Why Babur cruise missile is wholly Pakistan designed and engineered product.

[Rafeh]

This article is about the myth that the Babur cruise missile is a copy and Pakistan does not or did not not have the expertise to produce cruise missiles of its own.

Its a myth because of the following fundamental law:

Law: To reverse engineer something you have be to at the level of expertise at which the engineers of original product created it.

I am not talking about simple things such as law mover.

I am talking about something as complex as a cruise missile. Let’s see rigorously why this is so.

First take the scenario where you something better than the product which is a specification of its parts.


So instead of a product and no data, you are given the actual geometric design, then it is still just a collection of surfaces (arranged to form solids say). Regardless, knowing this surface data, or associated materials etc. among other things is not enough to produce the actual thing as will be shown.

That is when instead of a product you are given the actual production data required to produce each part it is still meaningless if you don’t have the expertise required to produce that product as a whole functioning system. It will become clearer late in the article. Meaning having in your hand, the shape of things (the surface geometry data of parts etc.) along with materials properties etc. will NOT allow you to create the final functioning product, if you don’t have the relevant expertise.

It gets worse when instead of engineering product specifications, all you have is the actual product and no product related data. Since even when you are given a product in hand, its impossible to copy it exactly.

Firstly you cannot even construct the exact geometry because of the measurements uncertainties due to existing wear and tear in parts, computer numerical approximations and so on. Finding out what exact material was used where or in what manner and for what purpose can be painfully hard. Even more harder is the fact that how and what manufacturing methods, processes and machinery were required to produce those parts with the same quality, engineering specifications and tolerances. Then let’s assume that you go through all this by magic or something (you still need industrial expertise to produce these parts though). What you have is still a set of parts. Parts that are imperfect, parts that you can never ever produce exactly or with the same industrial production methods that the original nation used to create them.

Then there are parts and electronics that you CAN never produce or even analyze their true nature, not to mention software unless you are at the same level of engineering expertise which the originating nation used to create them. Even then its more cost effective and easier to design things from scratch.

But let’s assume you finally go through it all (by magic say). You still have parts. What then. The sum of parts requires expertise to make them function as a full product, a high degree of engineering expertise. Examples to illustrate this phenomena are as follow:

Example 1: Even when you have all the above problems solved, who will supply you with the aerodynamic, stability and control derivatives and so on that are required to actually synthesize the final flight control and guidance laws for this cruise missile. They are not written on the product, you have find them yourself. For that you need again a high degree of expertise at the same level of engineers that actually produced the original missile in the first place. For that you need mastery of the same fundamentals of missile aerodynamics, stability theory, nonlinear systems and control theory, recursive Bayesian filtering theory and so on at the same level of “you guessed it” the originating nation’s engineers’ expertise (specifically also in CFD, wind-tunnel testing and other engineering analysis to finally come up with those guidance and control laws (among many other things).

Example 2: Again, as above, say you have by magic solved all problems but then you have other sub-systems such as say the obvious one, the engine. Say you begin with inlet and compressor stage. You still have to do all same analysis at the same level of engineers who produced that engine and this analysis is required to synthesis that said engine. You will still need to calculate (e.g. velocity/pressure gradients) or analyze inlet geometry-compressor interactions, or carry out combustion analysis (e.g. stability of combustion, various efficiencies parameters involved and list of things to do goes on forever). You need this analysis not to see just see that the whole thing will work under all of “your unique environment, requirements and constraints and because of so many inevitable changes you end up introducing”, but also you need these analysis, calculations and parameters for so many things. For example, for various control algorithms that control and stabilize various functions of the engine and to ensure required engine-airframe integration with engineering specifications and so on. This list of analysis is huge and highly complex. All of it requires teams of people with vast and high degree of engineering expertise before you can do that.

And WHO said, you don’t need highly sophisticated structural analysis (both static and dynamic) for everything and every part and as whole. Yes, you need the same expertise that those people who originally designed the actual thing to engineer it. You must characterize every part and system as a whole using a complex web of engineering analysis before you produce a cruise missile. Without it you can't trust anything nor it can work, ever.
There are so many other sub-systems needs to be analyzed too.

Its not a frying pan you are copying, it is a highly complex and sophisticated cruise missile.

What about guidance and control laws and other cruise missile associated software (e.g. general hybrid or at least switching control laws that ensure smooth transition when booster separates form the actual missile at a given height, velocity etc. among so many others things).

Does US drops a large team of highly skilled engineers with every missile to carry out all that sophisticated analysis too?

Obviously they don’t. Though I urge them to do it next time. Apparently we don’t have them as by some uniformed people.

Nor US drops complex missile associated software source code along with the missile.

