lockheed is 100 years old
martin is 60+ years old
raytheon is 100+ years old
harris is 130 years old
they too had their share of ups and downs during this journey.
murica as a country became private first, before they went public. they got private toll roads, railways, and telephone companies before their govt even intervened.
India story is very different from murican story, for us everything is gormint first and private business story is just 30 years old. safe to say Indian solution to this problem will not be same as murica's giant defence contractors.
many of the folks who used to get angry when air India was being managed by gormint and talked as if privatisation will solve all the probems, are on radio silence after TATA's tookover and bad service is continuing. these things happen, not everything goes according to plan.
my point is simply this, just keep an open mind as to which way this industry will evolve. we have our entire lifetimes to cheer for a good outcome as spectators.
Just to add my 2 cents , I'm unaware as to how many here have been involved with a new product launch right from conceptualization to realisation to marketing & creating new distribution / handling existing distribution networks to after sales service.
I've skipped a lot of steps in between but the best of cos who've spent a lifetime in this biz get things wrong & at times disastrously wrong. Don't believe me ? Look at the F-35 project.
As a French member in Strat Front put it , if France were to run it like the US did , France would impeach the President apart from guillotining a whole host of ministers bureaucracy & top generals before going bankrupt . It's a text book case of how not to run a project.
This is the first time HAL is involved in building a Fighter Aircraft NOT from SKD & CKD kits followed by incremental indigenization but from ground up which means setting up the entire eco system & then fine tuning it in association with their vendors mostly MSMEs , DRDO / ADA & the IAF. To top it all they're answerable not only to the MoD & thru it to the GoI & parliamentary oversight but have the CAG on their back too .
The last part is important as I'm given to understand it was the tendering process of a few LRUs which held back deliveries of the committed qty of the Mk-1a's. Latest news reports like for instance tweets by Snehesh Alex Philip of The misPrint suggests deliveries have been pushed back to the last quarter of this year . Can't vouch for its veracity.
Finally , if you want results , get the GoI to break up HAL in 3-4 cos with a charter to each such company on their Scope of Activities & privatise all its constitutents. Otherwise be prepared for more of the same.
As it is we're seeing Airbus bring in a 50 year old product the H- 125 to India to test the waters under the MII program following which you can expect them to set up the entire mfg line here & capitalise on the demand here whereas LUH is still being certified & HAL isn't too bothered about the prospect of losing out on the domestic commercial market for it has its plate full building everything from the RUAV to AMCA .
Ditto for our DPSU shipyards where after throwing open the sector , you can expect players from the Pvt Sector who've nothing to do with shipping till date to set up JVs with the Koreans & Japanese to take advantage of all the sops GoI has to offer.
