Guns vs Butter-III: Much of Army's war-fighting equipment remains vintage

The third of a five-part series looks at the state of the Army's weaponry and the need for greater funding to transition to a more state-of-the-art arsenal

The 36th report of the 17th Lok Sabha’s standing committee on defence, which was tabled before Parliament on March 21, reveals that an unduly high proportion of the Army’s war-fighting equipment remains obsolescent.

While discussing the recommendation made in 2018 by the standing committee on defence that one-third of the Army’s equipment must be state-of-the-art and one-third in the contemporary category, the remaining one-third could be vintage equipment, an Army representative stated: “You are right. It was 30:40:30. Thirty per cent was to be new-generation (new-gen) equipment, 40 per cent to be current equipment, and 30 per cent could be older-generation