If people still did not get, what this post is saying. It saying:

TO design and engineer an F-16 from its sample, you still need to be:

• At the same level of engineering expertise at which the F-16 was analyzed and synthesized in the first place. In such theoretical analysis, Pakistan is already way ahead. For example initial F-16 used a simple linearized flight control system. Due to theoretical and computational advances and associated computational hardware since 1970s, Pakistan now routinely uses far more modern highly sophisticated computer hardware (compared to 70s), with far more advanced computational analysis (e.g. advanced CFD involving full navier stokes equations etc., Finite element analysis), far more sophisticated flight control analysis (e.g. nonlinear and adaptive control theory instead of linear one etc.) and so on. (see my explanation below on how masters and PhD degree requires first catching up with all the current knowledge and advances in the field before creating more advance one and Pakistan military has plenty of masters and PhDs).
• What Pakistan did not have but only recently beginning to have is the industrial capacity to actually produce what it could theoretically and computationally analyze all along. So now we can do the engineering analysis like before (we had the expertise) but did not have the industrial capacity and the money to actually create it. Thanks to our missile programs, and projects such as JF-17, we increasingly have that industrial capacity now. We can do both now, the analysis and design, and the actual production (to at least a large degree and increasingly more every year).

So what does then reverse engineering means. Well it gives a good starting point. If say US has used a certain material coating (or heat or other chemical treatments etc.) to say for things such as improved temperature handling, you can take it as starting point (provided you can identify said coating, chemical treatments etc. and manufacture it all off course). Its kind of gives you trust that hey it worked for them. May be start with it. You still need to carry out the heat transfer analysis or Multi-physics and/or multi-scale analysis, or chemical analysis etc. at the “same level of expertise” which was used to select that coating, that heat and/or chemical treatment in the first place. But instead of analyzing 10 different coatings or optimize over 100’s, you might and note might, only need to analyze few or need less time to optimize things. Still more than once you have to do it, as you would have an imperfect copy of the original (due to real world constraints as discussed above), and as a result you might need to check similar coatings etc. to determine their efficiencies/performances as compared to the one used on the original one. In other words you do the same analysis, only over fewer iterations and/or design variations and that allows you to shorten the development time and reduce cost. That’s it. That’s the benefit of reverse engineering in a nut shell.

For complex, reliable and highly functioning products such as cruise missiles, you still need the same engineering expertise at the same level of those who originally produced the original product to make them work.

So please people should give Pakistan military, NESCOM, PAF and other hard working and highly competent scientists and engineers with undergraduate, masters and PhDs degrees from around world, a break, since it does requires a high degree of engineering, mathematical and scientific expertise to produce a cruise missile and if not:

Then please go to google patents, and you will find 10,000’s of expired patents for all sorts of bombs, missile components, aircraft subsystems and show the rest of Pakistan by actually producing anything out of it and without those high degree of expertise.

Actually use the latest ones since most of those patents are only locally legally binding to say in US, or EU or Japan. They are not valid in Pakistan. Since after all a patent often gives more “specific information” than say a used, dropped, damaged, and off course partially destroyed complex missile system. Why not make millions of dollars from those patents, if it doesn’t not require same level of expertise at which those patents were originally conceived.

If someone him/herself struggled in undergraduate engineering degree program, does not mean all Pakistani did. Every Pakistani has a different level of intelligence and/or determination and Pakistan military employs the best of them. Pakistan military has to deliver “real results”.

Secondly undergraduate or even PhD is not enough if a person is not “scientifically minded by nature”.

People with higher intelligence than say an average PhD go far beyond that said PhD.

Many highly intelligent post-doctoral Pakistani researchers continue to rapidly advance their knowledge and expertise becoming far far more then when they were when they finished their masters or PhD. Plenty of them are employed by our military.

Its even more important to realize that you can catch up with the most advanced knowledge in the world in a single or so years after you have mastered the fundamentals.

Proof: say you go to do a PhD at MIT, USA. What they ask you to do. They require you to get that PhD by requiring the following:

Produce a new piece of knowledge, advancing the current one, beyond at what it is today, in your field of research.

That’s what a PhD degree is. Unless you can master all the current level by then on your topic or field, you can’t advance it beyond current level. So you can catch up with everyone around the world, including Europe and USA in your field or area of research. What you can’t catch up quickly is the industrial capacity to produce everything and off course economics to support it. That requires not just money but entire supply chain.

The point is, you can always catch up with the expertise of developed world, always and quickly so, industrial capacity not so.

Put it bluntly, you have to catch up with the America or EU to get that PhD in your field, no matter where you do your PhD since now days, even in Pakistan, PhD in many universities require a “foreign approving professor” (e.g. japanese, Europeans or USA or Chinese) who reads your thesis and tell your UNI that hey this is good enough. Plus more often than not, you must publish your research in an internationally peer reviewed journal before you can get a PhD. Most Pakistani and international universities require it. Most Pakistani doctoral supervising professor are very competent and often have a PhD from reputable international university.

