DRDO and PSU's

[randombully]

Can you tell us the handle which wrote this post because the writing & argument seems suspiciously familiar to me.

This forum

L'Inde

forum.air-defense.net

This username

 

[Azaad]

This forum

L'Inde

forum.air-defense.net

This username

Yes , I suspected as much . This gentleman is ex Dassault having worked in a senior position there . Apparently Eric Trappier the current CEO of Dassault began his career as a trainee & later junior executive reporting to this gentleman .

He's also a member of Strat Front where these arguments are peddled by another member there , an Indian to be precise , who's been well known to pass off his fantasies / suppositions / theories mixing them with facts & presenting it as such.

 

[Patriots]

If anyone from dfb is going to aero india
Please open a new thread for , our questions. To be asked to different Pvt and public sector representatives

 

[Bhartiya Sainik]

Got it from, french military forum.
Google Translation of french.

The underside of the cards:

I also don’t think people understand how our procurement works yet. I have explained it before. The IAF has to prove to the DRDO that its technology is still not good enough before the DRDO will allow imports. Almost every import project you see, whether it is Stryker, Guardians or MRFA, none of them materialize without the DRDO’s approval. Only emergency procurement excludes the DRDO from the process. So the IAF has to explain to the DRDO and the government why the MRFA is better than the DRDO’s offerings if they want to go ahead. The government moderates and vetoes one or the other depending on who wins the debate, if there is a debate.

This is what happened with FGFA . DRDO won the debate on the technology part. They failed on the procurement part because they obviously could not meet the deadlines. But with the technology gone, there was no need to launch a development project with the Russians. The IAF's objective behind a development programme was to help Indian industry catch up.

There is a lot of logic and a lot of process in these things. And DRDO’s main objective is to delay the IAF’s import tender for as long as possible till the domestic technology is developed. So I would not be surprised if DRDO has delayed MRFA for the last 10 years for TEDBF/ORCA. Then DRDO and IAF need to find a middle ground, which would have involved IAF buying 60% DRDO products (LCA and AMCA) and 40% imports (MRFA, alongside MKI).

So there is no doubt that the IAF has won the MRFA debate. But in the process, they will have to push for a new Rafale with a new radar that outperforms the Uttam to convince the government to veto the DRDO. And the MRFA requirements will be such that DRDO will not be able to match it with ORCA. Hence the F5.

The MMRCA ended for two reasons, it was mismanaged from the beginning due to HAL's stubbornness. The FOEM should have been allowed to choose their own partner instead of lumping them in with HAL. Thankfully we did after this circus.

The second reason is that it was too expensive relative to GDP growth. The IAF plan for FGFA and MMRCA was dependent on a minimum 9% growth in Indian GDP. Around 2014, it was realised that only MMRCA or FGFA would be accepted, not both. Matheswaran also mentioned this.

So they cancelled MMRCA, accepted FGFA , then realised that the Russians were not playing the game, which also put FGFA in doubt . FGFA was already on the brink with HAL saying it could only do 15% of the task sharing instead of 50%. I guess we unnecessarily gave the Russians an advantage by cancelling MMRCA while not moving forward with AMCA as a cover.





Parrikar, no. In both cases, HALs were the main villains. Parrikar's biggest success was the frigate affair followed by the Rafale GTGs.

By the way, the FGFA is still active, just put on hold while Russia completes development. The decision to keep it or cancel it could entirely depend on the progress of the LCA and MRFA. At least, ACM Singh hinted at that.



@Ayan Barat @Bhartiya Sainik
So does actually drdo have power to stop iaf from importing?

I does hold poorly, but it could also be that Tar did not get as much support as "fighter jet tech" will get.
Though,The only thing I was able to find in ak203( except furniture and rails) that could be superior to trichy is that it has cold-forged barrel, was not able to find whether barrel of tar is cold hammer forged or standard one.
Also I guess reliability and production quality( ofb does not have good track record), it could be gov. Chose army's side in this seeing the track record, over drdo, or drdo did not pursue hard enough for a "rifle".

With that Said, there's another interesting take:-
Shall we continue the big reveal?



The high cost of the MRFA is largely due to HAL raising prices during production. They also demanded their own production process, which the French said would require re-certification. The IAF also raised the issue of quality assurances, and this for a product using a production process not certified by Dassault. HAL wanted to provide quality assurance, but the IAF insisted that Dassault do it.

