DRDO and PSU's

So let's assume US does this. A Reaper is crashed, heck all the 31 Reapers are crashed. What would we lose in? A whopping $3 billion. But ever bothered asking what US would lose because of that? A measly $230 billion worth of defence export market.

No matter where ever you go on this planet, the word "chinese" is synonyms with low quality in consumer market and people usually avoid it. This is what happens when your reputation gets tarnished. And in defence & aerospace people are way way more unforgiving.

Read what happened with Australian NH-90s after they developed a bad reputation.
Read what'll now happen to whole Swiss arms industry after it developed the image of an unreliable defence contractor who can falter on deliveries in midst of war, citing its neutrality policies.
I don't think there's enough kool aid in the world to satisfy your thirst.
 
Don't know why people keep forgetting the details of deals, last time someone was mad that we got just 22 Apaches for $3 billion...completely ignoring those 15 Chinooks also included in $3 billion. This time it's you

$3.3 billion is for 31 MQ-9, 170 AGM-114R and reportedly 310 GBU-39B/B.

Even novices like us can run up the economics of this by open source data.
> Min price of an AGM-114R is about $75,000; for 170 is would be $13 million.
> Min price of an GBU-39B is almost $40,000; for 310 it would be too be $13 million.
(figures from Fiscal Year and Overseas Contingency Operations budget, 2021. Can look up the article on TWZ)

Total cost of weapons package = $26 million
Deducting that from $3.3 billion doesn't make much different...so per unit cost comes to roughly $103 million.

$738 million is what Italy paid in August this year for 6x MQ-9 Block 5 aircraft with just 12x EO systems and 9x maritime SAR.
Or $123 million.

Compared to them we actually saved some $0.62 billion in the whole deal given the bulk nature of the order.
:eyebrows:
You’re also forgetting our notorious Import Duties are included in this. Indian Customs are very picky about this even with Defence Equipment purchased by the Armed Forces.

 
What people don't know is that tapas is having an intelligent mission computer (MC) which is basically networked with other avionic subsystems to aid the pilot in mission planning, mission execution and workload management etc.,with the use of AI techniques.
IMG_20241016_101245.jpg


Apart from that it is also having advanced path planning to reduce the chance or avoid UAV being tracked by an enemy radar.

IMG_20241016_101712.jpg

I doubt such capabilities are present in imported drones since no one will offer it to us.
 

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Exactly for what tapas was supposed to do it does better.
For ior we can have much more advance platform as the sam density is much much less and chances of its survival are way more there compared to even a paki front.

For the love of Shree Krishna, all of you, please, please stop making these foolish arguments -
  • Spending money on MQ-9 is useless, it can easily be shot down by SAMs.

    You know what else can easily be shot down by SAM ? Any slow flying object including transport, helicopters and any type of drone.

    These are utility platforms used outside of enemy's weapon range. Drones like MQ-9 hover at 40k ft. (way outside of MANPAD range) and can still see 20-30 km away easily. 99% of time is preparation for war, 1% time is actual war. ISTAR platforms like MQ-9 are crucial assets for such "preparation".

  • Tapas is a cheaper option than MQ-9, we should have gone for that.

    Tapas is cheaper but cannot replace MQ-9, but can complement it. Performance, sensor suite, comm. datalink, weapons, all exceeds that of what Tapas currently offers.

    IMO 31 MQ-9 should be complemented with ~50-60 Tapas for non-demanding roles & handing majority of non-specialised tasks.

  • Tapas was unjustly rejected because it cannot reach 30k ft., requirements are unfair.

    As a matter of fact requirements are not only fair but also made lenient for Tapas. Heron & Eitans fly above 35k feet consistently for multiple hours over Himalayas gathering data (we have observed this, can confirm). This is necessary because Himalayan mountains near LAC & northern LoC have ground level at 13k feet and general terrain touches 20k feet regularly.
    An RPA flying at 27k will not get the LoS to look towards the enemy territory without compromising its position.

 
For the love of Shree Krishna, all of you, please, please stop making these foolish arguments -
  • Spending money on MQ-9 is useless, it can easily be shot down by SAMs.

    You know what else can easily be shot down by SAM ? Any slow flying object including transport, helicopters and any type of drone.

    These are utility platforms used outside of enemy's weapon range. Drones like MQ-9 hover at 40k ft. (way outside of MANPAD range) and can still see 20-30 km away easily. 99% of time is preparation for war, 1% time is actual war. ISTAR platforms like MQ-9 are crucial assets for such "preparation".

  • Tapas is a cheaper option than MQ-9, we should have gone for that.

    Tapas is cheaper but cannot replace MQ-9, but can complement it. Performance, sensor suite, comm. datalink, weapons, all exceeds that of what Tapas currently offers.

    IMO 31 MQ-9 should be complemented with ~50-60 Tapas for non-demanding roles & handing majority of non-specialised tasks.

  • Tapas was unjustly rejected because it cannot reach 30k ft., requirements are unfair.

