I never said we did it alone without help, just we spent more.
Actually, you still saved a lot all thru these years.
You did not need to run manhattan project, courtesy Soviet Union.
You didn't need to develop Mig-21, since Sovient Union gave you the technology on a platter.
Still, if you are cribbing "we spent a lot" .... then you should ask yourself, "where the hell did we spend", when everything we got was free.
A very nice world, where Soviet Union was followed by Nixon .. and Nixon was followed by Bill Clinton.
My question is what did you achieve, after Su-27 was given by the Russians... with "all that you spent" !!!
"J-10" ???
Go compare the specs to HAL Tejas .. and then don't compare what India spent and what China "spent".
Compare the outputs, rather than the inputs.
Even India built nuke submarines, damn advanced missiles and even an aircraft carrier .... what did China produce that could be called the output commensurate to 3 times what "it spent".
J-10 may not be much compare to US airforce, but that's because the US spends way more. The Russians also spent more in the past. The same cannot be said for India.
And hence comparison to US or Russia is not fair.
But why do you look flat (if not, worse) against India ... in terms of output, when the input (i.e. what you "spent") is 3 times !!
Eh... is it money going down the drain ... or is it "re-inventing every type of wheel mankind has invented."
The arms embargo gave us a military industrial complex, before the embargo the motto was always, buy is better than make and rent is better than both. Now we have a military industry that can make weapons as fast as we lose them. And even faster.
Having weapons is good for show, but having an industry is good for WAR. Indian fighters may not be worse than Chinese ones, but how many can you make a month to replace fallen ones? If we make our industry go over time we can put two out for every one we lose if not more. While Indian lost, is just lost.
How many missiles do you have? Can you even make it through the war with your current inventory?
You can buy from others, assuming no embargo during a war, it would still take a long time for others to make the items. And by the time they finish it would be too late.
If you counting "J-10" against Su-30MKI ... there are already too many of both of them, but "J-10" loses hands down.
And trust me Su-30MKI gives much greater bang for the buck .. than J-10 can ever come close to. (Note: see here the 3 times spending is going; but what's the output)
Pretty much ditto for "J-11" or the older "J-7".
If India gets the current level of conventional deterrence against china ... at just 1/3rd the price, we should be patting ourselves for all the corruption and what not. PRC is doing much worse in terms of the "bang for the buck" it gets from 129 billions.
We will have to pay more and more as we enter fields unexplored by others, but then we do have an economy on track to pass the US. The same can't be said for the other Asian countries.
India is one country which exceeded the GDP of china in historical times, and can readily do so.
India's GDP is most dependent of human resources and renewable resources .. but less on mining.
What it isn't dependent on is "mining" .. which is the life and soul of the current chinese economy.
China mines 50% of the world coal (7 times India).... but in wheat and rice it produces about the same (not even 2.5 times, which the GDP PPP ratio suggests).
China produces 5 times crude oil to India .... again significantly more than the factor of 2.5 times.
Mining contributes 10% of china's GDP (ie. coal mining, crude oil, iron ore etc). They are all non-renewable.. and while they are produced they deteriorate the land and cause pollution.
For India, mining is only 1.5% of it's GDP.
The services (which are essentially dependent on human endeavours - software services etc) and agriculture (which is bases on renewable resources) GDP approach parity .... and mining in china is a big factor affects the GDP ratio.
So now you know why the 120+ billions is worrying.
The "input" can't be a cause of worry .. perhaps amusement.
The "output" from that spending .. is what you should cite.
And P.S. I don't hear the Philippines screaming the Taiwan threat even though Taiwan was closer to war with Philippines on the fisherman incident.
Also, if it didn't worry people, this article would not exist. Not a lot of newspaper screaming the Vietnam threat.
Phillipines and Vietman are connected to the world at large ... while china and north korea stand alone and aloof.
That's the reason, less than 20% of the world's population with even less share of world GDP is no cause of worry for the remaining 80% of the population with an even larger share of the GDP.