You are missing some key information. I wish to add to your pool of information, to help you update your world view.
During Musharraf's time when USAID PhD scholarships were in full effect, a group of Pakistani students ran an experiment. In the interview for USAID, they were asked questions such as 'How do you think you can help with America's perception in Pakistan' etc. One of them gave extremely confrontational answers such as 'American needs to help itself if it wants to improve its perception in Pakistan' etc. The others gave the obvious answers. I learnt this first hand from one of the students who gave the 'obvious answers': "As I was leaving the meeting room, the door started shutting behind me. The committee, thinking the door has completely shut, started their evaluation while the door was open just a crack. This is what I heard: 'He seems to have the kind of mind that we can mold...'". And so we have first hand proof, right from the horse's mouth: they are looking for weak, subservient minds that they can mold. The significant thing is that this is the FIRST thing they discussed. For a PhD program where one has to display intellectual capacity, creativity, depth of knowledge in one's field, a yearning for research and learning, they VERY FIRST thing they evaluated as soon as they thought the candidate is out of earshot, was ability to mold the mind.
The guy who gave confrontational answers did not make it. Let me assure you he is outstandingly smart, with an excellent academic record, and deserved the scholarship as much as any other candidate. The others who got selected were called for an orientation. The contents of the 'orientation' included information such as 'In America, if a girl wants to kiss you, you cannot deny her', as well as dancing lessons. Then they were invited to the American embassy for an evening where wine was openly available and they were expected to show how much they have learnt from the orientation.
And this will not change even if you send professionals from armed forces. You think professionals from armed forces aren't looking for a way out of Pakistan? How about the topmost generals whose kids are studying or living abroad? Don't we all agree these generals are a security risk? Even I being a civilian have run into well connected individuals who try to guage me by bad mouthing Pakistan. This is a key test to see how sincere somebody is to Pakistan. As soon as they find someone willing to work against their own country, they start to groom them. This is exactly what will happen to those professionals you send. You used to be the 'Counter terrorism expert' on the forum. Surely you understand all the implications? Or are you looking for a way out yourself?
Here is a proposal on how to build capacity within Pakistan. First let us identify the root cause of our backwardness. It is under-developed intellectual capacity. Our education system is geared towards memorization and regurgitation. The students realize much of what they are learning won't be used in the industry. There is actually no 'industry' for graduates of electrical, electronic, mechanical, and other types of engineering. Most of them already know they will be doing computer programming. Others will move on to an MBA degree. Many others will end up in a career that has nothing to do with engineering.
The very first step towards progress is the establishment of workplaces where people realize they have to put their academic knowledge to use. Their induction, continuation, and progress in organizational hierarchy depend on actually applying their graduate knowledge, and improving upon it through personal initiative. This means having managers and team leads who demand this attitude. These organizations will have to be numerous enough, and we will need a lead time until our society wakes up and realizes the importance of actually acquiring knowledge during graduate degrees.
What our workplaces expect and demand of us goes a long way in shaping us as a society. This is also true for military organizations such as POF, NESCOM, etc. Don't be fooled by successes such as Shaheen and Raad. These organizations are full of the poorest outputs from Pakistani institutions. I have friends who have worked on simulators. These guys tell horror stories about the code base developed for these simulators. And the sad aspect is that these horror stories reflect poor understanding of the programming language they were using, along with poor understanding of software development itself, and project management. The attitude of project leaders is application of manual, laborious, brute force measures to keep things working. There is no culture of sitting back and learning from own mistakes. No culture of reading journals or news articles and trying to apply best practices. By the way, this information is now pretty old. Hopefully things have changed for the better.
The road towards progress leads through the toiling fields of self-realization, and self-improvement. I am confident that if attitudes change in the leadership, at least our military organizations can embrace a cultural shift.
By the way, I am not opposed to attracting talent from abroad, per proposals from
@syed1 @JamD and
@Bilal Khan (Quwa) but they cannot comprise the main workforce of Azm. They can bring in special expertise in some areas, but in order to achieve the ambitions of Azm, we need to rise as a nation from within.
