[Modi & Biden, Jaishankar looking on]
One thing is certain: As Washington prepares to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a State Visit June 21, the Joe Biden Administration is intent on succeeding where previous administrations have failed, namely, in making India, a willing technology captive.
The Modi government, on the other hand, hopes that strung out between the Russian annexation of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s forthrightly confrontationist stance over Taiwan, and the fast growing Russia-China nexus, the US can be persuaded to part with military technology it had hitherto dithered in transferring to India, especially because India is neither an ally nor even a time-tested friend but is a ‘strategic partner’ with whom relations are, with the consent of both parties, transactional.
Modi and his advisers believe this is a ‘Dengxioaping moment’ for India when the international situation and correlation of forces favour it, and despite New Delhi’s not supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. the US and the West are inclined to help it to emerge economically and industrially as an economic and strategic counterweight to China. And with comparative labour cost advantage, perhaps, even replace the latter with India in the global supply chain currently dominated by Chinese manufacturers. The twin aim being to reduce dependence on China for crucial materials and components by carving out a supply role for India and, by the by, draw India more fully into the US and Western economic fold and, importantly, strategic arrangements in Asia geared to stalling China’s rise.
India, in fact, has already made itself an irreplacable part of the global supply chain by supplying the US and the West with an endless stream of skilled technical manpower. Indeed, it is estimated that as much as 40% of the US-originating IT software is produced by the Indian diaspora in America and Europe. In fact, the Modi government has long since decided to double down on the manpower supply role as central to its US policy. Whence, the Indian ambassador in Washington, Taran Singh Sandhu who in a June 18 TV interview reminded the audience that some 200,000 Indian students presently in the US are in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) category, who could provide the US with the “competitive edge” in the world and how this was central to what he called the “escalating” bilateral relationship. It was another way of pleading for increasing the H1-B visa quota for India!
That all this manpower carted to the US sets India back in its plans to emerge as a global tech power in its own right and comes at enormous economic cost (think of the extent of subsidies via education funded by the poor Indian taxpayer to prepare the potential tech immigrant to America) is apparently not of concern to Modi. This is the great difference between Modi and Deng, and between the Indian and the Chinese systems, that China and its leadership have always been oriented toward maximizing the gains from leveraging their advantageous position vis a vis the US by simultaneously building up the technology creation/innovation eco-system within the country with a view to becoming a global power independent of America. This last is something the Modi regime has not really attempted because it requires the maximal withdrawal of the government from the economic life of the country and to unshackle the technological and entrepreneurial genius of the people from bureaucratic control.
Deng, it may be recalled, visited Washington in end-January 1979 at a time when the Nixon-Kissinger game of balancing power by distancing China from the Leonid Brezhnev-led Soviet Union, had cleared a path for China. It resulted in American market access to Chinese goods and turning on of the technology spigot that enabled the Chinese military to get on par with the Soviet forces. It is these twin opportunities that Deng masterfully exploited to his country’s immense benefit until now when the Chinese economy has reached the $17 trillion level (compared to US’ $23 trillion), PLA poses the biggest, most potent, threat to the US, and China rivals the US in creating and innovating high technology.
Ram Madhav, an RSS leader, in a fit of hyperbole relating to the situation on the eve of Modi’s visit juxtaposed “expectant ecstacy” supposedly prevailing on the US side with “cautious realism” on the India side. Not sure what Madhav is reading, but the ecstasy seems to be entirely on the Indian side with the media, retired militarymen, and the commentariat going into raptures about India’s new dawn with American high tech! There is wide-eyed scepticism on the US side though. Two highly regarded India experts — Ashley Tellis at Carnegie and Daniel Markey, a former State Department Policy Planning official, at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, have doubted whether the red carpet rolled out for Modi and the easing of the tech trade will fetch Washington much. They are reluctant to believe that India will end up supporting Ukraine, disavow its neutral stance as between Russia and US and NATO on the Russo-Ukrainian war, or decide to cutoff of its historically strong Russian military and oil supply links.