Then after your PhD when you have some fundamental understanding, you continue to advance your knowledge and eventually in few years become hopefully an expert in at least one area. More intelligent ones become multi-disciplinary experts.

Pakistan military does employs many of those multi-disciplinary experts with more determination and with more concern since they are required to defend the second largest Muslim nation on earth surrounded by the second largest and hostile country on earth (by population). Not to mention Pakistan needs to deal with so many other unnecessary adversaries.

It is natural therefore that even though still a developing nation, Pakistan created one of best if not the best spy agencies in the world but also a professional military force backed by considerably large compared to our economy, military technology development and research complex that despite the severe financial constraints, has been able to deliver sophisticated hardware capable of flattening Pakistan’s adversaries to the ruble.

Pakistan did produce Babur missile and other missiles with its own expertise. Every shred of evidence points to it since its specifications (range, size, etc.) are too different from rest of the world. A little difference in specifications and you have to go through whole engineering analysis again, worse it might not even work. No country starts exactly from scratch. Everyone starts and built upon what is known. So they started with a well-known configuration since it, let’s admit it, aerodynamically the most efficient one. That’s why everybody uses it. Forms follows the function. Its as simple.

Pakistan is a competent nation even when a certain Pakistani individual may not feel that way. Also please, people should stop projecting their own hardships or struggle with learning complex concepts on every Pakistani and Pakistan as a whole. Plain English and respectfully, if it was hard for one person does not mean its hard for everybody. Others do master it and get things done. With persistent hard work even the struggling one can get it too. Our brain is a self organizing system meaning when pushed beyond its current learning capabilities, it self organizes (changes its functioning and structure in response to external demands due to a phenomena called neuroplasticity among others) to become superior then before. Meaning our intelligence increases in proportion to our efforts to learn complex information over time. We become smarter.


P.S. I won’t reply things as I am tired, and unwell and have too many things to do this whole month. If anyone does not want to believe the truth, good for them. Those of us who work in the field know the truth and appreciate Pakistan’s achievements. May be others should too. Its okay to accept the truth and live in the actual reality.

Pakistan can and does get things done. Pakistan remains a nation that shows to the world what a determine developing nation can do to safeguard itself against very large and very well armed adversary. That’s quite uncommon.

Side note: Terrain matching system of Pakistan's Babur cruise missile requires well matching/correlating terrain data with previously obtained ground or satellite data (say from commercial satellites in the past obtained by say SUPARCO and now perhaps from our own Pakistan remote sensing satellite (prss-1). Actually now a days digital 3D maps are freely available. You don't need even satellites for that. It has nothing to do with developing a satellite in the country (Pakistan is rapidly making advances in that front too). Now a days Pakistan likely uses A.I. to identify terrain features. Part of PAF CENTAIC research on A.I. involves imagery analysis. Pakistan produces large number of research in A.I., a lot of it in image processing so it should be easy for Pakistan).

@Bilal Khan (Quwa)

 

[CrazyZ]

By Nawaz Sharif.

 

[IbnAbdullah]

Salaam

This article is about the myth that the Babur cruise missile is a copy and Pakistan does not or did not not have the expertise to produce cruise missiles of its own.

Its a myth because of the following fundamental law:

Law: To reverse engineer something you have be to at the level of expertise at which the engineers of original product created it.

I am not talking about simple things such as law mover.

I am talking about something as complex as a cruise missile. Let’s see rigorously why this is so.

First take the scenario where you something better than the product which is a specification of its parts.


So instead of a product and no data, you are given the actual geometric design, then it is still just a collection of surfaces (arranged to form solids say). Parts of anything including those of a cruise missile interact with each other at the boundaries of these surfaces. Things also interact as a body too etc. say without surfaces touching. For example gravity where you don’t have to touch to experience its effects or electromagnetic forces (as in motors) where interaction can take place without touching. Regardless, knowing this surface data, or associated materials etc. among other things is not enough to produce the actual thing as we will show.

That is when instead of a product you are given the actual production data required to produce each part it is still meaningless if you don’t have the expertise required to produce that product as a whole functioning system. Meaning having in your hand, the shape of things (the surface geometry data etc.) along with materials properties etc. will NOT allow you to create the final functioning product, if you don’t have the relevant expertise.

It gets worse when instead of engineering product specifications, all you have is the actual product and no product related data. Since even when you are given a product in hand, its impossible to copy it exactly. Firstly you cannot even construct the exact geometry because of the measurements uncertainties, existing wear and tear in parts, computer numerical approximations and so on. Finding out what exact material was used where or in what manner and for what purpose can be painfully hard. Even more harder is the fact that how and what manufacturing methods, processes and machinery were required to produce those parts with the same quality, engineering specifications and tolerances. Then let’s assume that you go through all this by magic or something (you still need industrial expertise to produce these parts though). What you have is still a set of parts. Parts that are imperfect, parts that you can never ever produce exactly or with the same industrial production methods that the original nation used to create them.

