As late as the 1970’s, manufacture of defence items was concentrated among a few select nations, mainly USA and the Europeans. Japan being the sole exception. Since then this capability has been acquired by other developing nations. India, South Korea & Turkey being the most prominent ones. China’s arms industry is also relatively new but since Chinese economy is now 2nd largest in the world, her arms industry is not under discussion.
Despite the fact that a successful arms industry does not guarantee victory in case of war as evident from the German defeat WW2; exclusive dependence on few foreign countries for the defence weapons and technology is not in any countries interest. Particularly the availability of maintenance and repair capability, spare parts, material and other support to keep critical systems functioning in all circumstances is a vital concern.
However, there are so many inputs required in a successful military product that even highly the developed industry would still require lot of imported components.
This means that the dream of total independence from the foreign suppliers may never be realised.
Before we come to Pakistan starting the 10 programmes under discussion; let us briefly look at the three countries whose arms industry has come a long way during the last 40 to 50 years. These being India, South Korea and Turkey.
Each country had a 15 -20 targeted programme coupled with simultaneous substantial Research & Develop projects. This is evident from the fact that budget of just India's DRDO & ISRO at more than $4-billion, is more than half of the total annual defence expenditure by Pakistan.
All future wars are going to be won by the forces with better technology weapons. Defence industry requires input from nearly all branches of science. For example ‘Kevlar’ was developed thru research in the textile technology and input from the food industry is required in the field rations. Treatment of the wounded & the sick needs input from the pharmaceutical industry. Obviously countries with larger overall expenditure of R& D acquire more capability in the manufacture of sophisticated defence equipment as well.
According to the published data, South Korea spent $91.6-billion on R&D in 2010. India $66.5-billion and Turkey $15.3-billion. Pakistan on the other hand a paltry $2.4-billion. This being the R& D expenditure in all scientific fields including the agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
Turkey had made the decision to develop her indigenous arms industry after the imposition of the limited embargo by the United States in 1975 following Cypress invasion.
A new agency of the Defence Industry known as SSM with its own source of capital, the Defence Industry Support Fund was created in 1985. Its funding does not depend on national defence budget appropriations. Instead but 10 per cent of taxes on fuel, 5 per cent of individual and corporate income taxes, and taxes on alcohol and tobacco are earmarked for this purpose. Since the mid-1980s, Turkey has been engaged in a wide-ranging program to develop a modern defence industry based on cooperation with firms in other countries
Main engine of the development of the aeronautical prowess was the Peace Onyx started in 1984. Under the he Peace Onyx I & II program TÜSAS (Türk Uçak Sanayi Sirketi) Aerospace Industries [TAI] co-produced 240 Lockheed Martin F-16s.
Due to an escalating nuclear threat from North Korea; South Korean gov’t decided during the 1960’s that the country would pursue a self-reliant defence posture. As a result, the South Korean defence budget nearly doubled from $461million in 1973 to $697 million in 1974.
By the 1980s, the South Korean defence industry was manufacturing K2 rifle, the Hyunmu surface-to-surface missile, 155mm self-propelled howitzers, destroyers, fast attack patrol boats, the 500MD helicopters and the F-5E fighter aircraft. The development of South Korea’s defence industry was largely due to the strategic alliance between South Korea and the United States because the U.S. government was providing Korean defence firms with licensing and co-production agreements.
The Industries (Development & Regulation) Act, 1951 of India declared that 'core' industries (including defence sector) would be taken care of by central government. Eight Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs) were established under aegis of Government to undertake defence production. Defence Science Organisation (DSO), established for the R&D got amalgamated with technical development establishment (TDE) in 1958 and became DRDO.] .
India’s largest defence company the Hindustan Aeronautics developed through the licence manufacture of Bristol Siddely Orpheus jet engines back in 1957. Subsequently jet trainers Kiran and the Marut fighter were produced along with the licensed manufacture of MiG-21. The license production of Jaguars and MiG-27M was also undertaken by HAL.
From the 1980’s indigenous development of LCA, ALH, MBT Arjun by DRDO started as well as the missiles under Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme by Bharat Dynamics Limited.
