The Hard Truth Behind the Defence Acquisition Procedure Reforms
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh with Indian Air Force personnel in Bhuj (Image credit X.com)
From ambitious design to ground-level execution, a deep dive into whether faster decisions, cleaner procurement, and OEM control have truly materialised under the new Defence Acquisition Procedure.
By P. SESH KUMAR
New Delhi, November 29, 2025 — In the five to six years since the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) morphed into the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP), India has attempted nothing short of a tectonic reset in how it buys its weapons. What began as a mechanical manual of checklists has evolved into a living, breathing governance architecture meant to curb cartelization, tame the single-vendor curse, inject speed, enforce discipline in documentation, and push indigenous industry to the frontlines.
The Story So Far: How DAP Evolved From a Procurement Manual to a Reform Manifesto
In 2020, when the Government unveiled the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) to replace the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), the shift was more philosophical than semantic. The old DPP was a bible of don’ts-don’t violate L1, don’t ignore Contract Negotiating Committee (CNC) formats; don’t skip trials, don’t embarrass the system. The new DAP tried to be a system of dos-do promote Indian design, do encourage start-ups, do invite innovation, do shorten time cycles, and do protect the taxpayer from gold-plated deals.
DAP 2020 arrived at a time of global churn, geopolitical tensions, and intense scrutiny of India’s import-dependency. The doctrine behind the new regime was simple but revolutionary: procurement should no longer be an act of shopping abroad but a strategic act of nation-building. Categories like Buy (Indian–IDDM), Make I, Make II, iDEX, SP Model, Leasing and the Technology Development Fund were not mere paperwork; they were intended to uproot decades of reliance on foreign OEMs, opaque pricing structures, and rigid processes that collapsed whenever the L1 bidder withdrew or a mysterious single-vendor situation appeared.
The past six years have thus not been incremental but structural. Every edition of the DAP has pushed deeper into rationalization, eliminating archaic rules, delegating powers, and clarifying ambiguities that once kept procurement files buried under red tape for years. It has also attempted to do something rare in Indian defence governance: democratise responsibility. Trial teams, costing committees, legal watchers, project managers, Acceptance of Necessity (AON) authorities and the user directorates are now bound by measurable timelines, documentary obligations and explicit decision triggers. Delays, once invisible, now leave fingerprints.
The rationalization is evident in how ab-initio cost discovery is done, how benchmarking uses global price data, how CNCs document every deviation from L1, and how trials are designed to prevent vendors from gaming the system. Even the introduction of leasing-once unthinkable-has given the Services a way to plug capability gaps without entering the labyrinth of capital acquisition. Add to this multiple iterations of positive indigenization lists, embargoes on imports, and empowered project management teams, and India’s procurement architecture today looks far more structured, less discretionary, and significantly more accountable than six years ago.
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Has the Reform Delivered? A Reality Check on Speed, Value, and Transparency
The promise of DAP’s evolution was threefold: reduce timelines, increase value for money, and create paperwork that could withstand any audit, any court, any parliamentary scrutiny. The honest truth lies somewhere in between aspiration and execution.
Decision timelines have certainly improved in segments where Make II (Industry-funded prototype -Successful trials -Assured procurement – Strengthened domestic industry), Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) or Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured (Buy Indian-IDDM) rules apply. These are built for speed and have demonstrated that with clearly defined templates and empowered decision cells, acquisitions need not take half a decade. But in large-ticket capital procurements-fighter jets, submarines, air defence systems-the old ghosts still linger. Inter-ministerial consultations, field trials, deviations, benchmarking disputes, and the inevitable revalidations continue to extract delays. DAP has trimmed the fat, but it has not fully slain the beast.
Value for money has improved in categories where competition is real, vendor bases are wide, and digital documentation allows every pricing sheet, benchmark analysis and CNC decision to be reviewed. The Indian Army’s tactical communication procurements and the Navy’s shipbuilding contracts show a definite improvement in price realism. Indigenous vendors have matured, MSMEs may have gained a foothold, and monopolistic OEM behaviour is probably harder to hide behind technical jargon.