Tellis argued India is “a bad bet” because, in effect, it marches to the beat of its own different drum and won’t always follow the US lead, and Markey made the point that while the “shared values have grown weaker with India [owing to Modi’s growingly autocratic rule], their shared interests [such as containing terrorism and China] have gotten stronger”. While advocating targeted assistance programmes specifically to counter China, he warns against transferring GE 414 jet engine tech to India which, because it will strengthen India’s indigenous defence industry “might not serve US interests in the long term.” And he hints that the US may not want to help create another China with massive commercial investments in the Indian economy, etc. The analog of the 414 jet engine from Deng’s time was the 1982 ‘Orient Pearl’ programme initiated during the Reagan presidency that transferred advanced avionics technology. It upgraded China’s bulk fleet of F-7 fighter aircraft, of course, but along with the Chinese buy of the Israeli Lavi fighter design and materials, it kickstarted China’s wildly successful military electronics and combat aviation sector.
So, in this India’s alleged “Deng moment’, what’s the score card? iCET (Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies) is the new buzzword. It’s come about because an earlier programme — the 2012 Defence Trade and Technology Initiative and the 2016 action by President Barack Obama to raise India’s status to ‘Major Defence Partner” produced more hot air than transfer of technology. iCET is different because the National Security Advisers — Jake Sullvan and Ajit Doval are helming this effort. They have cut redtape and, and cleared logjams and bureaucratic resistance at both ends. Consequently, it has been agreed that Modi and Biden will sign several flagship accords in the hi-tech field. It is proposed, for instance, that General Electric Company will assist HAL in doing the only thing it is good at — “assembling” this time the GE 414 jet engine to outfit the Tejas Mk-2 and the 2-engined advanced medium combat aircraft on the design board.
The more significant understanding concerns cooperation in designing and manufacturing high-value semiconductor chips in highly complex and inordinately expensive fabrication (fab) facilities, in space exploration and ventures, and in quantum computing.
However, the reason why this won’t be a Deng moment for India is that the Indian government doesn’t seem as motivated as the Chinese state was to use US technology as base for rapid growth of indigenous technology. Possibly, keeping Markey’s warning in mind, the Pentagon is preparing to transfer all but 20% of the tech involved in the 414 engine. That 20%, however, is critical tech relating, as a former IAF officer suggested, to design and production of single crystal turbine blades, the very thing GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), try as it might, has failed to produce and why the indigenous Kaveri engine project has so far not reached fruition. It is a tech void the GE 414 deal won’t fill.
So, is the core of the tech deal on the anvil with the US still great shakes considering India might become permanently dependent on the US for combat aircraft engines?
Security Wise 
Professor,
I read both the articles by Ashley Tellis and Daniel Markey. Tellis downplayed the negative tones subsequently in his YouTube interviews with The Print and the Carnegie Foundation. His point was that the US does want a multi polar Asia and therefore is aligned with India, but the point being India will never become a U.S. ally and fight with the US for Taiwan.
Markey on the other hand comes across as distinctly anti India, but I think his view of the values mismatch is based on an incomplete understanding of the Indian ethos and culture. He probably needs to learn a thing or two about India as his values commentary is more aligned with the propaganda in NYT and WaPo. Frankly, it amounts to nothing. But his long term view of aiding India’s rise being against US interests may be true.
On engine tech transfer the view is that the top 20% will transfer after India demonstrates the ability to absorb the tech. Frankly, if India can’t develop its own engine tech, then it does not deserve great power status. India should take what it gets from other countries and focus on developing its own tech capabilities. However, if due to is sarkari feudal attitudes it is unable to do so, then it will forever remain a potential great power. No need to either criticize the Americans or the French or anyone else. They will do what they need to to prevent any peer competitor or maintain their edge for as long as possible (especially the US).
So the message is very clear. Get your act together India and develop cutting edge tech on your own. If you can’t, don’t dream of being a great power, or criticize others for preventing your full rise.
China got a way bigger boost from Nixon than India is getting from Biden or Trump. Western Orientalism means their strategic relationships will always be boxed into certain modes. So as a swing state, we can and should still pursue things like De-Dollarization. In our Look Further East strategy of engagement with Pacific Island nations, we should even help certain islands build deep-water ports capable of docking big naval ships. In the event that we get pushed out of such ports by Chinese economic muscle, this would raise the stakes for the West. The more the West tries to shut us out, the more we should leverage our swing state status — and there’s a lot we can do in that regard. We need to sew more seeds in that direction.
