Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP)

Imagine a government department with a detailed, regularly updated manual specifying exactly which suppliers it may buy from, in what order of preference, and under what conditions, rather than simply issuing purchase orders however seems convenient at the time. The Defence Acquisition Procedure is exactly this kind of comprehensive procurement rulebook for India's armed forces, currently in its DAP 2020 edition.

DAP consolidates and governs almost every mechanism already covered elsewhere on this site, the Make Categories that rank domestic versus imported sourcing preference, Offset Policy requirements on large foreign contracts, the Strategic Partnership Model's selection process, and Positive Indigenisation List enforcement, into a single, periodically revised procedural document that every defence procurement decision must follow.

The procedure is deliberately structured to prefer domestic sourcing wherever genuinely feasible, ranking acquisition categories from Buy Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured at the top preference down through various import-inclusive categories, only falling back to a straightforward foreign purchase when no viable domestic option exists at all.

DAP has been revised repeatedly, DAP 2020 itself replaced the earlier Defence Procurement Procedure, each revision generally tightening indigenisation requirements further and streamlining timelines that had historically made Indian defence procurement notoriously slow, sometimes taking a decade or more from initial requirement to actual equipment delivery.

Whenever a defence procurement decision is described as following a specific "Buy" category, or an offset obligation is calculated on a foreign contract, DAP is the specific procedural rulebook defining exactly how that category or obligation actually works, the connective document tying together nearly every other defence policy mechanism already covered on this site into one coherent acquisition process.