snahata wrote:ramana wrote:With its PSUs and OFB's India never fostered a military industrial complex and we see the results or lack there of. There is no synergy between the users, the makers, and the designers in India for we have an all powerful nexus of bureaucrats with the politicians overseeing all this.
I had to write today because for the hundredth time DRDO chief or his minions have come out with fantastic statements. Now they are going to use lasers, nano technology and whatever is the latest cool word to supply the cutting age equipment to india’s long suffering armed forces.
For over 50 yrs DRDO, this pathetic organization has not supplied any quality original product to india’s armed forces. This is a place to give employment to mostly worthless people barring rare exceptions.
To give a few examples. The so called indigenous fighter Tejas has been in development for almost 30 yrs. The most important part of a fighter plane is it’s engine and radar. After crores have been spent in close to 30 yrs we have neither a working engine nor a indigenous radar for this fighter. The so called indigenous Arjun tank has 70% of it’s components sourced from outside including some of it’s most important parts like engine and tank tracts.
Ok think if you have a large private company with it’s adminstrators being a bunch of crooks ( read GOI )and than you hire pathetic third rate people to ( how many top IIT grads or smart grads from other engineering schools you think would prefer to work for GOI. I leave that to you the BRfites to ponder )make a 4th generation fighter plane, a main battle tank and many such things . The results of last 50 yrs or more is not a surprise given the above scenario.
India does not have a lot of time to lose because the dragon is preparing to attack us. There has to be radical surgery to overhall india’s defense manufacturing and DRDO or any organization run directly by the corrupt GOI can not form any part of it. We should have a few hundred top scientist under a organization like DARPA doing basic cutting age technology research, paid adequately by the govt and free to do their research.
HAL and DRDO and all such govt funded and run oraganizations should be disbanded completely. Any person accidentally found to have some brains and ability and experience working in these organizations would be hired by private companies.
If you BRfites think I am talking nonsense just go back a few weeks to the statement made by one of IAF’s top generals who had the guts to say in public what many of us think in private.
In the last 3000 yrs of human history no culture or country has been either able to defend itself adequately or conquer territories by borrowing, buying or begging for military equipment from other countries. If we do not learn from history we would be forced to repeat it.
I am not a lover of the Chinese govt but one must learn from one’s enemies and respect their capabilities. China can not import any military equipment from western countries even though it would love to do so and than copy it. Russia would not supply it with critical technologies because they are not stupid people and there is a significant possibilities of a war between these two countries in the future. I think Chinese people are intelligent and hard working and can not be underestimated. Russsia made a mistake by selling them military hardware in the past and the Chinese have been able to learn and copy those. Even though I do understand Russia was short of money during these times but one day they may regret these actions.
More of it later. Thanks guys. I had to let of steam phew.
do you guys like to read each other's rent or give other's a chance also. ramanna is saying the same thing even thogh my statements are more direct
I share your same frustrations too. While DRDO does have a huge share of blame in this whole mess of being not able to deliver, the GOI and the armed forces also shares an equal amount of responsibility of this mess too.
Lets not forget that most of technologies that DRDO are not simple ones that every tom, dick and harry can build. While we have had a lot of ambitious programs since the 70s and 80s, we did not have a lot of basic technologies in place to embark on that journey successfully. Even today we are struggling with a lot of things like the Kaveri engine for LCA. The root cause of this problem IMO lies in lack of proper infrastructure/research facilities for basic science in India. A lot of these high level research requires people with high degree of knowledge and motivation. I would put the blame for lack of good quality engineers/researchers working in Defence PSUs on the govt. Indian govt and the Babus have never paid attention to requests for increasing the salary etc. The GOI should also change the promotion policies to ensure that merit is rewarded more than just the #of years in service.
Secondly the GOI should let private sector compete with the defence PSUs in creating the products that we need. The attitude of the current govt
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2010/02/ ... allam.html
on this seems to be really disheartening (Read the Public Vs Private sector section in the above link.) It looks to me like GOI is stifling innovation and competition. And so, it is quite natural that DRDO, which is protected from external competition and lack of proper incentives to attract talent would just be another govt job for a lot of people working there.
Thirdly, the attitude of the customers (in this case the armed forces) have to change. They have to have a feeling of being a stakeholder in the DRDO programs, rather than like a window shopper, with fleeting interest. In US, the armed forces are usually involved with the defense programs from the start to beginning. They also show a greater commitment to the products and a desire to work with the industry to fix issues. A good example I can think of the M-16 rifle. The rifle is a kick a** rifle. What a lot of people (I am sure a lot of BRfites would know this already.) don't know is that the rifle was responsible for getting quite a bit of US soldiers getting killed in Vietnam. The rifle had a problem where it would get jammed and also get over-heated. Soldiers were literally putting towels over the rifle in some cases when the rifle caught fire. And a lot of them used to also pour coolants over the rifles every 10 mins to cool them down. But the Pentagon stuck to they guns (pun intended.) The engineers fixed the most of the issues. While today most of the issues have been ironed out, the jamming still occurs if the gun is not cleaned regularly. And the soldiers may not be brushing their teeth or taking a shower everyday, but they WILL NOT forget to clean their rifles at the EOD.
Moving on, the amount of money spend on research/testing in India is ridiculously low. Take Akash missile for example. I read somewhere that Akash missile was comparable to Patriot systems from US (DRDO clams its even better. BRfites...any comments?.) We spent about $120 million into the program, while uncle spent somewhere about $5billion into the Patriot program by the end of 1994. If Akash is even half as Patriots, hats off to those scientists who worked on them against all odds (some of them being some very disparaging media reports against Akash.)
Whenever DRDO claims a missile like Agni etc is operational, I am happy for my country, but at the same time, I am apprehensive as well. Usually the strategic missiles in US are tested anywhere between 20-50 times before they are given operational clearance. And to be honest, this scares me, since I am afraid of the quality of the end product. While our country can do some good research, our "manufacturability" is not something that I am sure about. I would really like to see more and more tests to ensure the repeatability of success of missiles. And this requires a lot more money to be pumped in. And this can come only from the GOVT, since DRDO is going to do its level best to give a product operational clearance within the budgets that they have.
So, while DRDO does deserve some brickbats for they failure, they also deserve credit for the work that they have done, which unfortunately is not as well advertised as their failures. But I think DRDO is getting better at delivering (maybe not as fast you and I would like to be.) But then again, Rome was not built in a day.
I do like ur rant...and yeah I feel much better after my ranting as well
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T'was my first visit to her blog. And couldn't agree with you more!! Typical case of megalomania with all her certificates and photographs right from painting competition in KG to lemon n'spoon trophy in high school lined up for visitors to gawk at! Also saw some interesting comments reeked in sarcasm by the visitors !