These are indeed "Frequently Asked Questions"
suryag wrote:
1. why cant drdo be privatised or invite the private industry to build something that we dont have in any form right now
India private industry does not have the technology to do the things DRDO has done. The erason why private works in the West is because the technology was developed by private companies (sometimes with government support) in the first half of the 20th century and funding for research and further refinement continued in the West. The wars fought in the first 50 years of the 20th century ensured that a lot of industries were built out of the private industry innovations of the era. India as a colony got zilch.
Even now - the top Indian private companies do not have the technology to build a fighter aircraft - although we are seeing the first entrants into armored vehicles and small civil aircraft. Secondly, private companies need to make profits and cannot splurge money on the development of items that are vital but get only a few orders. Imagine a company that has to be set upto build canopies for 126 aircraft - say MRCA. The order will end around 150 period. What will the company do after that with all the special tooling and floor space dedicated to that? Better to start making biskoot right away - and they will sell millions every month for lower tech and lower investment
suryag wrote:
2. handover gtre to isro or when we can build cryos/semi cryos why cant we build 60s tech jet engines
Cryo and aero engines are quite different. Rocket engines are use and throw and nobody gets killed in a failure. Jet engines need to be reused and need to be reliable. Jet engine tech is "1960s" in name only. For example anyone who makes wheels is using 10,000 year old tech because there is some evidence of the use of wheels 10,000 years ago. Modern jet engines are highly complex and it is cutting edge tech. Nothing 60s about it.
suryag wrote:
3. why dont we reverse engineer like the Chinese do
Well we call it "import substitution". In Aeo India 2009 I had visited the stall of the Air Force's Base repair Depot. They had displayed a whole lot of stuff they had manufactured by reverse engineering. This year I went to their stall and again saw a whole lot of stuff (looking like cogs, plates, perspex parts, washers, brake pads etc) and I asked if all these had been reverse engineered as well. The man said "No. These are items that we would like Indian private industry to make for us". I regretted not having brought along with me a friend who owns a private auto parts company. These are just the sort of people who will reverse engineer individual parts.
If we can get people to reverse engineer in top quality about 100,000 or more different parts that go into an aircraft - then we can build that aircraft to the original standard. I believe even the Chinese have not built things up to the original standard. Copying is easier than achieving quality.
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