Why SPEED is critical for India’s defence acquisitions

India’s defence innovation ecosystem faces a hidden but critical internal threat —procurement delays.

- Ashok Atluri

In an industry where timelines can determine technological edge and superiority, slow decision-making is not simply an inconvenience — it drains private capital investments, national capabilities, and strategic readiness.

The ministry of defence (MoD) has introduced promising initiatives such as Buy Indian -Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured (IDDM), Make-II, and iDEX — all intended to foster robust private-sector participation. But the speed of execution remains the Achilles’ heel. Without measurable improvements in how quickly approvals move from ‘Acceptance of Necessity (AON) to actual orders being placed and timely payments being realised, innovators, especially self-funded R&D businesses, risk being forced out of the market.

Why focus on self-funded R&D businesses? Because they have skin in the game. SpaceX rockets flew because all payments were milestone-linked until rockets actually flew, while NASA-funded projects by Lockheed Martin and Boeing languished. We need to encourage more companies to do self-funded R&D for successful development. As That will happen only if the procurement cycle is compressed. This requires incentivising government officers to process the files faster — by assigning a value to every day of delay.

We estimate each day of delay on a ₹100crore defence project translates into an estimated ₹10 lakh in real lost value. For a ₹100crore defence project, a cumulative 24-month delay —unfortunately not uncommon —translates into losses exceeding ₹72 crore, capital that could have funded multiple new R&D programmes. This cost is borne by the innovating company (₹2.4 lakh/day as interest on loans, payroll, operational overheads), the armed forces (₹18 lakh/day from delayed capability deployment, using outdated technology), the larger economy (₹4.2 lakh/day in missed GDP impact, tax revenues, export potential), and the innovation ecosystem (₹1.6 lakh/day with talent migration, company shutdowns).