Well you want the Indian defence industry to be like the CHinese? I think the J 20 and J 31 are nothing more that tech demonstrators which spawned out from Industrial espionage. It is no where comparable to something that I would like to see in the IAF. Fancy Janes specs of IAF is what is required to fight a real war.
Chinese defence industry churns out products according to their capacity and these products gawky as may they seem at first glance will mature and produce a huge mil-industry complex for china. China has already become world's 5th largest arm exporter with no significant edge in any armament tech over india.
meanwhile what is happening here is our local product development is hobbled down by repeatedly moving goal posts siting new developments , all the while buying dubious imported stuff not suited to local condition and bleeding massive forex reserves, making us world's largest arms importer an ugly truth for a nation that produces a nuclear weapon, nuclear propelled sub, super computers , hundred space launches,ballistic misslies.
While all the things mentioned above are produced and fielded giving india a great power status, a repeated lie that india cannot produce a simple tank and a fighter plane is being hammered into indian physique.
While countries like sweeden and swiss export grippens and pliatus all over the world,India which houses one of the largest scientific manpower pools in the wolrd is being made out to be a nation that can not produce a run of the mill tank or 4th gen fighter.
Why?
When we send moon probes why can't we produce a fighter to replace a simple mIg-21 in time?
Reason all the scientific achievements stated above have nothing to do with Service GSQR or ASR.All the above achievements are about converting the scientific capacity of the country into usable products.
But strangely all the while using antiquated T-72 and Mig-21, the torrid co-operation among services and DRDO is the reason for all the shame. If the serveices insist on janes defence specs they are making sure those items are never going to be produced in time because india does not have the tech of US .
But without insisting on these janes defence weekly specs ,chinese armed forces (because no body is going to sell china even the watered down version of those top stuff.) by their by inducting whatever produced by chinese defence industries , are creating a robust infra and design environ for more mature products in the comming decades.
For example for a fighter that was supposed to be limited to the size of MIG-21, Why did IAF put forth such a large Radar requirement on LCA? Initially the dassault consultants were appalled at the radome dia requirement for such a small sized fighter.
Don't they know it would skew the L/D ratio? Why did they change their missile specs for LCA as late as 2004 leading to FSED-2? Don't they know it will delay it further?
If at they wanted such a big radome dia and top of the line air to air missile launching specs, they should have the foresight to see that in 1980s itself , when the Mig-29 arrived in IAF and asked ADA to go for a separate twin engined fighter.
By giving a mirage-2000 + Mig-29 like performance spec for a Mig-21 sized fighter frame , and 2 decades into development asking for heavier weight higher launch stress inducing WVR misisles , the chance for the country to have inducted a truly light fighter to replace the MiG-21 was given the go by.
The same is happening in AMCA. ADA put out a modest 5th gen stealth strike fighter proposal in the name of MCA as a follow up of LCA, which is what logic demands in 2002 itself.
But not satisfied with PAKFA purchase for Russia , IAF couldn't finalize ASR till 2012 nd that too at much more stringent level than that of PAKFA, why?
By simply accepting the limitations of tech level in the country , had we gone ahead with simple MCA , We could have beat the chinese to the 5th gen demo firdt flight.Considering the LCA flew in just seven years from the date of fund release.
These far simpler products would have generated export order form 3rd world countries as well , providing us with much needed money and industrial design infra to develop further.
The right approach is to accept the LCA , AMCA, Arjun in blks version like in F-16 gather experience and demand improvements as it matures.
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2013/07/air-force-at-war-with-hindustan.html
Recently IAf chief has written to MOD that HAL is even unfit to produce a basic trainer for IAF at an economical cost, blithly ignoring the fact that with depreciating rupee the pliatus's lifecycle and upgradation costs will make it at least thrice costlier than the local product!!!!!.,
Why is IAF arguing about financial savings here? That is the job of MOD and Finance ministry.
The IAF has proved itself to be unfit for the job, by first announcing that they will select MMRCA winner based on the total lifecycle cost , which includes spares, service, upgradation spread through out the period of it's service life, and then mysteriously retreating from this evaluation method saying that it is unable to do the calculation after seven years of negotiations.
Now Argentina, Srilanka, Egypt and many other third world countries are exploring the possibilities of buying JF-21. Sure chinese are going to export many MBTs also with many issues.
But India will forever buy these items abroad. Seriously do you think with continuing exorbitantly costly import of few in numbers foreign defence products which bleed precious little forex reserves hammering down the already drowned ruppee,
can India ever hope to hold it's borders against china which has massive forex reserves and locally produced armaments at lower prics and huge numbers, whose currency is appreciating against dollar?
. I mean unless their is some sort of big change at top political view/ or strict restrictions, you wouldn't see it in next 2 decades. I mean our children(for those unmarried) may have the chance on working on those projects.