The GE-HAL deal is nothing but the culmination of a ridiculous game between two unscrupulous enemies trying to make monkeys out of the other.As far as the details of the aerospace engine program are concerned, MIDHANI PSU has achieved breakthroughs in isothermal press technology as well as super alloys(Ni based) capable of withstanding extreme temperatures, coincidentally these are exact same technologies used in making crystal blades.In fact, MIDHANI is one of the only PSU’s to have done any job whatsoever in actual innovation.Coincidentally, the very recently developed 50 KN Dry Kaveri actually works.The 80% tech sharing deal was agreed only after the Modi govt was sure they could get the rest themselves.In any case,80% tech sharing is something which the US has not given to anybody else, even to top official boot lickers like the South Korea.The US guards jet-engine tech even more fiercely than thermonuclear weapon designs.
Our refusal to mindlessly commit on the western-side in the Ukraine war has been inarguably one of the only prudent decisions in Indian foreign policy history.The Countless footage of top-notch western armour and “NATO-trained” infantry getting decimated in the melitopol-Mariupol axis proves our point.Two weeks of extremely overhyped “counteroffensive” have yielded nothing but three completely leveled villages.They have even no failed to reach the first Russian defense lines,so as to speak.This is when US and Europe literally emptied all their munitions stocks in arming their little disgusting SS collaborators.In fact, back then ,such was the barbarity of the Banderite that even their hardened SS masters were appalled by it.They used them to do all of their dirty-work and then disposed them off like the disposable toilet paper they were(by forming cannon-fodder Waffen SS divisions).80 years later the Americans are following the same playbook. Total Defeat in Ukraine, will be a well deserved lesson for the Americans.
India bought USD 18 billion defence equipment in the last decade without any Transfer of Technology. Indian defence and commercial airlines provide US with a huge market, which must be leveraged for meaningful technology gains.
Before Deng came to power in the 1979 , he enjoyed a lot of goodwill in the western world as foreign minister .One of the most famous photos of Deng in America was him wearing a cowboy hat in Texas.He and the CCP were good at showing the Americans that Chinese are malleable ,just like americans, etc. Hostility to Modi , is a media + institutional problem. Indian PM and cabinet ministers should talk to American Media more often . We should start funding their think tanks .The institutes owned by Indian billionaires in major American Universities should get their act together i.e start setting narratives on Indian history , culture ,foreign policy etc and they study/understand India on our terms and not theirs.
India’s never done anything for those billionaires, who don’t really owe anything to India. They certainly don’t owe their wealth to India. Therefore it’s unlikely that India can expect any great shakes from them. I think the malice against Modi from US Congressmen can be traced to ex-pats of certain persuasions. We should flag their passports, and give them Robin Raphel treatment when they show up in India. Let them wait in the extra-long lines at the airport, without any air-conditioning. Make the experience as unpleasant as possible. As non-citizens, they have no claim to any right to visit Indian soil in the first place. The more their ties to India are cut, the more they’ll be inclined to move on, and pay less attention to Indian politics.
a
Indian Americans are probably the most foolish community in America.Most of them are pathetic social climbers and wannbe whites. If anything that community is a liability for India. For most Indian-American bureaucrats/diplomats abusing India and advocating harsh sanctions on India is litmus test for proving their loyalty to White America. While Modi is in USA , he should better meet the Jews/Israeli lobbies.They have done more for us than these Brown Sahibs!
From Lt General VIJAY OBEROI (Retd), former Vice Chief of the Army Staff
Mon, 19 June at 6:32 pm
Dear Bharat,
I have been reading all the articles you have been sending. This one is particularly relevant. There is also the domestic angle for both Biden and Modi, more for Modi as the Indian Diaspora in the USA is predominantly for the Democrats.
Besides the Aero engine, it is the semiconductor chip technology that will be essential. Modi needs to stand firm in his bilateral talks and not succumb to the optics, which he loves!
Warm regards.
Vijay Oberoi
Hello Bharat Ji. I live in the west/US. I can tell you MOST Indians either dont care bout Internal politics here or they all mostly support the GOP coz it’s the only party who helps Indians when it comes to Immigration. This is factually incorrect that Indians support the Dems. Infact Indians arent keen on Dems especially when the DEMS rather have Latino/Black vote for their Illegal Immigration policy support which the GOP vehemently opposes. I respectfully disagree with the Lt. Gen here. He has no clue.
Email from Dr V Siddhartha, former S&T adviser to Defence Minister
Mon, 19 June at 7:00 pm
… INTO ONE!
