Minimum essential force and defense industry independence in Indonesia: A CIPP model evaluation

Indonesia's Minimum Essential Force (MEF) policy guided the development of the Indonesian National Armed Forces' minimum essential strength from 2009 through three phases, ending in 2024, with national defense industry independence as its ultimate goal. By the end of this period, MEF realization reached only approximately 65 percent of its target, prompting an evaluation using Stufflebeam’s Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model, grounded in the perspectives of three key stakeholder groups: the regulator, a defense industry manufacturer, and academia. The findings show that the MEF Policy is grounded in the relevant context of defense and industrial needs, yet has not been evenly socialized beyond the Ministry of Defense and core state-owned enterprises. The input dimension is formally adequate in its regulatory framework for local content and technology transfer, but budget certainty, human resource readiness, and cross-ministerial coordination remain weak issues. The process dimension is the weakest link, marked by recurring gaps between planning and realization across bureaucratic chains. On the product dimension, the MEF has improved defense equipment capacity and domestic component levels or Tingkat Komponen Dalam Negeri (TKDN) in several flagship projects, but has not yet produced measurable defense industry independence, largely because no nationally agreed definition or key performance indicators for that independence yet exist; this study proposes an initial set of such indicators. As an exploratory, stakeholder-grounded evaluation rather than a comprehensive institutional audit, this study recommends that the successor Optimum Essential Force (OEF) policy for 2025-2029 strengthen cross-ministerial coordination, adopt clear industry-independence indicators, and ensure budget certainty alongside more substantive technology transfer.