Okay, what about cruise missiles? They've literally just tested the indigenous core of their mainline turbofan engine for every one of their cruise missiles, including the SOM, SOM-J, ATMACA, ATMACA KARA, and Gezgin. In fact, their Gezgin GLCM will probably cut way ahead in range compared to the Babur in its very first model (1,200 to 1,500 km).
Dude, seriously? You are comparing stuff, many of which aren't even in final trials yet or on the drawing board with our systems which have been in active service for a decade and a half and whose replacements are in development? The SOM, SOM-J
et al are fine systems, but they are at best equivalent to early Ra'ad which has been in service since 2008 and the SOM only achived IOC in 2020 or so.
This isn't even a debate.
Agreed, they are something like a decade behind us in this particular field. Not everything, and even most areas, but here,
India is ahead of Pakistan, and Türkiye is ahead of Pakistan. If anything, the real debate now is seeing who'll cross into the "big leagues" first -- Türkiye or India.
India has the same issue as we do and one which Turkey doesn't share, which is their and our systems have to operate in a
nuclear environment. The Turks don't (and NATO doesn't count since NATO nuclear role is assigned to the US, and the nuclear sharing is done through US Supplied aircraft).
Now I am sure you know this, but to reinterate. A system designed to operate in the nuclear role has to demonstrate reliability and robustness far greater than one which doesn't.
Reliability
A typical conventional missile system has a reliability of about 80-90%, under ideal circumstances. Thats simply not acceptable for a strategic system. For that you need closer to 99.9%. In a conventional war its more cost effective to compensate for expected failures by simply building more. Thats not an option for nuclear role, since every failure is a loss of a very expensive warhead at best and a nuke falling where you don't want at worst. And the 80-90% number is for complete missile loss, it does not include partial failures, such as a greater than expected miss, which again, is unacceptable for us since that means the hardened high value target you were trying to destroy survives and fights on. Therefore not only the system needs to have very high reliability as a whole but so do sub-systems. All this means much greater expense and effort.
Its for this reasons that for so long (until recently infact) we used imported engines for our CM's, not because we couldn't build them, but because we couldn't do it to the reliability levels our strategic forces needed. Its also why India takes approximately forever to induct systems.
Robustness
A nuclear system needs to be hardened against EMP, if your systems electronics get fried its no use, And hardening isn't as simple as putting a faraday cage over the electronics, that takes weight and uses space which leads to a tradeoff elsewhere. Plus when firing en salvo the thing needs to be protected against neutron fkux, its going to suck if you fire a salvo and the neutron flux of the first sets off the other warheads prematurely.
Due to some common ties (e.g., religion, the Turkic origins of the Ottomans and Mughals, and the help Muslims in India gave during WW1), they're inviting us to their team.
No, They do it sinces its in their interest.
We should humble ourselves, and join.
Agreed. I have been a proponent of this for years. What we should not do, is sell ourselves short. We have a lot of good stuff to offer them and we should do so.
