Exactly.
maybe.. but I wont shed a tear if they do get shot though.
Read
@Archer post in the above link before shooting down ADA personnel.
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/indian-air-force/18521-ada-tejas-lca-iii-168.html#post510998
Full text of it given below,
No, thats as wrong as it gets.
Programs run on funds. If funding is not available, and policies are restrictive - eg austerity measures mean less recruitment, programs suffer. Experienced people leave for better opportunities when there is no career growth in terms of better pay as well. Tarmak007 -- A bold blog on Indian defence: CLAW-ING AHEAD: Tejas clan who overcame tech denials turns 20
Tarmak007 -- A bold blog on Indian defence: World-Beaters: The fly-by-wire FCS will take India to new heights (Part-III-B)
Further, programs like the LCA require extensive investment in infrastructure, including quick processing of alternates if the original supplier cites laws and regulations eg MTCR, ITAR and refuses to supply. In India, forget sanction busting, even regular import of basic items goes through kms of red tape and then has to be hit by audit scrutiny. In other words, if you import two of an item from different vendors to cover your bases, CAG will slam you for infructuous expenditure. This sort of red tape rubbish, keeping track of the pennies and losing the pounds entirely (time delay mean imports) is very common.
In India, running your own fiefdom means national goals go for a toss. There has been clearly a serious dearth of vision at the national level.
Take HAL for an example. The company only started investing at any proper level in its own R&D in the 90's. The proposal to develop a FBW system as a tech generation project either using a Jaguar or a Marut airframe went nowhere. Babus at MOD shot down the proposal claiming that since HAL was a manufacturing company, it had no business asking to do such things. Ultimately, by the time the LCA project came along, HAL was in no position to implement it, or even wanted to get into it. So ADA was created. HALs design staff had been virtually eliminated with only a handful of people left, and even juniors in short supply
This is a perfect example of how the babucracy plus short sighted political view stagnated defence.
In this years defence budget, DRDO has got ~70% of their asked for requirement. Saraswat has gone on record stating that the constant underfunding, glib statements about defence preparedness apart, mean that some programs have to be prioritized over others. This means that timelines for some programs extend - in order to reaccomodate timelines to compensate for lack of resources, manpower and hardware (ranging from both design hardware/software to manufacturing systems, to even components required for prototyping).
The level of underfunding of the Indian defence sector can be judged from the fact that many establishments have been implementing PLM software only in recent years, well nigh a decade plus after this stuff became common abroad.
Basically, India has a bunch of generalists - politicians and babus - running roughshod over two groups of domain experts - technology developers and manufacturers, and the users (the services). If they had done an excellent job of coordination, at least this babucracy could be supported. But there is very little overall prioritization at the MOD level which is a bizarre state of affairs.
Take the HAL-LCA case. AM Rajkumar, points out succintly that at least one HAL CEO refused to support the LCA program for whatever reason. Later on, more reports emerged of HAL being more interested in supporting the IJT over the LCA. Finally, there is the case of LCA related projects constantly being sidelined or just treated as "it exists, let it go on". AKM himself ex-HAL notes:
Tarmak007 -- A bold blog on Indian defence: The Iron Bird Team: A Tejas story never told before!
And the first flight happened, the nation applauded it, but nobody hailed Iron Bird team. Dr. B Subba Reddy was transferred to other division for administrative reasons and the program suffered another setback as he was also the deputy director of National Control Law (CLAW) team of Tejas. Some temporary arrangements were done from HAL side to fill the void left by Dr. Reddy, but to no avail. However the core Iron Bird team with the support of ADA was strong enough to deliver the products (the software versions with updates) in time. The HAL saw the Iron Bird team as an unproductive group of people since they were not directly contributing to the production targets of HAL and the approach continues till today. ADA celebrated the milestones of Tejas project with its scientists and between these two approaches, the Iron Bird team was left out unacknowledged at every occasion. The question still remains unanswered: "Whose baby is this Iron Bird, anyway?"
With the project directors of Tejas raising their voices at various forums, the Iron Bird team was finally augmented with HAL manpower in the year 2007 and currently boasts of 18 engineers of various domains. The team is headed by one Mr Sanjay Sharma, who has been associated with Iron Bird testing from the early days. It was his initiative that Iron Bird team still remains capable and efficient despite various setbacks. He also guides a team of 7 highly skilled engineers deputed to National Control Law (CLAW) team of Tejas at NAL. A big section of HAL higher management still remains unaware of the facts, potential, pains and achievements of the team.
This is the sort of thing where somebody at the MOD level needed to have called up HAL, keeping the IAF in the loop, and pointing out that progressing the LCA - even at the cost of the IJT - was a first priority. Importing IJTs - a lower tech aircraft - can be afforded by India. Developing a LCA class aircraft is not an opportunity that can be missed.
