Sorry to say .. It seems that the discussion circulating about the procurement of weapons planned by your Defense Minister Prabowo is getting more and more "nonsense" and totally "irrational" ...
What really happened to your Defense Minister at this time?
I would say Prabowo lacks of strategic thinking, buying weapons from either East (Russia ) or West (US, British, France) can make Indonesia vulnerable since Indonesia has experienced getting embargo from both USSR (Soviet) and West (US and British).
Nothing is stable in international politics, we can get stabbed by West if for instant we make mistake in Papua like what happened when our soldiers in East Timor opened fire to East Timor protester which is known as Santa Cruz massacre that lead to US and British embargo for 10 years (1995-2005). Papuan is in majority Christian, so they share some Christian sentiment with that province. Just remember what happen with East Timor and South Sudan.
What we should do with our budget to make it more effective
The best strategy is to help defense industry, improve industrialization and economy. We should wait our local industry to make the weapon like buying Rafale or F 15 EX now should be replaced with buying KF 21/IFX about 6 years from now as the mass production stage is started in 2026 inshaAllah. Of course many components still come from the West, but in order to reach full independent there are steps to take, and if we dont do now, we will be dependen forever
Other like buying MALE UCAV from foreign nations should be replaced by buying our own MALE UCAV starting in 2025 or 2026 where the mass production will be started inshaAllah. We have already had severa Israli and China drone as comparison, so no need to buy more Male UCAV drone at this moment.
Buying the drone now will decrease our own industry future market and instead helping foreign nation defense industry. This condition will also happen in other product that is currently under development, like KF 21/IFX.
Defense budget can be more useful at this term (2021-2024) to finance our own R&D program where Indonesia is so lack and buying weapons that we dont make (and dont have immediate program) like big transport plane ( C 130 ), MRTT, AWACS, and also some missiles as we are still lack on AA and A2G missiles in reasonable amount.
Even it can be used to make IFX production facility and also increase N 219 production capacity. Our crucial project like Sumatra highway road still face lack of funding despite it is very important to make our economy competitive. Making sure our economy is progressing and healthy is necessary even if we talk about defense strenght. USA for instant is beaten by China due to economy and industry, not due to which one has more defense equipments than the other one.
Indigenous Rhan 122 B rocket and its indigenous MLRS system should also be bought instead of becoming prototypes forever as even Rhan 122 B
has already reached military target to reach 35 km and the MLRS is acknowledge by Army tester as having good quality.
More Pindad medium tank and Badak Fire Support Vehicle should be ordered as well while waiting local defense industry to make more sophisticated weapons like fighter jet and UCAV
CN 235 ASW and gunships should also be ordered as both can be made by local industry and very important defense equipment. CN 235 ASW is also crucial during submarine rescue operation and CN 235 gunship is really good platform to conduct patrol operation in Papua and also will be very good export potential, but our Armed force need to buy first to convince foreign buyers
Buying many radar should be wait our own 3 D radar program that will likely complete in 2024. At least at that time we have good capablity and bargain power and can lead to join program radar with Western countries.
Threat analysis until 2040
The geopolitics of South China Sea (SCS) is still calm with US is still very strong and its economy is even still growing, China is not fool to sacrifice its economic and technology development by start attacking her neighbor in SCS. It is economy and technological advancement that will make China defeat USA, making a war with US in SCS is very fool. Or even if USA doesnt intervere, there will be economic blockade to China and this will make China progress is very hampered, something that China doesnt want to do. Chinese leaders are not fool and stupid. I can say, at least until 2040 the region will likely be very safe.
Any way, Indonesia dispute with China nine dash line is relatively small and located in the edge of SCS, if China lead by crazy, he will make military advanture to Vietnam and Philippine first and Indonesia will likely be spared since many of their industry depend on Indonesian coal. Even if our agreement with China CATL reach concrete contract, it means they will have some meaningful dependence on our EV battery industry supply chain as well.
South China Sea (SCS) and its economic and strategic important
The economic important of SCS is getting less and less as EV industry is projected to replace combustion cars/motorcycle/buses as previously SCS is regarded as important due to its oil and gas potential. And despite this potential, until now there is no really huge oil and gas field there, of course Indonesia has found and extracted some of them, but the potency is not really great and since it will be deep sea oil and gas project, so the cost will be much higher than oil and gas field in Saudi for example.
