I agree with the Air Chief Marshall. Any chance of India getting its head out of the state-owned sand and turning onto the road to success in the domain of designing and building fighter aircraft?
If India carries on with its current approach, it risks never becoming a reliable supplier to its own air force force, let alone a major supplier of fighters to other countries.
If I understood well the AFM, his proposal his far from stupid.
HAL is a 80years old company which wasn't able to design jets (and not only fighter jet). 80 years old ! How is that possible ?
Creating a private sector by starting with technological transfers its a possible way of exit. Maybe with ToT, India will not aquire the ability to design jets, but it can start by developping a very good, strong and reliable aerospace industry. I mean... You send rocket to space and you are able to build such as complex things as submarines !
In France, after the WW2, we had a big gap to fill to try to develop warplanes while Germans, US and British has a huge advance in that area. So, our policy was to develop a LOT of different projects which was only prototypes, and learn. There was more than one prototype a year up to the 1970s.
I don't think HAL will be able to develop AMCA and/or TEDBF on time and on budget, or even produce them efficiently.
Its not because its a public company. Its just an issue of culture. There are a lot of public company that works just well (Naval Group in France for example). You really need to start from scratch.
Even in China, which restart from scratch 50 years ago, they were able to develop and catch up west.
HAL are only good for making promises. Not everything will be fixed with a parallel private sector, but it will be a beginning.
I have some hope that India and France works closely. Even to develop new programs. I personally prefer that we works with India instead of Germany But I have some doubts with your way to manage time and politics decisions. (and I have doubts for us too now...)
