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Tottering Trishul, Kargil forced Barak clearance

By 2003, the DRDO admitted failure and the facility established in Kochi exclusively for the Trishul trials had to be closed down.

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NEW DELHI: The CBI’s claim of impropriety in the purchase of the Barak anti-missile system in 2000 derived credence from the fact that the Israeli technology was acquired despite work being underway to develop the indigenous equivalent Trishul.

But it now emerges that the Trishul project stumbled through several missteps before being scrapped.

Beginning 1994, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the agency responsible for developing Trishul, made several promises of delivery to the Indian Navy.

But by 2003, the DRDO admitted failure and the massive facility established in Kochi exclusively for the Trishul trials had to be closed down.

In the intervening eight years, the DRDO had agreed to the procurement of the Barak system and then objected to it. By the time the Kargil war broke in 1999, the navy was in panic because its ships were easy targets for Pakistani missiles. At that stage, the DRDO pushed through a joint agreement with Israel to develop the Barak II system.

Those involved in the procurement of Barak systems reveal talk of intricate manoeuvres that have marked the transactions.

Curiously, however, the Barak system found its first mention in the files when Vishnu Bhagwat, deputy chief of naval staff in 1995, gave it a glowing report. Bhagwat, who was dismissed by George Fernandes in 1998 as the navy chief, has been vocally criticising the Barak purchase now.

The Trishul project, however, predates many of the players associated with the current controversy. The navy began working with the DRDO to set up the Trishul Induction Trials Team as early as 1988.

In 1996, President Abdul Kalam, who was the DRDO chief then, promised the naval top brass that the system would be ready in a year.

Between 1995 and 1996, Kalam agreed to the purchase of a single Barak system, but the acquisition was impeded by a bureaucratic process. By mid-1998, the navy was riven by a cold war between Fernandes and Admiral Bhagwat. But the Kargil conflict forced the government to expedite the procurement.

Sources point out that the first-ever delegation from India that went to Israel to witness the Barak system in action in the 1990s was led by a scientist from the DRDO who was the head of Trishul development.  

The Israeli system had shot down a missile flying just 5m above water, and a team from the Singapore navy, which was also witnessing the firing, soon acquired Barak. Around the same time, the competing Russian system, Kashtan, failed to hit a missile flying some 300m above the sea in the presence of Indian witnesses.

The DRDO, in the meanwhile, continued to test Trishul missiles in Kochi, without any integration or success.

Finally by 2002, the DRDO admitted a serious design flaw in the system and the navy shut down the trial centre in Kochi.

At the end of 2004, when naval commanders met in Delhi and discussed the joint project to build Barak II with a longer range, two vice-admirals objected, highlighting the Barak failures during two earlier tests in Indian waters. More than one source in the navy told DNA that the “failures” during Barak firing were rectified and re-trials were on target.

Sources point out that around the time, a French system, Aster, was also making intensive efforts to enter the high-end market. Despite such efforts, the DRDO, which had earlier objected to Barak, went ahead and signed a deal with the Israelis to develop Barak II at an estimated cost of $300 million.

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