Then there are parts and electronics that you CAN never produce or even analyze their true nature, not to mention software unless you are at the same level of engineering expertise which the originating nation used to create them. Even then its more cost effective and easier to design things from scratch.

But let’s assume you finally go through it all (by magic say). You still have parts. What then. The sum of parts requires expertise to make them function as a full product, a high degree of engineering expertise. Examples to illustrate this phenomena are as follow:

Example 1: Even when you have all the above problems solved, who will supply you with the aerodynamic, stability and control derivatives and so on that are required to actually synthesize the final flight control and guidance laws for this cruise missile. For that you need again a high degree of expertise at the same level of engineers that actually produce the original missile in the first place. For that you need mastery of the same fundamentals of missile aerodynamics, stability theory, nonlinear systems and control theory, recursive Bayesian filtering theory and so on at the same level of “you guessed it” the originating nation’s engineers’ expertise (specifically also in CFD, wind-tunnel testing and other engineering analysis to finally come up with those guidance and control laws (among many other things).

Example 2: Again, as above, say you have by magic solved all problems but then you have other sub-systems such as say the obvious one, the engine. Say you begin with inlet and compressor stage. You still have to do all same analysis at the same level of engineers who produced that engine and this analysis is required to synthesis that said engine. You will still need to calculate (e.g. velocity/pressure gradients) or analyze inlet geometry-compressor interactions, or carry out combustion analysis (e.g. stability of combustion, various efficiencies parameters involved and list of things to do goes on forever). You need this analysis not to see just see that the whole thing will work under all of “your unique environment, requirements and constraints and because of so many inevitable changes you end up introducing”, but also you need these analysis, calculations and parameters for so many things. For example, various control algorithms that control and stabilize various function of the engine and to ensure required engine-airframe integration with engineering specifications and so on. This list of analysis is huge and highly complex. All of it requires teams of people with vast and high degree of engineering expertise before you can do that.

And WHO said, you don’t need highly sophisticated structural analysis (both static and dynamic) for everything and every part and as whole. Yes, you need the same expertise that those people who originally designed the actual thing to engineer it. You must characterize every part and system as a whole using a complex web of engineering analysis before you produce a cruise missile.

Its not a frying pan you are copying, it is a highly complex and sophisticated cruise missile.

What about guidance and control laws and other cruise missile associated software (e.g. general hybrid or at least switching control laws that ensure smooth transition when booster separates form the actual missile at a given height, velocity etc. among so many others things).

Does US drops a large team of highly skilled engineers with every missile to carry out all that sophisticated analysis too.

Obviously they don’t. Though I urge them to do it next time. Apparently we don’t have them as by some uniformed people.

If people still did not get, what this post is saying. It saying:

TO design and engineer an F-16 from its sample, you still need to be:

• At the same level of engineering expertise at which the F-16 was analyzed and synthesized in the first place. In such theoretical analysis, Pakistan is already way ahead. For example initial F-16 used a simple linearized flight control system. Due to theoretical and computational advances and associated computational hardware since 1970s, Pakistan now routinely uses far more modern highly sophisticated computer hardware (compared to 70s), with far more advanced computational analysis (e.g. advanced CFD involving full navier stokes equations etc., Finite element analysis), far more sophisticated flight control analysis (e.g. nonlinear and adaptive control theory instead of linear one etc.) and so on. (see my explanation below on how masters and PhD degree requires first catching up with all the current knowledge and advances in the field before creating more advance one and Pakistan military has plenty of masters and PhDs).
• What Pakistan did not have but only recently beginning to have is the industrial capacity to actually produce what it could theoretically and computationally analyze all along. So now we can do the engineering analysis like before (we had the expertise) but did not have the industrial capacity and the money to do it. Thanks to our missile programs, and projects such as JF-17, we have that increasingly that industrial capacity now. We can do both now, the analysis and the actual production (to at least a large degree and increasingly more every year).

So what does then reverse engineering means. Well it gives a good starting point. If say US has used a certain material coating (or heat or other chemical treatments etc.) to say for things such as improve temperature handling, you can take it as starting point (provided you can identify said coating, chemical treatments etc. and manufacture it all off course). Its kind of gives you trust that hey it worked for them. May be start with it. You still need to carry out the heat transfer analysis or Multiphysics and/or multiscale analysis, or chemical analysis etc. at the “same level of expertise” which was used to select that coating, that heat and/or chemical treatment in the first place. But instead of analyzing 10 different coatings or optimize over 100’s, you might and note might, only need to analyze few or need less time to optimize things. Still more than once you have to do it, as you would have an imperfect copy of the original (due to real world constraints as discussed above), and as a result you might need to check similar coatings etc. to determine their efficiencies/performances as compared to the one used on the original one. In other words you do the same analysis, only over fewer iterations and/or design variations and that allows you to shorten the development time and reduce cost. That’s it. That’s the benefit of reverse engineering in a nut shell.