But now comes the million dollar question? Did the 50 years effort succeed in making the three countries totally self-reliant in arms production? Would the time and money spent on arms production would been more beneficial if spent on improving the education and general living standard of the common man instead?
Let us look at the ground reality.
South Korea has imported military equipment from the United States worth an average of about $3- billion a year over the past decade,
The total value of imports in the 10 years until October 2016 was $30.5- billion, which makes the United States by far the biggest defence exporter to South Korea.
http://www.janes.com/article/66969/south-korea-details-extent-of-us-imports
Turkey became the sixth largest arms importer in the world between 2011 and 2015, with the United States as the world’s biggest arms supplier, according to recent research released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Turkey accounted for 3.4 per cent of global arms imports in the past five years, according to the research, entitled “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2015.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/tu...veals.aspx?PageID=238&NID=95550&NewsCatID=341 combat aircraft to 9 states.
India is the currently the largest importer of arms in the world with the 14% of the world’s total arms imports.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...r-swedish-think-tank/articleshow/51093214.cms
Despite the huge sums spent on R &D, all of the three countries still remain at the rudimentary level in core technologies, such as aviation electronics, flight/armament controls stealth/composite materials, rotor design and aero engine manufacture compared to the US, French or German products. These countries continue to spend huge sums on arms imports because second rate equipment could mean defeat in a war and the indigenous produce is not good enough.
This is also evident in case on India where despite vast sums and effort spent of R&D, the high value armed forces hardware is met through arms acquisition from abroad such as Bofor 155 mm guns, T-90 Russian tanks, Hawk trainers, Mirage 2000 and now the Rafael.
Therefore there are serious questions about the benefits of prioritization the defence production over the economic development and one should do be extremely cautious as to what Pakistan should be doing but is not doing.
Every country has limited resources in men and material. In my humble opinion, most important is the HUMAN resource. Defence industry requires large number of high calibre scientists & engineers and technicians. Therefore above all, first thing to do is to prioritise improvement in the standards of education. Particularly the graduate & post graduate education level needs to be raised so that Pakistani degree is considered at par with the equivalent European & the US degrees
No harm in having ambitious dream, but in order to have any chance of achieving the goal of attaining even the 50% self-sufficiency in the defence related products; Pakistan needs to set up a long term (say 20 years) strategy with step by step goals.
Pakistan had been handicapped by large periods of sanctions and before the JF-17, only offset program we had was the Augusta submarine assembly. Nevertheless, we already have the capability of manufacturing small arms and ammunition and anti-aircraft missiles. We can also modernize and produce MBT’s.
As a first step, this capability should be expanded to include manufacture of all the field guns & howitzers, tank guns and the ‘reverse engineering’ of the spare parts so that we are able to operate the existing hardware even after sanction have been imposed.
Simultaneously GOP needs to establish a research organisation dedicated to aero engines, electronics, motor vehicles & turbines and a naval research unit with the initial task of improving the life and / or efficiency of our existing naval assets.
The second stage would be to start the manufacturing of radar, electronics command & control items thru reverse engineering or otherwise. With the aim that once we have a military item; it can be maintained and completely over hauled without depending upon foreign help. This would probably require joint venture projects with China, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, and Romania and may be also with the Italian & Spanish companies.
As the defence industry is highly capital intensive, it would be virtually impossible for our indigenous defence industry to proceed to the next stage; that is the design & development of state of the art military hardware without the supplemental funds made available through FDI and private sector financing. Defence capability building would therefore require a synergy between the private sector and public sector ordnance factories and the Defence Research & Development establishments, else high technology capabilities would be impossible to attain.
Since the design & development of high value military assets takes a very long time
“More often than not” hardware produced by less technically advanced nation becomes obsolete even before it is inducted. I would therefore suggest limiting the defence industry development to the capability that future major defence acquisitions should either be co-produced under licence produced or include at least 33% of Pakistan manufactured content though offset agreements.
All of the above was just theoretical. Key question remains as to whether the GOP has the will and the resources to implement it?