What to demand in a ToT?

[shehbazi2001]

Some time ago, we heard that both PAF and PA are buying SAMs and UAVs and there were some rumors of ToT.

If PAF or PA are doing ToT alongwith purchase of SAM batteries or UAVs, then it would be beneficial to discuss some important things about it.

ToTs done till now did not help us become self-sufficient.

ToT is not only the drawings of individual components or their assemblies, types of materials or alloys used, heat treatment and surface treatment details, quality certification criteria and manufacturing techniques.

Real Tot items are the details of engineering calculations for the design of individual elements like external aerodynamic design calculations of missile/aircraft body like lift+drag+skin friction+shock wave formation at various angles of attack and speeds, control surfaces calculation like required surface area of rudders+fins and positioning on the fuselage and their effectiveness in presence of shock waves, control scheme in subsonic and
supersonic regimes,structural design of main body like maximum bending stress and torsional strength, battery or power source for actuators and motors, selection criteria of actuators and motors based on power needed for control surfaces, variation of power needed by control surfaces with speed and turning angle, nozzle design for smooth operation from sea level to high altitude, propulsion motor with its grain design and thrust variation with time
and altitude, warhead design, proximity fuse operation details and design, uplink and downlink with radars and numerous other calculations of electrical, electronics and chemical engineering.

In each ToT, there must be two main parts. Production part and Design part.

 

[BATMAN]

^^Good subject.
Perhaps you would agree to add service/maintenance as well, in your last sentence.

There are few other dimensions to it, (used by our friendly neighbor). i.e.
Ask the respective state to help in other R&D programmers, which may not even be related to the potential sale.
Ask for installing a production unit.
Ask for investments in other sectors.
Ask for jobs/trainings/sponsorships.
Ask for support on various political fronts.

 

[shehbazi2001]

yes maintenance and repair parts are part of it. But as u manufacture all the parts, u can do maintenance urself after even the basic ToT of production.

The electronics are mostly replaced after a certain time, they are not repaired....so are the sealings.....they are just replaced....

But if design part is not included in ToT, then what happens......

Suppose we did a TOT for a certain item (for a defence item or a washing machine or sewing machine or a fan). We start producing it and make certain quantity.

Then after 10 years or even earlier the new model arrives in the market. Your item becomes obsolete. You are not in a position to develop new item because u dont know how to design it.

Then u shall do a new ToT again?....its better not to do a ToT when u cant take the product further.....then its better just to buy some pieces directly....

Its like locomotive factory near Risalpur. After making initial engines, we were not capable of improving the design and thousands of employees dont have anything to do then.....

The same is the story of Heavy Mechanical Complex (HMC), Taxila. HMC was a shining complex at start. But as it was just production-oriented without any specific R&D, its shine soon finished.

So R&D on understanding the current systems, improving the existing systems, designing new products and then bringing new ideas is the way to success.

 

[araz]

A really good topic and worthy of discussion. The evolution of a product is something that people keep in their minds when they make original contracts. For example in Uk, firms sometimes dont buy equipment but lease them and have them replaced when their projected life expires. As against that in machinery this is difficult to do unless you have ongoing collaboration with the parent company. This may have been the reason for the recent Thales contract with pakistan.
However, as you have rightly pointed out unless you have potential R+D ongoing, there will be no progress.
Why do WE not do it. Perhaps, lack of fresight, perhaps, lack of resources, and perhaps corruption. Possibly lack of will on the part of provider. This may be due to the saize of our market.
regards
Araz

 

[fatman17]

^^^i am not a engineer, but for R&D (of the sort we r talking about) one needs these high-speed computers which can do these intricate calculations in a matter of seconds. i dont think we have any such capability. these computers are only available in the US. i think US has sold 1-unit to india (pls correct me)

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

PK so ToT is Transfer of Technology!

I thought it was Time Over Target as per the military abbreviations.

 

[BATMAN]

Then after 10 years or even earlier the new model arrives in the market. Your item becomes obsolete. You are not in a position to develop new item because u dont know how to design it.

Then u shall do a new ToT again?....its better not to do a ToT when u cant take the product further.....then its better just to buy some pieces directly....

Their's no harm either. At least, it generates jobs and help to develop skilled manpower. if you are not really dum than you may abe able to reverse engineer the subject product before it's obsolete and continue its development from that point onwards.