For complex, reliable and highly functioning products such as cruise missiles, you still need the same engineering expertise at the same level of those who originally produced the original product.

So please give Pakistan military, NESCOM, PAF and other hard working and highly competent scientists and engineers with undergraduate, masters and PhDs from around world, a break, since it does requires a high degree of engineering, mathematical and scientific expertise to produce a cruise missile and if not:

Then go to google patents, and you will find 10,000’s of expired patents for all sorts of bombs, missile components, aircraft subsystems and show us by actually producing anything out of it and without those high degree of expertise.

Actually use the latest ones since most of those patents are only locally legally binding to say in US, or EU or Japan. They are not valid in Pakistan. Since after all a patent often gives more “specific information” than say a used, dropped, damaged, and off course partially destroyed complex missile system. Why not make millions of dollars from those patents, if it doesn’t not require same level of expertise at which those patents were originally conceived.

If someone him/herself struggled in undergraduate engineering degree program, does not mean we all Pakistani did. Every Pakistani has a different level of intelligence and Pakistan military employs the best of them. Pakistan military has to deliver “real results”.

Secondly undergraduate or even PhD is not enough if a person is not “scientifically intelligent”.



People with higher intelligence than say an average PhD go far beyond that said PhD.

Many highly intelligent post-doctoral Pakistani researchers continue to rapidly advance their knowledge and expertise becoming far far more then when they were when they finished their masters or PhD. Plenty of them are employed by our military.

Pakistan did produce Babur missile and other missiles with its own expertise. Every shred of evidence points to it since its specifications (range, size, etc.) are too different. No country starts exactly from scratch. Everyone starts and built upon what is known. So they started with a well-known configuration since it, let’s admit it, aerodynamically the most efficient one. That’s why everybody uses it. Forms follows the function. Its as simple.

Its even more important to remember that you can catch up with the most advanced knowledge in the world in a single or so years after you mastered the fundamentals.

Proof: say you go to do a PhD at MIT, USA. What they ask you to do. They require you to get that PhD by requiring the following:

Produce a new piece of knowledge, advancing the current one, beyond at what it is today, in your field of research.

That’s what a PhD degree is. Unless you can master all the current level by then on your topic or field, you can’t advance it beyond current level. So you can catch up with every tom and harry around the world, including Europe and USA in your field or area of research. What you can’t catch up quickly is the industrial capacity to produce everything and off course economics to support it. That requires not just money but entire supply chain.

The point is, you can always catch up with the expertise of developed world, always and quickly so, industrial capacity not so.

Put it bluntly, you have to catch up with the America or EU to get that PhD in your field, no matter where you do your PhD since now days, even in Pakistan, PhD in may universities require a “foreign approver” (e.g. japanes, Europeans or USA or Chinese) who reads your thesis and tell your UNI that hey this is good enough. Plus more often than not, you must publish your research in an internationally peer reviewed journal before you can get a PhD. Most Pakistani and international universities require it. Most Pakistani doctoral supervising professor are very competent and often have a PhD from reputable international university.

Then after your PhD when you some fundamental understanding, you continue to advance your knowledge and eventually in few years become hopefully an expert in at least one area. More intelligent ones become multi-disciplinary experts.

Pakistan military does employs many of those multi-disciplinary experts with more determination and with more concern since they are required to defend the second largest Muslim nation on earth surrounded by the second largest and hostile country on earth (by population). Not to mention Pakistan needs to deal with so many other unnecessary adversaries.

It is natural therefore that even though still a developing nation, Pakistan created one of best if not the best spy agencies in the world but also a professional military force backed by considerably large compared to our economy, military technology development and research complex that despite the severe financial constraints, has been able to deliver sophisticated hardware capable of flattening Pakistan’s adversaries to the ruble.

Pakistan is a competent nation even when a certain Pakistani individual may not feel that way. Also please stop projecting your own hardships or struggle with learning complex concepts on every Pakistani and Pakistan as a whole. Plain English, if it was hard for you, does not mean its hard for everybody. Others do master it and get things done. With persistent hard work you can get it too.


P.S. I won’t reply things as I am tired, and unwell and have too many things to do this whole month. If anyone does not want to believe the truth, good for them. Those of us who work in the field know the truth and appreciate Pakistan’s achievements. May be others should too. Its okay to accept the truth and live in the actual reality.