Transparency, however, is the arena where DAP’s evolution may have genuinely changed the culture. Every stage now leaves a paper trail. Every deviation has a reason. Every extension requires justification. Every trial report is structured to avoid ambiguity. Every costing sheet is auditable. For an auditor-whether from CAG, internal financial advisors, or external watchdogs-the evidence pathway is supposed to be clearer, richer, and far harder for non-technical manipulation to survive.
Yet the weakest link remains enforcement. Many provisions that promise value addition depend on officials having the courage to reject non-credible bids, blacklisting subtle collusion, or reporting OEM mischief. DAP equips them. Whether they use the tools is another matter.
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Cartelization, Single Vendors, OEM Mischief: Can the Latest DAP Break the Curse?
The defence procurement ecosystem has always been a playground for collusive behaviour and subtle arm-twisting. Cartelization does not appear on notepads; it appears in mysteriously identical pricing, coordinated withdrawal of bids, shadow subsidiaries, and “technical non-responsiveness” engineered to eliminate competition. Single-vendor situations arise like clockwork, allowing OEMs to dictate terms and price structures.
The latest DAP seeks to confront this head-on and, perhaps for the first time, with teeth.
It mandates global benchmarking by specialised costing committees, making it impossible for a vendor to quote moon prices and hide behind proprietary technology excuses. It mandates re-tendering or fresh RFPs in persistent single-vendor situations, with exceptions only when strategic justification is documented at the highest level.
It brings in the SP Model and broader vendor development efforts precisely to break monopolies. It uses trial design-including no-cost-no-commitment trials, confirmatory trials, and parallel evaluation-to ensure that no vendor is eliminated on flimsy or partisan grounds.
OEM mischief-bid withdrawal, engineered delays in trials, refusal to share transfer-of-technology details-has been explicitly anticipated. Penalties, LDs, performance guarantees, vendor ratings, and repeat-defaulter restrictions now have enforceable structures.
The new DAP’s insistence on complete audit trails, digital submission systems, RFI transparency, and public release of key procurement milestones builds a documentary moat around decision-making. If cartelization still happens, the evidence will not be faint; it will be visible to every auditor and investigator.
The competition architecture—through indigenous lists, SP model, Make-II pipeline, and the sudden rise of domestic defence manufacturing—creates the most potent antidote to OEM dominance: credible alternatives. When a DRDO-private collaboration or a domestic MSME consortium can offer 70–80 per cent of the capability at a competitive price, foreign OEMs lose the ability to strong-arm the system.
The most transformative element is the shift from rule-based procurement to ecosystem-based procurement. DAP is no longer just a manual; it is a marketplace shaper. It shapes who can bid, who can partner, who can dominate, and who must compete. It is a regulatory spine that silently pushes the ecosystem towards competition through design rather than through punishment.
The Verdict: A Strong Foundation, But the Edifice Needs Builders
Six years of DAP reforms have built a cleaner, sharper, purpose-driven system that wants to buy speedily, wisely, and transparently. Many of the legacy infirmities have been acknowledged and addressed.
But no set of rules can eliminate culture. The rulebook can demand timelines, but only leadership can enforce them. It can mandate competition, but only empowered committees can insist on it. It can create penalties, but only oversight-parliamentary, audit, and administrative-can use them effectively.
What DAP has done is create the possibility of a procurement system where value for money is not an accident but an outcome. Where competition is not luck but design. Where documentation is not clerical but evidentiary. Where OEMs cannot manipulate, cartelize, or monopolize without leaving unmistakable fingerprints.
The next six years will not be about drafting better rules. They will be about proving that the rules already drafted can deliver a modern, agile, accountable acquisition ecosystem worthy of a country whose defence requirements are strategic, not transactional.
Prescription: From Procedure to Performance
The future of DAP will not be shaped by the number of amendments but by the resolve to use them. India needs dedicated acquisition cadres trained in costing, global benchmarking, technical evaluation, and contract enforcement. It needs digital procurement platforms where every transaction, amendment, trial, and deviation is visible to authorised oversight.
It needs stronger vendor rating systems that reward honesty and punish mischief. It needs institutionalized red-team reviews to prevent behavioural capture by OEMs. Above all, it needs a procurement culture that prefers saying “No” to bad deals over signing “Yes” out of habit.
DAP has evolved. Now the system must.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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