 

[BATMAN]

^^^i am not a engineer, but for R&D (of the sort we r talking about) one needs these high-speed computers which can do these intricate calculations in a matter of seconds. i dont think we have any such capability. these computers are only available in the US. i think US has sold 1-unit to india (pls correct me)

Though the modern day development is calculation based but still not limited by computers. Infect, it is software based and such calculation softwares can be purchased off the shelf and what is required is a computer who can run the programe, even laptops can run most of programs. It is even possible to record your equations and develop models in `excel` but dedicated development softwares are available in the market which have directories of premade basic calculation modules to aid development of further complex modules and function blocks to develop eventual macro. It is more like building blocks with possibility to develop your own blocks and you protect your development with codes and even if you market your development for others to use they can still not do any modifications or know what’s inside, until they have access to the codes. Off course the target is to meet the parameters with least complex macro, demanding less hardware and eventual bugs which should be located in lab testing and pilot projects. Those development softwares are developed by software developers and there is wide choice of basic languages to develop any software.

The hardware which if matters is the hardware of the product. Even if you have an extremely complex equation or enormous amount of data, what it is required is appropriate design engineering of existing hardware and technologies. What eventually matters is the application, size and ambience. i.e. how fast you need to process the signal and how many space processors will acquire and are specs. of processor and associated electronics is suitable to the altitude and temperatures of final installation.
Design engineering could also be very challenging in cases of extreme design parameters. Whereas design engineering is generally worked out using basic engineering equations, which can be done by calculator but you can organize your work by saving your calculation in excel so in next similar calculation time can be saved and errors be avoided.

Coming back to the hardware; since electronics have seen major shift in signal processing and signal modeling, which is now done by processors instead of having various circuits involving conversion, attenuation, carrier, feedback and filtering etc. until the final signal is produced or before the actual wheel start rotating or knowing speed and position of machines and process, accurately enough that matters to application. e.g. many calculations based theories existed but not materialized unless high speed processors were developed and similarly processors were in the market from long time but further electronic components were not developed to convert / handle fast processing results of processors to replace conventional circuits.

I see, development mainly as bi-direction one is the fabrication of semiconductors, which for me is still basically transistor development making them as small as possible and as fast as possible. And second direction is refining and developing macros reducing hardware as much possible. So what is happening is we are striving to go nano and targeting all applications. Having a compact product can be achieved by working on both directions i.e. developing smaller semiconductors or by reducing the hardware components by virtue of software modeling of any existing design function, using complex mathematical models.

It really doesn’t matter if India has been gifted by super computer they can only use it to process large amount of data or do their calculations very fast and so can be only helpful to develop artificial models bit faster but does speed difference of seconds in such matters really? Anyway, today the hardware of computer is not the bottle neck of development.

Whereas, It has all been changed in Pakistan’s education, within a brief amount of time. I’m proud to say that now we have many more engineering universities. Some of my family kids have recently graduated from NUST and upon looking at their resume, I found that all those development softwares are not only accessible to them, instead they develop their projects using those advance softwares and are in better position to start carriers in the field of development, where as old graduate like me is only good for engineering work. There are new technologies introduced in universities and graduates are already working in development at NESCOM. I do not know much about the other new universities but that’s how I know NUST which has become one of world’s leading university, having affiliations with universities all across the globe.

 

[shehbazi2001]

^^^i am not a engineer, but for R&D (of the sort we r talking about) one needs these high-speed computers which can do these intricate calculations in a matter of seconds. i dont think we have any such capability. these computers are only available in the US. i think US has sold 1-unit to india (pls correct me)

Supercomputers for R&D are "nice to have" but not "need to have". Plus nowadays many computers are used "in parallel" a network and it works. Additionally small supercomputers are available to almost everyone.

heavy supercomputing is required in computational work only, not necessarily in experimental work, but then it depends on the nature of work.

To give a rough idea to non-aerospace members, a typical small simulation of aerospace design engineering takes 24-30 hours on a 3GHz processor computer with 2GB RAM.

I would like to add that in advanced countries , these supercomputers are a SHARED resource. All important R&D organisations make "reservations" in advance for using the supercomputer.

Therefore, Pakistan can start by establishing a Centre for Supercomputing. Currently the most powerful supercomputer is probably in Japan.

 

[shehbazi2001]

Their's no harm either. At least, it generates jobs and help to develop skilled manpower. if you are not really dum than you may abe able to reverse engineer the subject product before it's obsolete and continue its development from that point onwards.

Yes of course, for job creation it works.........but reverse engineering, I doubt it.......I think we all dont understand whats reverse engineering.......