Pakistan can and does get things done. Pakistan remains a nation that shows to the world what a determine developing nation can do to safeguard itself against very large and very well armed adversary. That’s quite uncommon.

@Bilal Khan (Quwa)

An excellent post, indeed. I read your post and knew it should be a separate threat and ,dare I say, an article on the front page in some widely circulated relevant paper as well.

It's the same as if it was so easy to reverse engineer technology, every tom dick and Harry would've been producing their own latest phones and chipsets.

The Americans were able to go to the moon with 60s tech, the blueprints for which are likely easily available, yet how many can replicate that?

Leave alone such seemingly high tech stuff, just take the example of the humble ballpoint pen.

after a reported five years of research and development, the state-owned company Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group (TISCO) announced that it would begin mass-producing ballpoint pen tips and replace imports within two years.

(link to full article)

It was only a year or two ago that China started to produce the ballpoint pen tips domestically. China with it's mighty technological and industrial power - which was producing nearly 80% of the global pens produced - spent years trying to develop something so seemingly simple.

So what of something as complicated as a cruise missile which incorporates so many different technologies. Therefore, even if we reverse engineered it, that would still make it an exceptional achievement for us and something worthy of celebration.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. Should be sufficient for anyone willing to understand and learn.

 

[peagle]

This article is about the myth that the Babur cruise missile is a copy and Pakistan does not or did not not have the expertise to produce cruise missiles of its own.

Its a myth because of the following fundamental law:

Law: To reverse engineer something you have be to at the level of expertise at which the engineers of original product created it.

I am not talking about simple things such as law mover.

I am talking about something as complex as a cruise missile. Let’s see rigorously why this is so.

First take the scenario where you something better than the product which is a specification of its parts.


So instead of a product and no data, you are given the actual geometric design, then it is still just a collection of surfaces (arranged to form solids say). Parts of anything including those of a cruise missile interact with each other at the boundaries of these surfaces. Things also interact as a body too etc. say without surfaces touching. For example gravity where you don’t have to touch to experience its effects or electromagnetic forces (as in motors) where interaction can take place without touching. Regardless, knowing this surface data, or associated materials etc. among other things is not enough to produce the actual thing as we will show.

That is when instead of a product you are given the actual production data required to produce each part it is still meaningless if you don’t have the expertise required to produce that product as a whole functioning system. Meaning having in your hand, the shape of things (the surface geometry data etc.) along with materials properties etc. will NOT allow you to create the final functioning product, if you don’t have the relevant expertise.

It gets worse when instead of engineering product specifications, all you have is the actual product and no product related data. Since even when you are given a product in hand, its impossible to copy it exactly. Firstly you cannot even construct the exact geometry because of the measurements uncertainties, existing wear and tear in parts, computer numerical approximations and so on. Finding out what exact material was used where or in what manner and for what purpose can be painfully hard. Even more harder is the fact that how and what manufacturing methods, processes and machinery were required to produce those parts with the same quality, engineering specifications and tolerances. Then let’s assume that you go through all this by magic or something (you still need industrial expertise to produce these parts though). What you have is still a set of parts. Parts that are imperfect, parts that you can never ever produce exactly or with the same industrial production methods that the original nation used to create them.

Then there are parts and electronics that you CAN never produce or even analyze their true nature, not to mention software unless you are at the same level of engineering expertise which the originating nation used to create them. Even then its more cost effective and easier to design things from scratch.

But let’s assume you finally go through it all (by magic say). You still have parts. What then. The sum of parts requires expertise to make them function as a full product, a high degree of engineering expertise. Examples to illustrate this phenomena are as follow:

Example 1: Even when you have all the above problems solved, who will supply you with the aerodynamic, stability and control derivatives and so on that are required to actually synthesize the final flight control and guidance laws for this cruise missile. For that you need again a high degree of expertise at the same level of engineers that actually produce the original missile in the first place. For that you need mastery of the same fundamentals of missile aerodynamics, stability theory, nonlinear systems and control theory, recursive Bayesian filtering theory and so on at the same level of “you guessed it” the originating nation’s engineers’ expertise (specifically also in CFD, wind-tunnel testing and other engineering analysis to finally come up with those guidance and control laws (among many other things).

Example 2: Again, as above, say you have by magic solved all problems but then you have other sub-systems such as say the obvious one, the engine. Say you begin with inlet and compressor stage. You still have to do all same analysis at the same level of engineers who produced that engine and this analysis is required to synthesis that said engine. You will still need to calculate (e.g. velocity/pressure gradients) or analyze inlet geometry-compressor interactions, or carry out combustion analysis (e.g. stability of combustion, various efficiencies parameters involved and list of things to do goes on forever). You need this analysis not to see just see that the whole thing will work under all of “your unique environment, requirements and constraints and because of so many inevitable changes you end up introducing”, but also you need these analysis, calculations and parameters for so many things. For example, various control algorithms that control and stabilize various function of the engine and to ensure required engine-airframe integration with engineering specifications and so on. This list of analysis is huge and highly complex. All of it requires teams of people with vast and high degree of engineering expertise before you can do that.

