I will find again but there is an interview of Gen Tariq with Dr Moeed. Near the end he says to give Pasni to the US so that they can take rare earth materials from Afg. So, Pak should invite Amazon/SpaceX etc to take pasni and surrounding as a tax free zone to establish S.Cells industries, where they import material from Afg and process it near pasni.
Unfortunately, our public statements endorsing BRI and hailing CPEC by going out of the way on global fora have earned us deep suspicion in the West. West cannot decouple Pakistan from China anymore, and the excitability and immaturity demonstrated by Pakistani leadership are to be blamed. China will move quickly to capture the REM resources in Afghanistan and it will take the raw material to the mainland (to be precise the industrial clusters along the Southern Chinese coastline, far away from less developed Western Chinese territories-hence, not even toll for us via shipping final products through CPEC routes and using our ports). It would have been in our economic interest if the Americans could tap those resources; at the very least, they could have used our communications infrastructure to ship raw material. Not sure if they would have set up plants in Pakistan. Now, it is near impossible as all our eggs are in one basket. Unrest in Balochistan is a problem that would discourage even European investment (Germans are not as entrenched in their suspicion of China as many other European states and want to continue doing business) in this technological sphere even if we extend investment perks.
Huawei was started by an ex-PLA guy. Having links within CCP and PLA helped him get contracts and huawei never looked back from there. If our ex-military guys could use their contacts to promote indeginization of defense solutions and scaling up to become solutions exporters, then 100 bismillah. Integrated dynamics started with great fanfare. is it not succeeding? Their flagship products were small sized drones, right?Sadly, I agree. The projects these docs mentioned were good - given that they were properly managed and audited, adequately funded and provided useful deliverables. Obviously, that doesn't usually happen. Whatever projects saw the the light of day probably sit on some computer or filing cabinet, never to be touched again.
That's interesting and may be a cause of hope.
A major question that has always been on my mind though: Do you have any idea if the solid rocket motors for the Shaheen series, etc were actually developed and produced indigenously? Or did we just license-produced them/modified Chinese designs?
Would love to see this Pakistani SLV in my lifetime.
Still commendable. Shauq mujhay bhi hai, but I'm too lazy - even posting on PDF is too much of a hassle for me
You do have the likes of Shibli Electronics, although I'm not aware of what they're upto these days.
The only issue is that the defence procurement circles are murky at best and highly corrupt at worse. You need connections with high ups in the services to even get into the business. Not to mention the one thousand security clearances you will need even before you start, with several thousand more to follow for simple tasks such as importing raw materials.
This would explain why some recent entrants in the defence/aerospace businesses are retired military guys and would also explain why people like the Integrated Dynamics CEO and the Azm-engineer-turned-UAV startup guy have been floundering - connections.
I first found this doc before PakTES was even launched, honestly thought that I'd stumbled upon something that would warrant a Black Vigo at my door
Good read though.
A lot of private Pakistani companies are lead by ex-military personnel, which, for the reasons you describe, are able to survive in Pakistan's very anti-military business environment. Unfortunately, even those folks are barely able to survive because of how cabal-like our defense production setup is.
true.. but business interests are different. For instance, Siemens setup in pasni will have few Germans and mostly locals. For profit a few can be convinced. plus, US interests in region means RAW will not support BLA/BRA in Baluchistan. Anyway, we have to provide security for any business local or foreign. I don't think IK is not welcoming any foreign western investment, yes he is a little left centric like always parsing china, panahgah, langar, etc socialist approach.
It is not about us being open to Western investment. it is a game of perceptions and in Western perception, Pakistan is firmly planted in the Chinese camp. Our leaders gave this perception overzealously projecting BRI/CPEC instead of silently doing substantive work on the projects (which has lagged considerably under the current government).
What are the origins of GIDs? The military seems to be absorbing much of what this particular company produces. This unfortunate state of affairs would continue until there is no civilian oversight. The interest groups in uniform would continue rewarding themselves at the expense of the national interest which lies in investing in indigenous private solution providers enabling them to achieve scale and become viable parts of the defense supply chain.
GIDS = Marketing arm for NESCOM. If I had a dollar for every time I had to write that here.