……. I distrust the U.S. in that she will reverse her position on anything, just on Beltway whims. If U.S.-China relations improve, the U.S. administration will dump India in a jiffy — regardless of any bi-partisan support/understanding in the U.S. Congress.
PIOs in the USG are actually counter-influential. They routinely try harder to be more-American-than-American when it comes to India, lest they be accused of a pro-India stance. (The contrast with Jewish-Americans on Israel is so striking). For me, N.R.I expands to Non-Responsible-Indian. And NRIs/PIOs in the U.S. keep using “we” at Indian-Indian events even if they are U.S. citizens — further revealing their conflicted loyalties, which makes them suspect in (White) U.S. eyes. Here is a true story: When Mohammadali Carim Chagla was the Education Minister and was also the Vice-President of CSIR, the then founder-director of the National Aeronautical Laboratory (NAL in Bangalore) passed-away in harness. A search of a sparse clutch of possible successors got an invitation to (now late) Krishnamurti Karamcheti (KK), a world-renowned aerodynamicist at Stanford. After being interviewed, Chagla made KK an offer of Directorship of NAL. KK said he would accept but wished to retain his U.S. citizenship. Chagla told KK to his face: “If I wanted an American, I would have got an honest-to-goodness one”!
I am in Bengaluru now, and the not one of the ex-fulcrums of the Panja Pandavas [Atomic Energy; Space; Defence Research; Oceans and Quantum technologies (at Raman Research Institute)] I know well and have spoken to believes that the U.S. will licence the export of any technology – intangibles particularly — that might facilitate India to become a future technological competitor (as distinct from a merely commercial one) to the U.S.
The invitation to Modi for a state visit, and to address the U.S. Congress, is the usual U.S. last resort: “We have tried almost everything else; let’s try chamchagiri”
VS
PS: Re: “…. to design and production of crystal-edged turbine blades, the very thing GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), try as it might, has failed to produce and why the indigenous Kaveri engine project has so far not reached fruition.”
No such blade.
But then I do not expect any in the IAF to have even seen a “single crystal turbine blade”, which DRDO HAS developed and tested:
The catch is — and remains — serial production of such within weights of each blade which are less than grams apart, so a same-weight set of blades can be selected from a batch, and assembled into a turbine, so there is no significant imbalance in the radial force when the turbine rotates at very high rotational speed. That imbalance
is what has caused the bearings on the turbine shaft to erode at much higher rates than allowable MTBO.
Email from Vice Admiral KN Sushil (Retd), former CINC, Southern Naval Command
Tue, 20 June at 5:26 am
The bottom line is that India continues to be the same…our inability to March up if not match up in technological innovativeness.
In the past we dabbled with Russia Our exposure to then Soviet era equipment made us believe that we now have access to state of the art equipment…but slowly it dawned on us that LM 2500 GTs were better than Soviet GTs which we were gaga about . We placed our AD bets on Barak and Barak NG. The ILs and TU were replaced with P8I s and Hercules and so on
In the whole decades which we spent in changing from Russian to western our innovateness stood still.
Modi may get Drones and 414 Engines but once the acquisition cycle is complete and we reach the half life operational period where will we be? As any one concerned with long term strategy we should be looking seriously on capability building
Atma Nirbhar sounds very patriotic but unless we demonstrate indigenous capability we will get technologies that others think it is okay to dispense with.
China transformed herself ..and has become a power to reckon with. We on the other hand merely changed whom we seek help from.
Professor,
I was listening to another podcast by Ashley Tellis today and a couple of things struck me, which I believe are key to why India cannot produce top military tech on its own.
One, the Indian strategic community does not view the military as a force to shape political outcomes (too defensive), and two India is not fully convinced about the value of markets.
I believe that change on both fronts is gradually happening, but until these factors are true, neither will the deep state make good strategic military or economic decisions, nor will the innovativeness of the population (which I believe is true of Indians) be fully realized.
Only external threats and emergencies can force a change in India! India has at least something to thank China for!
Glad Ashley sees the wisdom in the themes I developed in Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet) -which he is now echoing! A diffident military is a subject I have iterated for a long time before this book, and have done so since. This 2015 book, incidentally, was launched in the US at Carnegie in a programme hosted by Dr Tellis!
@Bharat
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1714134
Just go through the above link properly.It’s two years old.It clearly states we have developed and produced, in scale monocrystalline blades(in this case for helicopter engines).It is safe to say that similar products would have have also been used in the very recently and successfully developed Dry-Kaveri engine with 50 KN thrust.Beats me how nobody has bothered to look up this, when it’s available in the public domain.