And WHO said, you don’t need highly sophisticated structural analysis (both static and dynamic) for everything and every part and as whole. Yes, you need the same expertise that those people who originally designed the actual thing to engineer it. You must characterize every part and system as a whole using a complex web of engineering analysis before you produce a cruise missile.

Its not a frying pan you are copying, it is a highly complex and sophisticated cruise missile.

What about guidance and control laws and other cruise missile associated software (e.g. general hybrid or at least switching control laws that ensure smooth transition when booster separates form the actual missile at a given height, velocity etc. among so many others things).

Does US drops a large team of highly skilled engineers with every missile to carry out all that sophisticated analysis too.

Obviously they don’t. Though I urge them to do it next time. Apparently we don’t have them as by some uniformed people.

If people still did not get, what this post is saying. It saying:

TO design and engineer an F-16 from its sample, you still need to be:

• At the same level of engineering expertise at which the F-16 was analyzed and synthesized in the first place. In such theoretical analysis, Pakistan is already way ahead. For example initial F-16 used a simple linearized flight control system. Due to theoretical and computational advances and associated computational hardware since 1970s, Pakistan now routinely uses far more modern highly sophisticated computer hardware (compared to 70s), with far more advanced computational analysis (e.g. advanced CFD involving full navier stokes equations etc., Finite element analysis), far more sophisticated flight control analysis (e.g. nonlinear and adaptive control theory instead of linear one etc.) and so on. (see my explanation below on how masters and PhD degree requires first catching up with all the current knowledge and advances in the field before creating more advance one and Pakistan military has plenty of masters and PhDs).
• What Pakistan did not have but only recently beginning to have is the industrial capacity to actually produce what it could theoretically and computationally analyze all along. So now we can do the engineering analysis like before (we had the expertise) but did not have the industrial capacity and the money to do it. Thanks to our missile programs, and projects such as JF-17, we have that increasingly that industrial capacity now. We can do both now, the analysis and the actual production (to at least a large degree and increasingly more every year).

So what does then reverse engineering means. Well it gives a good starting point. If say US has used a certain material coating (or heat or other chemical treatments etc.) to say for things such as improve temperature handling, you can take it as starting point (provided you can identify said coating, chemical treatments etc. and manufacture it all off course). Its kind of gives you trust that hey it worked for them. May be start with it. You still need to carry out the heat transfer analysis or Multiphysics and/or multiscale analysis, or chemical analysis etc. at the “same level of expertise” which was used to select that coating, that heat and/or chemical treatment in the first place. But instead of analyzing 10 different coatings or optimize over 100’s, you might and note might, only need to analyze few or need less time to optimize things. Still more than once you have to do it, as you would have an imperfect copy of the original (due to real world constraints as discussed above), and as a result you might need to check similar coatings etc. to determine their efficiencies/performances as compared to the one used on the original one. In other words you do the same analysis, only over fewer iterations and/or design variations and that allows you to shorten the development time and reduce cost. That’s it. That’s the benefit of reverse engineering in a nut shell.



For complex, reliable and highly functioning products such as cruise missiles, you still need the same engineering expertise at the same level of those who originally produced the original product.

So please give Pakistan military, NESCOM, PAF and other hard working and highly competent scientists and engineers with undergraduate, masters and PhDs from around world, a break, since it does requires a high degree of engineering, mathematical and scientific expertise to produce a cruise missile and if not:

Then go to google patents, and you will find 10,000’s of expired patents for all sorts of bombs, missile components, aircraft subsystems and show us by actually producing anything out of it and without those high degree of expertise.

Actually use the latest ones since most of those patents are only locally legally binding to say in US, or EU or Japan. They are not valid in Pakistan. Since after all a patent often gives more “specific information” than say a used, dropped, damaged, and off course partially destroyed complex missile system. Why not make millions of dollars from those patents, if it doesn’t not require same level of expertise at which those patents were originally conceived.

If someone him/herself struggled in undergraduate engineering degree program, does not mean we all Pakistani did. Every Pakistani has a different level of intelligence and Pakistan military employs the best of them. Pakistan military has to deliver “real results”.

Secondly undergraduate or even PhD is not enough if a person is not “scientifically intelligent”.



People with higher intelligence than say an average PhD go far beyond that said PhD.

Many highly intelligent post-doctoral Pakistani researchers continue to rapidly advance their knowledge and expertise becoming far far more then when they were when they finished their masters or PhD. Plenty of them are employed by our military.

