Simply put Bangladesh is a young nation. It has massive potential. It is SO underdeveloped. And the inherent capabilities of Bangladeshis are tremendous if properly cultivated. This means EDUCATION! education, healthcare, infrastructure development should take precedence over military procurement in my opinion. That being said, I think some baseline capability should always be present with BAF armed forces of course.
Bangladesh' HDI and education development goals (including literacy) is higher than neighbors such as India, with
_half_ the budget per capita that India spends. We have more girls than boys in school, which is unheard of in South Asia (and even some Muslim countries in Asia), which is heavily backward in this regard. We can have development in education
_and_ military procurement. I don't see the point why the two factors have any relationship and have to be mutually exclusive.....as our economy grows we have to abandon these backward self-limiting thoughts...... we are so behind in every factor from everyone else, we don't have the luxury of time to dodder about.....
Purchasing the two old Mings were brilliant i thought. It takes YEARS to build up a culture for operating submarines. InshAllah after BN is more familiar with the basics, and the economy have improved even more, perhaps 2 new builds or even more will be bought.
While BN trains and builds its submariners, we can start building the subs with ToT. Maybe not nuclear subs to start with, but something like Kilo class or U209 types. The two factors (training and sub building) don't have any causal relationship. They can develop in parallel, why wait? Only Bangladesh' enemies would support a philosophy of waiting so they can dominate us.
Mings are just a training platform and not offensive platform. India put decommissioned Mings in a roadside museum in Chennai some ten years ago.
All I'm saying is this. Bangladesh has bigger fish to fry then worry about developing an indigenous military production capability. It is several years, if not a generation or two away from that even being a concern in the face of other more immediate concerns.
I'd disagree. With so much lacking in this field, we should indigenize
_any_ sort of defense production to become self-reliant. If we have the money to invest, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. How shameful is it, to go to a foreign source, asking to buy simple arms like AK-47's or Sniper rifles or armoured cars like COBRAs? True - we have local production on some of these items but with how many factories we have, we should be making most of these items ourselves.
Your views would not jive with that of most people in Bangladesh I'm afraid.