Indian members here tend to believe in the miracle of ToT too much as if the technologies can be actually transplanted. ToT is mere a "Book" you bought, and it is up to you to read and digest it and turn the "story" into your own. Just look back in India's history of defense industries, how much you have actually benefited from all those ToTs that you paid a fortune for?
Well its highly variable experience. Some were quite good (if you read up on the Sepecat Jaguar for example and the DARIN upgrade that resulted from long term intrinsic ToT combined with local research and development).
The somewhat other side from same program is in fact as far back as the 80s, India developed a local fix for the aircrafts nose landing gear issue (it would collapse quite frequently on landing) which was later claimed by the company itself and used to address aircraft under service in other countries...at no cost to them.
Same thing with Russians/USSR. All sorts of technology have permeated from the ToT signed for all Mig series production...mostly related to production side manufacturing methods. On other hand a lot of ToT for say tanks and vehicles was simply bolting on armour to tank body....but thats normally because India did not press for much massive fundamental ToT requirement there since we developed local technology already at CVRDE and other such RnD places.
The only really lacking ToT has been Jet engine technology....no one wants to part with anything too crucial so its a long term process.
There is decent knowledge and experience inflow coming in....on the balance sheet overall its ok....to get something you got to pay something....so sometimes we get a good injection of technology at very low margin and that balances the high margin "easy tech" ToT that is sometimes part of the same deal.
The main problem with Indian defence production has little to do with the ToT story but with the effective production operationalising.
This can only come with ample and consolidated investment and a balanced public-private approach to design, development and production. Before it was terribly skewed by over-relying on a few PSUs that had their own vested interests and deep rooted inefficiencies. The root cause of this approach was from the low "tech" demand from Indian armed forces given its low budget (especially on per capita terms)...so the margins were not that high to develop a consolidated defence production base. The margins (and progress) only existed where there was significant spin off effects to other sectors (like electronics, communications, power equipment, traction etc..).
For example my uncle worked (before he retired) for a company called BEL which is one of these PSUs that benefited from a lot of the spinoffs coming from the direct ToT imported from USSR (and later Ukraine) regarding battlefield communications technology. Now BEL makes very good quality sets and has even diversified to other related areas like tactical radars and WLRs by its own RnD that was spawned/enhanced from the initial ToT.
So an in depth analysis, taking into account:
a) socialist and later monopolist PSU mindset of Indian defence production
b) the time it took to really increase the defence budget to levels to provide sustainable margins and requirements...given GDP size, taxation. opportunity costs etc
...is really a very detailed and complicated thing to do....and there is no black and white answer I am afraid.
Your guys like to stand on a "moral high ground", and laugh at China's "copy and paste" effort, but it is an effective way for a technically backward country to catch up industrial leaders, especially in defense industries where nobody will actually share the core technologies with you. China and India imported Su-27/30 family Russian fighters about the same time, while India has to ask Russian to upgrade its fleet, Chinese are mass-producing J-11, J-15, J-16 with incremental improvements on each subsequent batch.
Well I am never one of those "guys". I have always been appreciative of the Chinese strategy and its one that we can learn from for sure. It is interesting to notice that Modi has been very impressed by China's defence sector and economy as a whole. Thats why there is now a big push along those lines in many industries....but we cannot go "cold turkey" so to speak....there will have to be a transition over a decade maybe (hopefully less).
There are many bright spots in Indian defence sector right now who's concepts and experience will serve as the beacon for the areas that are still stuck in the old inefficient "low absorption and lack of continued development"...so there will be an effective overhaul of all the crucial "value-added" items like aviation, propulsion and surveillance. Some will be big ticket stuff, some will be back to the basics like small arms and munitions (with added focus on Quality development, production and assurance).
I hope, with private sector getting involved in defense industries, India will break the cycle and come up with its own advanced defense products in the near future. Just don't "sleep" on ToT.
Yup I hope so too. Sleeping on ToT was the hallmark of the previous govt. This govt is slowly getting the wheels rolling in areas that have been quite resistant to better and more efficient RnD strategy and production.
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