A 1970 Public Accounts Committee report recorded that war-wastage reserves were set with reference to indigenous production, the possibility of diverting manufacturing resources, the time required for that switch-over and the time needed to move stores from production or storage to forward areas. Imported items required deeper reserves when wartime supply could not be assured.
Production credited against the reserve shifts part of readiness from stored inventory to industrial delivery. That credit must rest on output the production chain can sustain.
In 2024, the Comptroller and Auditor General found that propellant factories had repeatedly missed supply targets to ammunition filling factories. Three ammunition types and one rocket worth ₹1,053 crore could not be issued to the Armed Forces mainly because sister factories fell short on propellants worth ₹276 crore.
The constraint sat upstream of final ammunition production. A faster filling line adds no replenishment when propellant supply cannot support it.
The Army's ten-year ammunition roadmap is expanding indigenous sources and manufacturing capacity while building stocks. In 2025–26, indigenisation of 32 import-dependent ammunition variants worth ₹15,899 crore was under way, alongside efforts to establish multiple domestic sources and acquire critical production technologies.
For selected battle-critical munitions, reserve planning must credit that capacity at the replenishment rate the full chain has demonstrated and the time required to reach it.
Nameplate capacity and production targets do not establish that rate. Accepted ammunition delivered through the full chain does.
NATO's 2026 Strategy for Industry-NATO Cooperation calls for exercises with industry to stress-test surge production under heightened-demand and crisis scenarios, alongside strategic reserves and continuous production models.
A crisis exercise can expose assumptions and bottlenecks. A physical replenishment rate requires stronger evidence.
Actual deliveries or a controlled elevated-rate production run can establish that rate without maintaining wartime output in peacetime.
A slower demonstrated industrial response requires more inventory.
Indigenisation changes the war-stock calculation only at the production rate India has proved.
Replenishment must be proven before it reduces war stocks