Beside that, China as country that becomes rich due to trade, of course wants to see SCS as always become an open sea and one of the main reason of why China put military base there would be probably to make it protected from pirates and possible grab from Vietnam in the future, there is national politics as well that play so making base there would make the regime there get more domestic support politically.
Economy and local defense industry should be the focus
But of course Indonesia should still be prepared and because we have still another 20 years to prepare, we should have more focus on local defense industry and economic progress. Why economic progress ? It is because a Giant like China cannot be dealth with country that doesnt have powerful economic power, it will be useless since economic power will determine how much we are going to spend in military and strong local defense industry will make our defense spending more sustainable economically.
The period from now until 2025 is also critical, Indonesia should make sure its economy is competitive enough during the start of RCEP (FTA ASEAN-China-Japan-Korea-Australia-New Zealan). We have to focus more on economy (making it healthy and competitive) and industrialization (including growing our local defense industry and its ecosystem industries).
We need to get the positive momentum during the start of RCEP and maintain it, actually 2021 is already seen as the year to see which one will benefit more from that trade group, if we can manage to have strong growth during this 5 years period with healthy debt to GDP ratio, we can have long term positive trend of foreign direct investment that is caused by the momentum we can create (with the help of Allah) during the first 2-3 years of RCEP start.
If we cannot compete in RCEP, it means the possibility for Indonesia to balance China power in South East Asia after possible USA retreat after 2040 will be gone. This is why our defense strategists should think long term and should have economic and industry perspective before making any threat projection and analysis.
Immediate China threat perception
Immediate China treat perception is basically prompted by foreign defense equipment brokers and also schoolars from Singapore/Australia/New Zealand that wants Indonesia to buy as many weapon as it could from the West and in process destroy the development of our local defense industry since it means Indonesia will become so dependent to The West, so less possibility to attack SIngapore/Australia/NZ when Indonesia economy (nominal GDP) reach 3-4 trillion USD in 2035 inshaAllah (projected by many institutions like CEBR and Mckensy).
With that large GDP, Indonesia will have capability to have large defense budget, possibly around 3 until 4 times current budget after 2030 which follow conservative defense spending of 1% from total GDP figure. ( Indonesia defense spending history shows its defense spending is always less than 1 percent of its GDP since Soeharto regime until now).
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So far Prabowo dream is still controlled by our current Presiden and his economic team who have more rational and better strategic thinking than him
Here latest update about our budget management
Indonesia's plan to procure Rafale fighters hampered by funding roadblock
by Ridzwan Rahmat
25 May 2021
The Indonesian Ministry of Defense (MOD) has made further progress in its effort to procure 36 Rafale multirole fighter aircraft from Dassault Aviation but a formal contract may be delayed by a lack of clarity over funding sources.
In February, a delegation of senior Indonesian MOD officials led by Major General Dadang Hedrayudha, director general of the ministry's defence potential department, completed the latest round of negotiations with Dassault Aviation's vice-president for business development Jean Claude Piccirillo, and vice-president for offset Michael Paskoff.
The negotiations, which largely covered offset and financing arrangements, went well, Maj Gen Dadang said in February. The MOD has since raised a request for the programme to be funded with foreign-sourced loans, ministry officials disclosed in March.
However, a schedule of national projects that have been approved for foreign funding was obtained by Janes on 21 May. It confirms that Rafale programme has not been included. The schedule is published annually by the Indonesian Ministry of National Development Planning (Kementerian Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional: BAPPENAS), and it spells out national programmes for which foreign loans can be obtained for the year.
As such, given the lack of endorsement from the BAPPENAS, the bid to procure 36 Rafale fighters has not been gazetted by the Indonesian Ministry of Finance (MOF) as a defence procurement programme for the 2021 financial year.
Janes
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The Indonesian Ministry of Defense (MOD) has made further progress in its effort to procure 36 Rafale multirole fighter aircraft from Dassault Aviation but a formal...
www.janes.com