I will only respond to the last paragraph of your post. When the PAF/PN/PA are acquiring drones from multiple sources and fulfilling their requirements Azm appears to just be another institution where people gain fat arses from sitting in plush offices and doing nothing. In the long run PAF will be forced to look inwards but currently nothing of value has been produced due to multiple factors ( foreign items make money for generals, lack of investmemt into infrastructure, and lack of basic infrastructure being one of the many reasons). I dont know whether we have put the cart before the horse here or what! However I will be absolutely thrilled and proud when we start producing post graduate students to supply to the rest of the world like all other institutes in Pakistan. We lose people as we cannot pay them what other companies will pay, there is no career progression and no will to reward genius or individual efforts. Even if something is produced incorporation in the industry becomes problematic. We need to progress far but both the means and the will seems to be lacking at the moment.
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I agree with a lot of stuff you said. I disagree with the part about "generals making money", can some do? Yes, it's like everything else in the world. It would be the same case if two companies produced JFT and J-10C locally, someone will get commissions. This here identifies the LARGEST issue we face in Pakistan. Corruption is "hidden" and done a lot. We need to mature up, there is NO society on planet with 0 corruption. So make a % of it legit, the French and Indians have it at 10%, the US calls it "lobby", etc, etc. The world simply works like this. Whichever politician sells the "chorun" of "corruption free society", is dumb as hell or making people total fools and lying to them far off reality. So if 80/90% is spent on the country and 10% is legally taken as "commission", I am PERSONALLY fine by it, why? Because otherwise 80/90% doesn't go to public right now, it's looted and ALL politicians are involved. Now there are new tactics, you stop supporting them due to their MASSIVE corruption including corruption inside institutions, they try to run over you and want you their police force!
Now, with respect to internal manufacturing and experts, we can't produce PHD's, we don't have the institutions built at that level of expertise. So like India, what we do need first is the Horse, not the cart. We use the same engineers who graduate in thousands with good profiles and train them on strategic weapon's technology (JFT / J-10C being an example). Indians went to US/ Canada / UK around 1995 in numbers, studied and worked there and it was only from 2015 onwards you started to hear "design houses" forming in India whether through DRDO or other Tech institutes, until 2010 or so, they worked overseas and learned and established institutions. That's a 30 year journey.
This links to the SAME theme I've been singing, SOMEONE needs to start thinking long term for Pakistan! We have the JFT manufacturing in house and Mirage rebuild factory, the senior most talent exists, we need to go into an overdrive and expand these center of excellence quickly, supplement by our labor force towards J-10C, Drones, may be a BVR weapon, and whatever else becomes "strategic enough". A part of this labor then needs to be sent for PHD's and bring back to expand the local knowledge base. 15 years from now, we'll be where you want to be at, but in that timeframe, we'd have established independence in producing critical components or majority of strategic assets with a much lower cost, with institutions or center of excellence and support current acquisitions for next 30 years.
This right here needs to be a national strategy on everything. Right now being one of the poorest countries we import everything, from food, grocery items, to oil, gas, machinery, defense equipment! And the entire nation LOVES foreign brands and has no sense of Nationalism!
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