    As a matter of fact requirements are not only fair but also made lenient for Tapas. Heron & Eitans fly above 35k feet consistently for multiple hours over Himalayas gathering data (we have observed this, can confirm). This is necessary because Himalayan mountains near LAC & northern LoC have ground level at 13k feet and general terrain touches 20k feet regularly.
    An RPA flying at 27k will not get the LoS to look towards the enemy territory without compromising its position.
Actually govt knows this. Its hafte that we giving to US to keep them in our control.
These machines are just eyewash to pay hafta to them.

Let it be until we reach china position.
 
In India we have zero cybersecurity period.

Our babus are illiterate on that front and would give up any hardware just for some money and clout that's it, nothing is there to prevent that.

And expecting that any of this will improve is like living in fools paradise we have to accept it and move on we can't do nothing, when there is full fledged war, we will be sitting ducks our electricity grid, railways and many other government owned organisations will come to stand still.
This is being too much black pilled about Cybersecurity.

It is not like India specific issue; 10 years back there was not much focus on cybersecurity but not just limited to India. pretty much all of our clients, US/EU/Japan were ultra soft on the policies.

Heck! one could even walk in with a personal external HDD and copy whole company data and move out in evening without anyone catching anyone.

When I joined work, Desktops used to rule the offices, barely 10% had laptops. All the ports used to be open, you could connect your phones, pendrive, HDD, etc.

People used to store movies, tv series, on the drives and share the path with each other's. Few systems could run torrents too.

Copying data between client network and our companies network was enabled for long.

By 2016, there was a security drive where they disabled ports in laptops and desktops for personal use. later they disabled shared drives and then scanned drives for personal media.

Later, disabled installation of any kind of softwares. you have to request for license first and then raise request for installation.

There is no admin access given anymore to anyone.

These things have been present in most companies whether private or public. All kind of InfoSec and Cybersecurity policies are available.​
 
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This is being too much black pilled about Cyversecurity.

It is not like India specific issue; 10 years back there was not much focus on cybersecurity but not just limited to India. pretty much all of our clients, US/EU/Japan were ultra soft on the policies.

Heck! one could even walk in with a personal external HDD and copy whole company data and move out in evening without anyone catching anyone.

When I joined work, Desktops used to rule the offices, barely 10% had laptops. All the ports used to be open, you could connect your phones, pendrive, HDD, etc.

People used to store movies, tv series, on the drives and share the path with each other's. Few systems could run torrents too.

Copying data between client network and our companies network was enabled for long.

By 2016, there was a security drive where they disabled ports in laptops and desktops for personal use. later they disabled shared drives and then scanned drives for personal media.

Later, disabled installation of any kind of softwares. you have to request for license first and then raise request for installation.

There is no admin access given anymore to anyone.

These things have not present in most companies private or public. All kind of InfoSec and Cybersecurity policies are available.​

India's cyber security policies evolved along with U.S and EU since mid 2000's.

one of my old companies had RSA to login into company network, and yet it has regular virus scans.

cybersecurity is a cat and mouse game, those who want to cyber security have to make investments and just have to keep up with the game, but it can't protect from deliberate acts of sabotage.
 
This is being too much black pilled about Cybersecurity.

It is not like India specific issue; 10 years back there was not much focus on cybersecurity but not just limited to India. pretty much all of our clients, US/EU/Japan were ultra soft on the policies.

Heck! one could even walk in with a personal external HDD and copy whole company data and move out in evening without anyone catching anyone.

When I joined work, Desktops used to rule the offices, barely 10% had laptops. All the ports used to be open, you could connect your phones, pendrive, HDD, etc.

People used to store movies, tv series, on the drives and share the path with each other's. Few systems could run torrents too.

Copying data between client network and our companies network was enabled for long.

By 2016, there was a security drive where they disabled ports in laptops and desktops for personal use. later they disabled shared drives and then scanned drives for personal media.

Later, disabled installation of any kind of softwares. you have to request for license first and then raise request for installation.

There is no admin access given anymore to anyone.

These things have been present in most companies whether private or public. All kind of InfoSec and Cybersecurity policies are available.​

India's cyber security policies evolved along with U.S and EU since mid 2000's.

one of my old companies had RSA to login into company network, and yet it has regular virus scans.

cybersecurity is a cat and mouse game, those who want to cyber security have to make investments and just have to keep up with the game, but it can't protect from deliberate acts of sabotage.
Here they sold government owned systems then how any of above mentioned restrictions come into place, and the restrictions you mentioned are majorly used in private sector and there are many workarounds for all of these so they are not full proof, it all depends on the person handling the data to be sensitive about that.

Like just couple of days back star health's medical data was sold by it's CISO to chinese, so none of the above arguments hold there.

I am talking about human end of things not about the software related restrictions.

I know some from CISF as well and whatever I have heard from them about handing of confidential documents doesn't inspire me to be white pilled about any of that.
 
Here they sold government owned systems then how any of above mentioned restrictions come into place, and the restrictions you mentioned are majorly used in private sector and there are many workarounds for all of these so they are not full proof, it all depends on the person handling the data to be sensitive about that.

Like just couple of days back star health's medical data was sold by it's CISO to chinese, so none of the above arguments hold there.

I am talking about human end of things not about the software related restrictions.

I know some from CISF as well and whatever I have heard from them about handing of confidential documents doesn't inspire me to be white pilled about any of that.

algorithms cannot prevent human greed and stupidity from occuring, those need a different approach.
 

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