And it is because IAF procurement is linked to GDP that the MMRCA has become expensive. No growth means no money. The combination of bad negotiations and bad economics led to the demise of the MMRCA. The MMRCA being ‘overpriced’ was just one small component. The Rafale was not ‘overpriced’ but HAL’s end product. According to the defence ministry, HAL increased the price of the Rafale to $300 million.

www.ajaishukla.com
Eurofighter says price and time parameters for Rafale cannot be met.
www.ajaishukla.com www.ajaishukla.com
Unnamed officials are setting a high benchmark, spreading the rumour that Dassault had offered $300 million per Rafale in the MMRCA tender. The Economic Times quotes government sources as saying that Dassault is giving a 25% discount, offering 36 Rafales for $200 million each, in a deal worth around $8 billion.

Two squadrons of Rafale were then purchased under pressure from the IAF. The IAF originally wanted 4, the government settled for 2, the rest was planned under TE MII . They then considered buying two squadrons every two years, like the GTG, but the IAF rejected this proposal because all these different configurations coming without sufficient advanced technology would be difficult to maintain.

It is unrealistic to have 3 different versions of the Rafale, and each time go back to Dassault using three different negotiation processes, requiring three different contracts while navigating the difficult anti-corruption bureaucratic circus that we have within the Ministry of Defence. This is also why we have put in place a new process where the IAF will negotiate directly with the Indian partner instead of going through the FOEM.

But all this has nothing to do with the future delays of the MRFA. What I have been talking about all along are the future delays, that is, from 2015 to 2025.

DRDO's upcoming products are not on par with the F5. The Swedes may be the closest to the Rafale, but all other competitors seem to be similar to what DRDO is developing for the LCA Mk2 and the MKI MLU.

There are two reasons for the delays. The first is financial. We needed a good budget to launch the MRFA, which we are getting because of economic growth. The capital budget has been growing in double digits. So we almost have it now. In 2010, Citibank predicted that India's GDP would touch $6 billion by 2020. Based on the exchange rate then, we are supposed to touch $8-10 billion today. So the UPA's economic mismanagement prevented the strengthening of the rupee that was needed to pay for imports. But one can imagine that a $6-7 billion economy could have easily paid for all the Rafales. So it is not the Rafale that has become expensive, it is the dollar that has become poor.

The second factor is technology. All OEMs, including Russia, are way ahead of the DRDO. They all have operational aircraft with the technologies that the IAF wants, while all DRDO products exist today only on paper. The only difference is that in many ways, DRDO products are half a generation ahead of the competition, which gives them time.

In 2017: “Why buy more Rafale F3R with GaAs when we are offering Uttam Mk2 with GaN?” would be an argument of the DRDO. The IAF would claim that it is not ready yet, to which the DRDO would reply that it is only in a few years, while an avionics configuration on a jet lasts for 25-30 years.

Such arguments would have saved DRDO 5-7 years while configuring the MWF and AMCA. So the IAF would have had to go back to the drawing board for the MRFA with much higher avionics specifications than before. And their new doctrine came out in 2022. And naturally, the tender would be for next-gen avionics combined with Rafale/Typhoon class air performance.

As for ORCA, even though it comes under HAL, it is still another arrow in the quiver of DRDO to attack forces. Hence the need for Rafale/Typhoon class performance that ORCA cannot match, i.e. supercruise, higher G-performance, proven credentials, etc.

Such long plain text is super boring & about obsolete but polished/MLUed 4gen jets is also boring. And i hate blame games. Let me see when i can reply, may be tonight, may in few days, but on tech aspect in my limited IQ.

 

[Zoid Raptor]

Tata doesn't know what the word "indigenous" really means. The fact that this vehicle was first ever seen being off-loaded from a flatbed in a South-African airport speaks volumes of it's origin.

Maybe similar to the recently inducted Mahindra ALSV procured by IA and Straton APC/MPV used by UN both of which were designed and developed by their Emirati division

Similar to how most of Kalyani's armored and artillery designs are bought/borrowed from the Paramount Group, TASL might have some connection with Paramount and Denel in South Africa to help design this vehicle