distinction through proposals for fast-moving, low-cost technologies, refined Fast Track Procedures and technology-readiness-based categorization.

India should institutionalize separate acquisition pathways for major strategic platforms, conventional equipment and rapidly evolving technology.

Establish Cost, Schedule and Performance Baselines

Every major defence program should establish an approved baseline covering:

Cost — Schedule — Performance

Material deviations should trigger progressively stronger review.

Minor deviations could be managed by the program office. Larger overruns should require senior review and a documented recovery plan. Programs exceeding defined cost or schedule thresholds should require explicit approval to continue in their existing form.

Programs should be capable of being redesigned, recompeted, reduced or terminated when they no longer provide sufficient military value for their cost.

Publish a Defence Procurement Performance Dashboard

Operational details and sensitive military capabilities must remain classified.

Administrative performance does not necessarily need to be.

The Ministry of Defence should publish an annual non-sensitive procurement scorecard showing measures such as:

– average time between major acquisition stages;
– percentage of programs meeting scheduled milestones;
– major program delays;
– cost growth against approved baselines;
– time from successful prototype to production order;
– time from contract signing to initial delivery; and
– major causes of procurement delay.

The objective should not be to expose military capabilities. It should be to make administrative performance measurable.

You can manage what you measure more effectively.

Clear schedules expose bottlenecks. A designated program leader establishes responsibility. Early technical expertise reduces avoidable specification problems. Different acquisition pathways allow rapidly changing technology to move faster. Cost and schedule baselines make overruns visible before they become permanent features of a program.

India’s own proposed reforms already move in this direction. Draft DAP 2026 calls for monitoring acquisition timelines from the Request for Information onward, conducting activities concurrently where possible, involving technical experts earlier and delegating decisions to accelerate procurement.

The United States provides a useful example of program-based acquisition accountability. Major U.S. defence acquisition programs establish acquisition baselines containing cost, schedule and performance parameters against which subsequent performance can be tracked. Program managers and designated milestone decision authorities have defined responsibilities as programs move through development and production decisions.

The U.S. system itself has experienced substantial procurement delays and cost overruns, so it should not be copied wholesale. The useful principle is that a major defence acquisition should have a baseline, identifiable decision-makers and measurable deviations from the original plan.

India can combine that accountability with the faster and more flexible acquisition pathways already being proposed under DAP 2026.

National security requires rigorous procurement. It should not require indefinite procurement.

The measure of a defence acquisition system should ultimately be simple: how quickly can India place the capability its armed forces need into their hands—at an acceptable cost and without compromising quality or accountability?