Also, with all due respect and no offense, I have had it with armchair experts and retired senior army and Air Force officers with absolutely zero technical backgrounds whatsoever vociferously trash-talking Indian engineers and scientists.My heartfelt sympathies go out to the latter community (because I am one of them!).It’s very easy talk to about AI,ML,Hypersonic glide vehicles and variable-cycle aerospace engines after reading an article or two in the western press.DRDO scientists operates with extremely minuscule budgets(compared to western counterparts), lack of even basic test facilities(as in case of GTRE) and in terrible work atmosphere (all thanks to the babudom).Designing, developing the metallurgy , carrying out stress tests on aerospace engines for thousands of hours is a process that takes at least a decade.We don’t have that time today.That is why the modi government has taken the easier route of getting whatever we can from the enemy(US).It is easy to talk when you don’t have to do it.
Sir, you only help to worsen the military diffidence when you echo this “autocratic” nonsense spit out by others. Remember when our late former CDS Rawat was accused of coup-like “midnight military maneuvers”? Same kind of game. Your rhetoric in a similar direction certainly doesn’t help.
Professor,
India is a complex country and all strands of thinking exist. Tellis identified four which I found to be interesting. There are some in India who don’t think it should aspire to be a great power (the Guhas of the world). Others want to focus on internal development and not worry about being a great power (Apparently Raghuram Rajan falls in this bucket). There are others who want to focus on soft power (Tharoor). And finally there are those who unabashedly want India to be great power (yourself and the current administration I believe).
As one can see, the first three strands of thinking all relate to the liberal party which ruled India for decades since independence. Being a realist myself, I support the Chanakyan approach of acquiring great power as the best way to ensure the thriving of India.
But when this country has leading intellectuals advocating very different styles of governance, it is no wonder that progress in India is slow. I do not see such dissonance in thought in other great powers today – US, China and Russia. There maybe difference in how to achieve great power status, but the goal itself is not up for debate. In India, the goal itself is not a certainty. How can achievement be certain then?
looking into history it doesn’t looks like its good idea to get too close to US, also regarding purchase of defense equipment , US can virtually fully control all of its military equipment remotely and can jeopardize any Indian military operation which might be using those
The moment you quoted Daniel Markey, you lost the plot. His recent article in Foreign Affairs is factually incorrect (which is the most charitable way to put it) and quoting him makes one unwittingly foolish by association. An otherwise excellent article of yours doesn’t deserve mention of Daniel Markel.
Kaveri engine is not a failure. It has never been mated with any aerial vehicle even to merely to propel and motor down a few metres of runway and not because it’s a failure. Similar 46 kN 70 kN has powered many planes.IAF can seek a 2 engine fighter designed around indigenous Kaveri. Mate it, test it then declare it a success or failure.
Bah, given all the strong optimism when it was first undertaken, it’s certainly produced poor results. We want to put it into our Ghatak UCAV vehicle, which has lower thrust requirements owing to its lower mass as an unmanned vehicle. It’s an improvised fallback, but will at least keep it in use. Maybe we should also look at cultivating the broader turbine manufacturing industry beyond just aerospace, in order to build up the required expertise.
Email from Air Marshal SG Inamdar, former Vice Chief of the Air Staff
Wed, 21 June at 6:21 am
As in the past, this piece too, is eminently readable and good food for thought!!
This US visit by the PM does seem to have all the trappings of a landmark visit on multiple counts & will probably clarify many crucial points you so succinctly make!!
Prayerfully, to India’s benefit: at least majorly, if not entirely!
Best,
SG Inamdar
Air Mshl
Email from Air Marshal Harish Masand (Ret)
Wed, 21 June at 11:50 am
Bharat,
The turbine blades I talked of are known as crystal blades or single-crystal blades connotating the same technology. These have higher temperature tolerance and longer life.
Kaveri, as far as I know, did not have such blades but still had problems perhaps because of balancing problems or production of blades to perfection. I am not certain now after almost 18 years of having visited GTRE but I think they also had some issues with the compression ratio.
Interesting piece. I hope the GoI does not walk into the trap you mention.
Warm regards,
Harish
My bad on the single crystal blade tech, Air Marshal. Thank you. The post text stands corrected.
