I think Bangladesh can produce its own tanks. You only need to import German engines, German gearboxes, German tank guns, and US fire control systems... You can produce tanks like K2.
But a real question arises, what about your industrial integration capabilities? How is your metallurgical technology? And forging technology?
South Asia's most powerful nation in order to produce a reliable tanks, they spent 40 years. and you?
The tank is a weapon of war, not an exhibit. Chinese tanks have gone through many wars and undergo rigorous tests. This is different from K2 or "other exhibits".
Sorry forgive me I just live in the real world.
Well yes you do have good points but ZTZ-96 or 99 (even VT-5) has not seen real combat either. This is true for all new generation Chinese tanks. Some say K-2 is a down-sized Leopard (old generation) copy, but so is the M1A1 in many ways (except for the turbine engine of course). Today one can build tanks from sub-assemblies sourced from countries who have already invested substantially in heavy-duty steel-armor casting and forging capabilities.
Today - industrial integration is not a question of 'capability' but rather a question of needed investments. There are enough talented engineers in Bangladesh to pull off something like this. What is lacking is political will and what makes business sense.
A lot of people (even some idiot Indians) have the idea that Bangladesh is some industrial backwater like say Papua New Guinea or something. This is hardly the case. It is not my job to educate ignorant folks, Google is their friend and they can do their homework.
If we need just 50 tanks, assembly of imported components will be sufficient. Like I said - Egyptians are assembling M1A1's.
But expensive investments in,
a) metallurgical steel/alloy casting/testing and
b) heavy-duty forging capability (such as forging tank main guns)
can only be feasible when we are talking about having a long-term program of building an indigenous tank to one's own specs, compliant with local terrain and fighting conditions, and most importantly, when the number exceeds say more than 1000 tanks.
On paper they still had a great number of assets not much worse than Vietnam, but Thailand had mixture of assets from many supplier and galvanized their logistick effort
Thailand's armor and air-defense capabilities were sophisticated from very early days (Interwar years from late 30's), like Indonesia. They defeated French colonial forces when the French tried to annex part of Thailand.
Here are some early aircraft Hawks, Oscars, Nates, Hawk II's, Spitfire 16's, Fireflies, Bearcats etc. from early Thai AF inventory