The question remains, what has BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited produced apart from producing Brahmos
Their part is the navigation systems, new software and mission computers, which served our purpose in first place. You think as Brahmos as a newly developted missile, like Barak 8, but it isn't! It's a missile further developed from the Russian once, just like Maitri SAM is based on MICA VL and is further developed to suit our requirements. In both cases, the original missiles obviously will remain on the market and like we saw in the case of the P800, are even cheaper, or might come with other political or defence offers, that India can't provide. However, exports were never the aim of Brahmos, nor will it be for Maitri, but to get a capability for our forces, suitable for our requirements, which our industry was not able to develop on their own!
Next ... are there any ramjet missiles drdo has in the pipeline that they have learned from brahmos project? All DRDO has learned from brahmos is to produce brahmos, thats it.
That's what you say, but how do you know if the navigation systems they developed for Brahmos were not used in Nirbhay as well? The Brahmos light version (which btw is not only a scalled down version as you wrongly think) will have a new jointly developed Ramjet propulsion and do you think we will not benefit from that? The Hypersonic Brahmos will be all over a complete NG missile, which even the US is only developing right now and do you honestly belive that we would get similar even at the end of the next decade, if we would have done it alone?
Whereas indigenous projects like pinaka brings the capability to take a basic MBRL system and develop it into a smerch class system and even further, or Astra which can have follow ups to it.
You compare Brahmos with Pinaka? That's like saying developing FGFA is as simple as developing LCA!
As I said, we can and we must develop indigenous arms and techs, but only as far as we can and that is only at the lower level. To defend India we need more and these high tech arms and techs can either be procured from foreign sources, which makes us dependent on them (just think about how often Russia would have increased the price by now, of we had just simply procured the P800), can be build in JVs or joint developments.
We still have time, we need to take the high road and start doing the hard work, hire the best minds in the industry, and put money behind the research.
That's sounds nice, but no offense it's a naive point of view!
It completelly leaves out the defence needs of India and only looks at the industrial side (which ADA, DRDO and HAL already makes way too often and what turned out to be a major problem too!!!), bu if we had just put money in indigenous in the 80s for example, do you think we would have been able to defend ourselfs during Kargil war?
It was Mig 29s and Su 30Ks that secured the air and it was Mirage and Jags that were able to do precision strikes, after we integrated US and Israeli LGBs. With "hoping" on the older Migs and possibly the Marut, we would never had changed the war like that, because money alone don't get you expertise, that's what the Chinese proves, since all their investments didn't get them a high tech fighter engine either right?
The top priority always needs to be the defence of the country, industrial benefits have to come later, or on the lower side, where delays can be taken as a calculated risk. That's why LCA is mainly important to set up an Indian aero industry, but not for the defence of the country!