Professor,
Looks like the F414 MOU has been signed and 7/11 critical tech will be transferred. But after the MOU, the US Congress has to pass the deal, then the Indian CCS has to approve the deal, and only then the final deal between GE and HAL will be signed. Let’s see how long that takes!
Also, I wonder how the ToT of 7/11 critical tech is 80% tech transfer. I wonder what metric is being used to calculate the 80%. Critical tech is critical tech. Can this metric be based on the value of the tech in the engine?
Additionally, there is no deal yet on the 130 KN future engine for the AMCA MK 2. There, Safran and Rolls Royce are still in the fray. However, I learnt recently in an interview with Air Marshall Bedi (Def talks by Aadi), that China is developing a 180KN WS15 engine, though their machine tools are imported from Germany. Expect this to be sanctioned if the U.S. can’t develop such an engine first. But it has implications for India too.
There is something different this time of the mood of Indian Americans. I saw pictures taken by a person who attended the White House south lawn event organized before the state dinner, and the crowd there looked jam packed! Also, the INDUS-X initiative that has been announced is the most detailed collaboration document I’ve seen to promote Indo US defence cooperation at the start up level. At the same time, there was not too much brouhaha like the Howdy Modi event in Houston a few years back. More action, less talk – that’s kind of the feeling I have. Who knows, maybe this time the defence collaboration talk is more real!
Professor,
Here is an article by a Retired Group Captain, who says the GE deal will ensure that India will not make its own jet engines till 2100.
https://eurasiantimes.com/end-of-made-in-india-dream-no-indian-fighter-jet-will-fly/?amp
His point is that the DRDO/HAL combine is so inefficient and their history is such, that they will not be able to make their own engine which will be sufficient for future needs.
I would say that this is a very realistic assessment of the Indian mindset and capabilities. The only way India will develop its own critical miltech is if a culture of challenging the hierarchy develops in the Indian military eco system. Not in the military, as it is by necessity hierarchical, but in the private sector, where good ideas should challenge the status quo. And if the challenge is defeated, then to be able to easily set up a new organisation which will have a captive market to allow the good idea to flourish. And a culture of meritocracy where competence is rewarded and incompetence punished. By and large the U.S. has such an environment and that is why it leads the world in many technologies.
For this the sarkari attitude in private and public companies has to be killed, and India must embrace capitalism more openly. Of course, India must also generate competent engineers, but that is not where the problem is. Until this happens, India will be forced to depend on other countries, and that is not a good recipe for great power ambitions.
So, what’s new?
I just hope Indians learn from Americans and address these issues. If there is one country where Indians have been successful it’s America. The US does have a need for low cost manufacturing and frankly a lot of the innovation and R&D in the US happens through Indians. That’s one of the reasons the US is looking at India. I just hope India does not mess it up. Learn from others where you need to and stand firm where you need to.
Gentlemen in this forum including retired officers of all ranks love to talk about fancy-new technologies they have literally zero idea about,to say it mildly .However,the fact is that Aerospace engines is arguably the only such military field where decades of experience and matured,highly secretive technologies(metal coatings,for instance) continue to rule the roost.Aerospace engines is one of those domains where tech takes at least 15-20 years to mature .It is only due to this fact that the much vaunted Chinese are still struggling with the reverse-enginnering of the Al-31F,a decades’ old Soviet vintage which is nowhere close,in terms of tech, to the American GE-F414.In fact,it is different versions of the crude chinese copy of the Al-31F which powers their entire fighter fleet as well as nascent transport aircraft(the Y-20).
Some of my senior college friends who were in Aeronautics and Mechanical Engg. currently work at GTRE.I have only met them once or twice after they graduated.The only thing they talked about was the last of basic testing facilites and unbelievably scarce funds.These are highly-motivated and talented young men who genuinely want to do something for their country.The disgusting babudom,of course,does not make things any easier.Despite all these bottlenecks,the guys at GTRE have successfully developed the 50 KN Dry Kaveri engine,overcoming the myriad problems in its hot core.Also developing single-crystal blades is a job of the DMRL(Defence metallurgical research Lab) and not GTRE.In fact,it has already accomplished this two years ago.It is this breakthrough which enabled the development of a stable hot-core of the Dry Kaveri.The Modi regime’s decision to pay the US some $4 billion odd dollars in the form of various defence deals,to extract 80% of the tech of the F414 is a welcome move.In fact,I was personally shocked by the fact that the US was willing to transfer basically everything except the casting of the single crystal blade.The GoI clearly made the decision as we simply dont have the time to develop and mature all of this tech on our own.It was a bitter but necessary decision
@Ayush, if you talk to retired Air Force officers (of which you claim to have some connections with through your gramps), you will note that one of the key differences between IAF officers and pilots and USAF officers and pilots is their theoretical knowledge of aeronautics and aircraft technology. Not only do pilots know how to fly well, they know a lot about how to repair them too.
