I will say this again that designing a fighter plane is not halwa let alone a 5th gen plane.
The amount of complex tech which is incorporated in a modern fighter are really complex and so much more for 5th gen. For you to think that a nation can simply make a 5th gen plane within a span of few years who doesn't even have required infra, is simply a ignorance of higher level. When you truly understand the complexity of various programmes, then you will truly appreciate the work that has been done on them and it pains me to see any person quote TAI 5th gen fighter and it feels like a slap on every other 5th gen in service and their competency.
I won't talk much about how ToT basically is not very much useful and you don't really get much useful knowledge/data which can be applied in making other indigenious projects. Infact, most of the important tech and data are alway kept hidden so as to keep the dependency. For reference just see the comments of Mazgaon docks in recent article.
The head of India’s biggest warship builder, the State-run Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Ltd, wants the government to take “some bold steps” on submarine manufacturing in the country.
infra.economictimes.indiatimes.com
He is basically saying that lets dispose the tech partners and has asked the GOI, Navy and Drdo to come up with local replacement of components which are in essence being held by the so tech partners and are not sharing them, thereby you remain dependent on them for the rest of your product lifetime, that is almost 2-3 decades. This comes with all kind of problems like the non availability of firing or performance parameters which leads to problem of guarantees, in simple words how do you make local equivalent if you don't have data parameters to make a local equivalent, it can be done but yeah not easy and then a whole lot tons of testing for said components.
Same is the story for every ToT which people think is great when you dont even have the most important thing given to you. On the other hand a local designed product suffers from no such problem and the learning simply goes to the next and other projects, basically iterate and improve, expecting F35 like thing from get go is a stupid proposition to begin with.
Let's see what happens with P75I, it has turned into a shitshow as of now and I don't think it's gonna go ahead, simply not many partners to begin with and all the major naval groups have pulled out and NAVY is all to be blamed with their ambitious requirements without any flexibility at all.
So these are the few options ahead of us-
1) A retender for P75I, also known as wait for another decade.
2) Going for GtoG deal for P75I with French, also known as french having upper hand and may milk us fully as they can, single vendor leading to loss of negotiating power.
3) Ordering more scorpions, AKA ordering subs which don't even fulfil the requirements for a long range long endurance P75I reqmt.
Pick your poison.
IMO, is scorpene design even viable for upscaling to 3000+tons design when the current design is even less than 2000+tons. Anyway our next submarines should atleast have comprehensive Sonar suit with side arrays and towed array(lacking in scorpene) and the Li-ion tech, reduced noise levels, deploy USV and UAV, and perhaps VLS.
IN should at this point atleast launch a tech demonstrator for indigenous SSK with VLS with help of NSTL and NPOL.
