The risk of an Indo-Pak war can be as early as tomorrow, so realistically, how many new attack helicopters (or tanks, SAMs, J-10s etc) are we going to have by then? This is the issue I have with this "urgency" thinking.
Our gov't and generals aren't doing anything to trigger a fight with India, and even when things escalate, we are trying to cool the situation. So, if this is the policy, why are we constantly draining billions of dollars for all these urgent needs, and not solve the long-term problem?
If we don't solve the long-term problem, then we'll always be stuck with, "urgent" near-term shopping lists. This way of doing things is costing us both in direct terms and opportunity costs (e.g., that money could've gone back into the economy via in-house programs).
Just to make a point, I brought up the idea of the South African "New Attack Helicopter" program in
2008 (I was 17-18).
Basically, a kid could come up with these ideas, and they'd still make sense. It's now been
13 years since I made that comment -- we could've FOC-ed this by now if our decision-makers had the vision and sincerity.
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This was when ATE (the private company in charge) said it'll set-up a new helicopter industry in the partner country.
just so you people know, pakistan transferred some armour technology from al-khalid to Turkey for their next-generation battle tank. al-khalid is anything but a failure. there haven't been any exports because we are not exporting it as a whole right now, only certain parts. Sorry, I disagree...
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