Well your own rhetorical questions can actually validate my point. Why are we struggling on a subsonic cruise missile, despite codeveloping a world class Brahmos? How did the know-how help?
Simple, it gave us the know how to develop own guidance and navigation systems, just as a variety of launch applications, from land based, naval surface, naval submerged up to the latest air launched systems. All this is based on the know how we gathered through the Brahmos project, which now is diverted to Nirbhay. The problem is, that you consider ToT to be something magical, that directly brings us to the same level as the country that is providing us with it. Which obviously is not the case, because we have to understand and absorb the ToT first, before we can use it for next projects. We are able to produce or assemble the Russian parts of Brahmos in India now, just as we will do it with the Israeli parts of Barak 8, which we couldn't without ToT and we would not even close to develop the same on our own. So ToT of critical techs and joint developments are the only way for us to at least shorten the time for developments and get our hands on advances arms. But implementing the knowledge we gathered into own developments, is the next step which takes time and effort too.
You can see the same in the Dhruv project too, where we gained from foreign design and tech support => learned to produce them in India => implemented the knowledge into own developments to replace foreign parts over time and now even to do own re-designs and new projects, based on what we learned. That's the learning curve, LCA should have followed too, which would had made it equally successful and our industry more capable than it get so far with that project. But that's also the learning curve we see today with the MKI, were we not only learned to produce it to a large extend in India, but also to develop counterparts for Russian systems and weapons. Astra for example is based on R77 seekers, how do you think we got that? ToT! But we have to develop the rest on our own witht the know how of the seeker we got.
Why are we struggling to make a radar for a 4th gen aircraft, despite all the foreign aircrafts we have manufactured, including the sophisticated MKIs with ToT?
As already said, because ToT to assemble BARS in India, doesn't make HAL or GTRE able to develop a similar radar. That's why I told you that ToT is not = ToT. ToT to assemble parts is basic ToT, which is what we got for decades and which is what most countries get, if they get ToT at all. But ToT of critical techs, to produce them in India even with Indian materials, gets us far more access to that system and that's what MMRCA was up to, getting to the next level beyond the MKI deal.
Why did Bharat Forge need to acquire the company itself, rather than pay and buy "ToT"?
Because you can't "simply" buy critical ToT, since no company is easily giving away their know how. That's why these we have to negotiate in every licence production tender for every bit of ToT, licence production or cusomization, which are also limited to specific systems only, while taking over the company means, taking over their whole know how too.
If I buy the entire Boeing company tomorrow, I will be producing Super Hornets - not because I became a lot more knowledgeable, but because I bought the frigging company.
Wrong, you will be able to produce them in the Boeing facilities, but also to divert the know how to any of your own facilities and produce the F18SH there! You simply are not limited to approval from Boeing, but are free to use the full know how of the company, where and how you need it. That's why Bharat Forge is not producing the Howitzers in Austria, but diverting and implementing the know how in their own facilities in India!
Tata producing helicopter "parts" is in no way comparable to making an entire modern fighter jt. The difference in complexity is incomparable.
Who said that it would be comparable, the point was, that they couldn't produce these parts, without Sikorsky sharing the know. Same as we have seen with HAL and BAE Hawks, which after proper support of BAE was able to produce the Hawks in a similar efficient way as TATA does it with Sikorsky parts. Both examples again shows the importants of getting foreign know how to our industry and the more critical techs, the better for our future!
The only point of contention is whether this uber expensive "ToT" will enable us to become on par with the entity we are purchasing the said ToT from.
Well you get what you pay for! We could have bought US fighters at lower costs, without hardly enough ToT to assemble the radar and EW systems that were produced in the US, while the major ToT package would be of airframe parts. Cheap, but totally useless to improve our industry for the long term and that's the ToT you complain about!
On the other side we have the EF and the Rafale, more costly, but vastly more capable as fighters and with the best industrial packages we could get. To not use this chance to give our industry a push, just to safe a bit money, will be a huge setback for the industry, that has to invest more and need longer, to reach the same level on it's own.
You can purchase the blueprints for Rafale, you can learn how to build the radar - but what you cannot do is learn how they learnt it in the first place.
Of course not, that's experience and not technology. But experience of understanding advanced technology, or advanced production methods is crucial too, since it's shortens the time, that you otherwise need to reach that level in the first place. You can go 1 - 2 - 3 and each step will be more demanding if you do it on your own, but if you have somebody with knowledge that teaches you the same, you learn it faster.
How do you think we navalized a fighter sooner than China did? Because we decided to do it, a long time back.
Not really. We failed to do it alone and then started a tender for foreign help and after the US companies were not allowed to give us their know how and guidance, we took the L2 Airbus, as the foreign partner.
So our advantage was the variety of options from Europe, Russia and to an extend even US, that were ready to help us, while China had only the option to convince the Ukraine or to get the know how on other ways and no, they didn't do it themselfs, they bought Su 33s, the carrier and even trained their pilots and crews in the Ukraine, apart from the know how they got to refurbish the carrier and navalise the fighters. They knew how to build Su 27s from the know how they get from the Russians, but were not able to navalise it on their own, just as they still are not able to develop similar radars or engines as latest Russian Flankers have. Which also shows the difference of critical and basic ToT.
By paying 8 billion dollars for Rafale's ToT, we are not going to be able to make a world beating new aircraft in future.
Which itself is a wrong idea, that India is able to develop a world beating aircraft. But why do we have to exaggerate always like this? We are still learing to develop a 4th generation light class fighter and could get the know how of 4.5th gen systems, improved airframe design, advanced production methods, which all helps us in any future fighter development. We heared for example that LCA is not really designed to be maintenance friendly, while Dassault fighters are know to have a focus on ease of maintenance and repairs. So understanding that and implementing it into the AMCA design in the development stage, would be a crucial advantage. We heared that HAL produces the composites for LCA manually, while Dassault does it automatically => something to learn and implement into AMCA... which shows how important it is to learn from those who already have the knowledge, to cut a decade of development time or reduce the risks of failed developments.
