1)Because no one else saw value in buying a drowning company, and only their competitors had much to gain from buying them out to gain experience of their designers.
2)And then they charge you for it all. Govt PSU's have enabled India to have a decent military RnD without breaking the bank. Check diff b/w AMCA and F35 dev cost. Check diff b/w SpaceX and ISRO cost.
Nah. Private companies exist to make profit, not to advance national interest. Check the amount of money US has to dump to get comparable platforms to their peers. They spend 2x of what the rest of the total world does. They are not 2x as powerful as the rest of the world. And BTW, our scientists were also using bullock carts for transport when our rockets were first built. Cant fault their passion. Some are lazy af, but can not brand everyone as bad when they tend to get stuff done despite roadblocks. Say one thing that military asked for and DRDO gave up on.
1. It is only looking cheap because you are converting ₹ spent over several decades to $ based on the interconversion rate today.
2. If you do a more realistic conversion like GDP (PPP) vs GDP nominal then does it look as cheap?
3. US can spend 100x because they print the $s will gay abandon and then re-invest all of them in their own economy- I'm not sure why we can't get on that positive spiral (not the printing, but the In-house spending)?
4. With the cheapest so called research why did we get the shameful tag of the biggest importer of military goods world wide?
5. What world beating tech have DRDO scientists cooked up in their own time and own resources? Like may be an attempt at self driving car tech? Why do they have to be dependent on service *SQRs to get their creative juices flowing? It is just a job to them & job security sprays water on any fire in their tummy they may have started out with.
Private-Govt mix is best.
Of course it is best- infact it is the only course of action since no private entity will invest billions of dollars in facilities that can only be amortized when multiple national projects use them & scales of economies get worked several times over. But my view is gov should do no more, fund & own the resources (hard assets), fund the right companies & people and let magic happen.