Assume tomorrow, HAL is bought out by say a TATA or a Mahindra
That's not possible, since even the NDA government would retain state owned companies to keep control in the strategic defence industries.
It is quite surprising to me, that every one on the forum vehemently agrees to need of private participation and when Anthony baba lays 50 odd transport aircraft right on the platter, private industry squirms it's nose about a low book order?
That's surprising because you put on your HAL glasses again and doesn't see anything else.
A) we need privat industry to commit themselfs to defence production and even better to defence developments. Antony had started that with FICV, the self propelled howitzer or the Avro replacement tender and only because it doesn't work in the latter doesn't make it a bad idea in general.
B) the Avro replacement is only for 40 aircrafts and MoD under Antony, as well as the current are ignoring the fact that we need more of the same aircrafts in other forces too, so easily could increase the order, which then would attract more privat industry players and foreign vendors. Just as they are ignoring the similarities of the Avro replacement and the RTA 70 development, which easily could be combined to increase the potential too.
So it's neither surprising why everyone wants the privat industry to come in and be a credible competition in the Indian aviation industry, nor is it surprising that not even the NDA government was able to get more privat companies in, if the basics of the tender are not right.
The fact is, we had more than a decade where only HAL, NAL and DRDO were players in the aviation industry and the result is bad to say it politely, which is why the hope on getting the privat industry on board is so important for Indias future in this field. And that is even positive for HAL as we already can see, because HAL has to change it's policies to retain the leading player, be it the pre-emptive investment strategy that they now show (and that would had made HTT40 available today, if they came up with it earlier), or that they open up to privat partners in developments and don't see them only as outsourcing companies for minor production parts. That's the result of competition and the obvious change of the ground reality under the NDA government, that doesn't support HAL anymore as it was in the past.
And if you remember correctly I had long ago said that Tata will eventually chicken out ... and that is exactly what has happened here.
Not at all, TATA is still in just as their combined bid with Airbus, the problem is the single vendor situation and the fact that the new DM seems to have a focus on less types of aircrafts. That's why he wants to increase the availability of the MKI and add some more, as a possible alternative to MMRCA, or why he sees the MTA here as an alternative for the Avro replacement. In both cases he is pretty mistaken, since he will end up with high operational costs, using medium class transporters flying with half or even less payload in basic logistical roles, just as using heavy class fighters in air defence roles of light to medium class once.
In fact, IAF had evolved under Antony, to not only look at the unit cost of an aircraft, but to inculde the operational cost as an important factor, Parrikar now seems to make a U-Turn on that and I'm not sure if he just tries to keep is budget under control or if it's just his different way of leading the MoD yet.