Point is this sort of vision is totally missing at the MOD level. The user is not even aware of the fact that it needs to get into program management in a big way to replicate the success of advanced MICs - the MOD wont ask for this either, and in fact may push back. The MOD wont lead overall programs and resource, support them optimally, leading it to the individual agencies to navigate the labyrinthe of the PSU-mix, without having any powers to hold the PSUs accountable either - take the recent BEML case and the way in which its embattled CEO has been going after the exArmy chief despite the number of enquiries against his own self. Then think of what happens when these individuals are asked to pull together for a national program - its ego which rules the day for a few, if not even some gentlemen. And even those few, can cause tremendous damage. A couple of years delay in a program translates to a huge opportunity cost and sours the user as well.
Here is an example of the sort of technology development that is required.
See this clip. The first is a clean room assembling the intricate RLG-INS, a huge achievement for India. It takes years of research plus very expensive equipment that can often turn out to be only of limited use (then you have to build custom jigs and assemblies). Only when you are into the 2nd or 3rd product iteration, that do you start making near-optimal decisions. The C-C panel shown in the second part of the clip comes after almost two and a half decades of working on C-C tech. India initially even custom built its own filament machines for the Agni TDS when that was denied by sanctions.
Point is timely funding, overall political support and clear lines of authority, delegation of powers for responsible acquisition (with accountability) are essential not "good to have" for such programs.
The US approach is exactly this, but they lost accountability in their overarching desire for high tech. Incremental innovations are often ignored by them, with every new class often a completely disruptive jump from previous designs - take a look at the Zumwalt class for instance. The costs are ever ballooning and huge, and delays common.
Point is though, for India, this is exactly the same predicament for all of its first programs, since ALL of these programs are often disruptive in nature and do NOT have an existing base to build on. Today HAL is building LAH/WSI-ALH based on the ALH platform, but it had to pay its hidden cost in terms of delays and huge challenges for the ALH itself.
This is basically the thing with Indian programs, because of which the babus and netas have to be 10x more responsive than those in foreign nations where the MIC is already well established. In India, since we are starting from a low industrial base and within the space of two decades wanted to go from near 100% imports to somewhere around 30%, the MIC would have to make its first products on par with the Gen 4 products achieved by other countries and available for export to India.
The challenges involved in such an endeavour completely passed them by. There was no overarching mission or vision. The nuke program for instance was run as a haphazard project with it taking the NDA govt to make the call on tests. They had to do so ASAP befor anyone got wind of it. Which meant the LCA team got stuck abroad with their 1-2 protos of the DFCC in the US, which were promptly confiscated and the team sent back to India. Add a delay of another 2 years. Nobody clearly at the national level kept Kalam etc in the loop about when what needed to occur, before NDA got into power and when this decision would have to be taken & the need to keep a backup in India with everything covered. Basically add a few months to the program ahead, but then avoid taking a hit at the critical path of the project. Way back during PVNR time itself.. the teams should have been told to start backing up such critical programs, even if more funding was required. But such was not done.
Similarly, the actuators were from Moog. The LCA team pulled off an incredible feat by keeping the TDs flying by rotating actuators between the test rigs and the aircraft. This is one of the reasons why so few aircraft were available at the beginning of the program, and shows how it has been run on a shoestring. No other country has done this - - per a test expert from another nation - with whom I crosschecked at a public event. In fact the folks who thought sanctions would kill the LCA as a good lesson for the 1998 tests, were shocked that India managed to develop its own DFCC, and with limited hardware (only a handful of actuator sets and instrumented engines) kept the program running.
Ideally, they should have had excess actuators to spare, and also enough funding to develop a parallel program with a completely independent source like Russia. We never did.
Such penny pinching, at all levels, may result in a "cost effective aircraft", but it causes huge issues at every level of the program - reducing development time and risk, take a backseat. There is no vision about developing such strategic projects and hence letting funding flow!
In contrast, imports at 3x the cost, citing operational urgency are common.
While babus and politicians can point to the state of the economy as a reason for some of these things, in many others - they squarely take the blame for not fostering a properly resourced and enabled program. When Kargil happened VK Malik was asked by a MOD babu - as to why he wanted more weapons, didn;t the Army have enough rifles already? Malik replied that the Army ran on more weapons than just rifles.
If this is the knowledge level amongst many of our bureaucrats, that says it all.
The NSG head in Black Thunder pointed out he received a message from another such gent, saying - why the delay, just go in and sort them out no, take a few casualties, its ok.. this is the attitude which leads to fiascos like the no of CRPF folks killed in Operation Green Hunt etc.
Theres a lot our babus and politicians could do better