If u manufacture an item, it means u have its all specifications,documents and drawings........may be through a production ToT........Here what is the role of reverse engineering???? u already have the specs and drawings......

the reverse engineering may be to understand how it is designed......and I dont think that a production-manager can do this.......only the people qualified in design can do this..........this is what I think....others may differ....

 

[fatman17]

Supercomputers for R&D are "nice to have" but not "need to have". Plus nowadays many computers are used "in parallel" a network and it works. Additionally small supercomputers are available to almost everyone.

heavy supercomputing is required in computational work only, not necessarily in experimental work, but then it depends on the nature of work.

To give a rough idea to non-aerospace members, a typical small simulation of aerospace design engineering takes 24-30 hours on a 3GHz processor computer with 2GB RAM.

I would like to add that in advanced countries , these supercomputers are a SHARED resource. All important R&D organisations make "reservations" in advance for using the supercomputer.

Therefore, Pakistan can start by establishing a Centre for Supercomputing. Currently the most powerful supercomputer is probably in Japan.

if modern day R&D is so "simple" as u have explained - then what is the hitch. why is Pakistani R&D 20-30 yrs behind the times.

 

[fatman17]

^^^and further why then do we need ToT (transfer of technology)

 

[Always Neutral]

Supercomputers for R&D are "nice to have" but not "need to have". Plus nowadays many computers are used "in parallel" a network and it works. Additionally small supercomputers are available to almost everyone.

heavy supercomputing is required in computational work only, not necessarily in experimental work, but then it depends on the nature of work.

To give a rough idea to non-aerospace members, a typical small simulation of aerospace design engineering takes 24-30 hours on a 3GHz processor computer with 2GB RAM.

I would like to add that in advanced countries , these supercomputers are a SHARED resource. All important R&D organisations make "reservations" in advance for using the supercomputer.

Therefore, Pakistan can start by establishing a Centre for Supercomputing. Currently the most powerful supercomputer is probably in Japan.

Its not that easy as you make it sound.

Regards

 

[shehbazi2001]

if modern day R&D is so "simple" as u have explained - then what is the hitch. why is Pakistani R&D 20-30 yrs behind the times.

Its a very very long topic.............but a few sentences can be written..........Because we have not invested properly in R&D or even Engineering Education till now and we dont follow the policy of merit completely.

Once our instructor took us for an experiment and the machine was really old. The instructor told us that when he was a student some 30 years ago, he also did experiment on the same machine.

Tell me which univeristy of Pakistan has a functioning Wind Tunnel?, of course, except PAF Collge of Aeronautics. Perhaps there are no Rapid Prototyping labs too........I think that there are no Gas Turbines samples in UETs.............the steam turbines lying in UETs are in pathetic condition and even dangerous to operate from safety point of view.............Machines in the workshops of UETs are mostly out of order.....students cant train on them...........etc

R&D does not mean that u buy a Pentium-4 for the engineer and he shall start clicking. The real thing is experimentation and Laboratories. After initial training on softwares, a young engineer should start doing practical work of experimentation in conjunction with his computer work.

Our universities needs funding to buy new training equipment.............Its a pity that our universities too depend upon donations of equipment from various sources.........

The human resource development has only recently been taken into focus nationally by Higher Education Commission..........

And I did not mean that R&D is easy thing. It needs patience.

 

[Always Neutral]

Its a very very long topic.............but a few sentences can be written..........Because we have not invested properly in R&D or even Engineering Education till now and we dont follow the policy of merit completely.

Once our instructor took us for an experiment and the machine was really old. The instructor told us that when he was a student some 30 years ago, he also did experiment on the same machine.

Tell me which univeristy of Pakistan has a functioning Wind Tunnel?, of course, except PAF Collge of Aeronautics. Perhaps there are no Rapid Prototyping labs too........I think that there are no Gas Turbines samples in UETs.............the steam turbines lying in UETs are in pathetic condition and even dangerous to operate from safety point of view.............Machines in the workshops of UETs are mostly out of order.....students cant train on them...........etc

R&D does not mean that u buy a Pentium-4 for the engineer and he shall start clicking. The real thing is experimentation and Laboratories. After initial training on softwares, a young engineer should start doing practical work of experimentation in conjunction with his computer work.

Our universities needs funding to buy new training equipment.............Its a pity that our universities too depend upon donations of equipment from various sources.........

The human resource development has only recently been taken into focus nationally by Higher Education Commission..........

And I did not mean that R&D is easy thing. It needs patience.

What about the money required ? where will it come from ?

Regards