Bart S wrote:chetak wrote:
we missed a golden opportunity when we did not pick up the dirt cheap and readily available Dornier 328 plant and machinery complete with a genuine and by god TOT, after the dornier company ran into serious financial difficulties.
Over the decades, we could have seriously leveraged and built up from there.
When bombardier desperately needed about a billion dollars worth of investment recently, it was the hans who went in with the money whereas our guys simply sat back with their dicks in their hands. A billion dollars is mere chump change for us.
There might still be an opportunity, but I doubt if our approach has changed one bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Dornier_328JET
While first flight was anticipated in 2019, Turkey abandoned the program in October 2017, facing increasing costs. Believing in the sub 40-seat market, Sierra Nevada Corporation and 328 Support Services GmbH are searching for other means to revive the aircraft, hoping to follow through by the end of 2017 or early 2018.[9]
Instead of knowingly throwing billions of dollars to crony capitalists like Mallaya the govt via banks or even directly could arrange soft financing to people like Kalyani for such strategic projects. Or nudge bigger players like Reliance, Tata or Mahindra to use their own funding towards that.
please don't quote selectively, saar. Its all on the very same wiki page
Manufacturer Fairchild Dornier
First flight 20 January 1998
numbers built 110.
no one cares what the turks did. They didn't/couldn't make a go of it
lockheed martin used this platform to develop the Lockheed Martin X-55 Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA)
a Dornier 328J with its mid/aft fuselage and empennage replaced with advanced composite materials. The ACCA is a Lockheed Martin demonstrator to advance composite usage on next-generation tactical air mobility transports for the US Air Force Research Laboratory.
This deal was first offered to HAL even before fairchild came into the picture.
there was ample development potential for us to have exploited, learned from and moved on to larger programs using lessons learned, skilled manpower developed and engineers clued up. At least we would have had some sort of a handle on similar projects instead of reinventing the wheel all over again like NAL has with the saras program.
where do guys like kalyani, tata, reliance and mahindra have shortage of funds?? what they have shortage of is gumption and the ability to take market risks. They are all looking for very high ROI from the defence market in India without wanting to take even the smallest risk. All of them, bar none, are sitting with senior ex DRDO and ex military guys in positions of power, the very same guys who produced zilch when they were in service. Its the same old GIGO maya, but maybe not so much for Kalyani or even his bharath forge.
And "soft loans" to these guys is so very different from what was given to mallaya?? Really??
I know of only one company who transplanted an american assembly line along with its recently retired american chief designer, set up the plant in some wilderness and went into production making some aerospace products and they made a go of it from day one. They overcame the GIGO maya. I don't know if they are still around as I don't have dealings with them for the longest time now.