Pakistan did produce Babur missile and other missiles with its own expertise. Every shred of evidence points to it since its specifications (range, size, etc.) are too different. No country starts exactly from scratch. Everyone starts and built upon what is known. So they started with a well-known configuration since it, let’s admit it, aerodynamically the most efficient one. That’s why everybody uses it. Forms follows the function. Its as simple.

Its even more important to remember that you can catch up with the most advanced knowledge in the world in a single or so years after you mastered the fundamentals.

Proof: say you go to do a PhD at MIT, USA. What they ask you to do. They require you to get that PhD by requiring the following:

Produce a new piece of knowledge, advancing the current one, beyond at what it is today, in your field of research.

That’s what a PhD degree is. Unless you can master all the current level by then on your topic or field, you can’t advance it beyond current level. So you can catch up with every tom and harry around the world, including Europe and USA in your field or area of research. What you can’t catch up quickly is the industrial capacity to produce everything and off course economics to support it. That requires not just money but entire supply chain.

The point is, you can always catch up with the expertise of developed world, always and quickly so, industrial capacity not so.

Put it bluntly, you have to catch up with the America or EU to get that PhD in your field, no matter where you do your PhD since now days, even in Pakistan, PhD in may universities require a “foreign approver” (e.g. japanes, Europeans or USA or Chinese) who reads your thesis and tell your UNI that hey this is good enough. Plus more often than not, you must publish your research in an internationally peer reviewed journal before you can get a PhD. Most Pakistani and international universities require it. Most Pakistani doctoral supervising professor are very competent and often have a PhD from reputable international university.

Then after your PhD when you some fundamental understanding, you continue to advance your knowledge and eventually in few years become hopefully an expert in at least one area. More intelligent ones become multi-disciplinary experts.

Pakistan military does employs many of those multi-disciplinary experts with more determination and with more concern since they are required to defend the second largest Muslim nation on earth surrounded by the second largest and hostile country on earth (by population). Not to mention Pakistan needs to deal with so many other unnecessary adversaries.

It is natural therefore that even though still a developing nation, Pakistan created one of best if not the best spy agencies in the world but also a professional military force backed by considerably large compared to our economy, military technology development and research complex that despite the severe financial constraints, has been able to deliver sophisticated hardware capable of flattening Pakistan’s adversaries to the ruble.

Pakistan is a competent nation even when a certain Pakistani individual may not feel that way. Also please stop projecting your own hardships or struggle with learning complex concepts on every Pakistani and Pakistan as a whole. Plain English, if it was hard for you, does not mean its hard for everybody. Others do master it and get things done. With persistent hard work you can get it too.


P.S. I won’t reply things as I am tired, and unwell and have too many things to do this whole month. If anyone does not want to believe the truth, good for them. Those of us who work in the field know the truth and appreciate Pakistan’s achievements. May be others should too. Its okay to accept the truth and live in the actual reality.

Pakistan can and does get things done. Pakistan remains a nation that shows to the world what a determine developing nation can do to safeguard itself against very large and very well armed adversary. That’s quite uncommon.

@Bilal Khan (Quwa)

Great article @Bilal Khan (Quwa)

Too readily the world and shamefully also ourselves greet Pakistan related issues with derision, without justification and lazy reasoning, because no-one challenges it. No-one offers fair analysis.

Thank you for speaking up. stay blessed and stay healthy.

A correction @Rafeh
Yaar I'm still relatively new to online forums and got confused.
Without taking away my wishes @Bilal Khan (Quwa) I wish you a happy and healthy life and and thank you for this wonderful piece, stay blessed.

 

[Blueskiez 2001]

GREAT ARTICLE

AND THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH TO CLARIFY THIS - THE POST WAS SO EDUCATING

And let me add something to this: If having a structure was enough then Pakistan could in theory be producing F-16 - and not buying them second hand.....

 

[JamD]

If someone him/herself struggled in undergraduate engineering degree program, does not mean all Pakistani did. Every Pakistani has a different level of intelligence and/or determination...


Pakistan is a competent nation even when a certain Pakistani individual may not feel that way. Also please, people should stop projecting their own hardships or struggle with learning complex concepts on every Pakistani and Pakistan as a whole. Plain English and respectfully, if it was hard for one person does not mean its hard for everybody. Others do master it and get things done. With persistent hard work even the struggling one can get it too.

Thoroughly enjoyed these comments
You are:

(don't worry main bhi lol)

 

[Bilal Khan (Quwa)]

Great article @Bilal Khan (Quwa)

Too readily the world and shamefully also ourselves greet Pakistan related issues with derision, without justification and lazy reasoning, because no-one challenges it. No-one offers fair analysis.

Thank you for speaking up. stay blessed and stay healthy.

I didn't write it bro. @Rafeh gets full credit here.