Maybe you’ll learn this when you join the IAF, but don’t underestimate the continuous learning that happens in the Indian military. They probably know more about engine technology than you who comes with a CS background, albeit from a good school.
@Amit
Thanks for replying.
I would like you to ask all retired IAF officers including and above the Group Captain/Commodore rank you know, regarding what the advantages of single crystals of Nickle/Rhenium based super alloys are, and also about highly-secretive vacuum casting process involving complex ceramic moulds.I can bet that hardly anybody would have an iota of knowledge about this.IAF has a very murky tradition of letting senior pilots fly(and die) infamous vintage “flying coffins” like the Mig-21 and others.
Almost all two/three star IAF and army officers rely upon their junior rank staff officers to do all of their day-to-day work.While at the same time,these men pilfer on juicy “commissions” received for enabling imports of all kinds at the MoD , at the expense of equivalent local programmes which they try their level-best to ruthlessly sabotage.For instance,I am aware of one particular incident which occured during “Modi 1.0” when army officers from the Mechanized forces(MF) ordered a “do or die” trial for the Arjun Mk1A.The trials basically involved firing a cutting edge Israeli 120 mm APFSDS meant for the Merkava series tanks at point blank range at the Arjun MK1A.To the shock of the baffled army officers,the Arjun MK1A’s upgraded Kanchan-armour actually survived the onslaught! Despite what was,incontrovertibly, the most rigorous and exhaustive trials ever carried out on a tank,the army ordered only a paltry 118 of these (worth approx. $1 billion ).The excuse this time was the 68 ton weight! Now, it is a completely different matter that the army’s “marvel comics requirements” ensured that the weight of the tank increased by dozens of tons due to massive upgrades.Beats me how the army officers involved in the Arjun trials and also those at the procurement directorate were not hanged.
@Ayush, I don’t know the Group Captain who wrote that article. I’m sure there are bad apples in the armed forces. And in any organisation, it will be the junior staff that actually works on the tech. That is just a fact. And frankly, it is not the job of the IAF to develop the engine, though many IAF personnel do transfer to DRDO, ADA, etc. in technology development programs.
The issue is the Indian system. I’ve worked for an Indian company and worked in India for a few years. For miltech, moreover, it is public companies that are supposed to do the job. I think the general Indian workforce is good at a few things, but not so good at many. It is not world class, yet. There are only so many IITians and NIITians floating around, many of whom still leave India within a few years of graduation.
And in the defence industry, the PSUs leave a lot to be desired in terms of timely outcomes. There are added issues related to bureaucratic delays, corruption, and lack of political will, which I think are bigger issues than the competence of the engineers doing the actual job. Until those issues are resolved, India will continue to muck around and will always be one step behind in developing top miltech that is cutting edge.
To AYUSH
USA as a greedy private defence establishment produces over priced not so effective defence equipment with that much of money spent as do other nations.so much about capitalism producing good defence goods.! In Ukraine overpriced Anglo goodies are burning . USA can do that because USA has stooges in India and 3rd world who lick American boots to get HIB visas for their wards .falling which USA threatens other nations to buy overpriced goods and use only dollar for foreign transaction.that is why USA can print money out of thin air . India, by buying American goods, is basically arming her future enemy .
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AYUSH said
“press.DRDO scientists operates with extremely minuscule budgets(compared to western counterparts), lack of even basic test facilities(as in case of GTRE) and in–“.
Deliberate underfunding of and even anti propaganda of DRDO was done by unelected ex pm mmsingh working as if an agent for Anglos He decried DRDO even in the Indian parliament casting doubt about DRDO ability .
There is a saying “Shikari ayega, jaal beechayega par phasna nahin”
Indians deliberately fall for anglos trap to be snared by anglos to buy spy infested Anglo’s defence articles with full knowledge of what England and USA do to sabotage other nations .still Indian NRIs and Indian corrupt class cheer such deals because they seek worthless HIB visas