Look at this video at 4.45. What would you say about that guy?
Forget that guy, look at what (never thought I'd say this) Ajai Shukla said. He hit the nail on the bloody head. He is exactly 1000% correct.
See from 27:33 onwards:-
Look at what he says about Arjun tank (at 28:09), its the single most important line said in this entire debate:-
"After some time of DRDO consistently overpromising and underdelivering, there comes a point of time in the project (the inflection point) where things change. The Arjun tank changed from a complete white elephant to a functional tank. But the mindset of the military was not able to recognize the change because they had been fighting with DRDO for so long."
^Absolutely correct. Even some forum members fail to realize this.
@Bhadra sir?
Another point was made in the debate at 31:18 - "The Minister of Defence is the Minister of Air Force, and the minister of defence production and the minister of DRDO and he also needs to worry about the balance sheet of HAL. So he simply sits back and says "
let these guys fight, I'll just wait for my tenure to be over".
^ This shows how important political leadership is in making or breaking a project when the departments below him are run by ineffective bureaucrats. We can see how instrumental the leadership of Shri Parrikar ji was in salvaging Tejas. Before him, the Ministry was in autodrive, all the departments were infighting and the only person with the authority and responsibility to ensure these departments cooperate was an empty chair. Its in these situations that foreign lobbies manage to find footholds in our governance structures and manage to use the internal divisions to their benefit, colonial divide and rule style.
Now the million dollar question is, did the Air Force now take responsibility of HAL and of the entire AMCA project like the Navy does for its own projects? As Shuklaji said, at 29:18, a Naval Officer is chosen for the task, made to retire prematurely and made to go take over the shipyards where he can lead the projects. I don't think Air Force is doing that even for AMCA.