That is just bad project management.
As a Project manager, your goal is to deliver on the requirements not what you feel the customer should have.
Your military is your customer. You have to deliver what they want. They want an MKI, they want the migs, they don't want the LCA. It takes a strong project manager to realize a failed project and end it.
Take the lessons learned into your new project.
What is a successful project? That finishes its deliverables on time and on budget. All changes have to go through change management processes. I'm pretty sure the IAF has not authorized most of the LCA "goals" and changes are happening in a haphazard basis.
They should've made, LCA phase I, LCA Phase II, LCA phase III type deliverables. Get the damn bird in service! It's giving ZERO benefit to the IAF.
Let me rephrase, the plane does not suck because it does not exist in an end product form till now. The LCA project, however does suck.
Pakistan's PAC has already DELIVERED on the JF-17. They did it, whether it was through Chengdu, or through santa. PAF will just say PAC delivered what we asked them to.
Now if they want more changes they can have a JF-17 phase II project starting up.
Again, your missing the point Asim.
Its not about project management as it is about developing technologies.
When the project started, the technologies that were needed to develop the plane were simply not there, nor the industrial base, nor the research base. Today because of this failed project as you say, we have all of the above. The spinoffs from the LCA project alone have been massive. India has been able to modernize Jags and Migs on its own without external help apart from some critical technologies. The spinoffs have been applied in everything from composite development for all missiles, to radar technology to small arms developments. There are over 500 research labs directly associated with the LCA project, let alone indirectly associated labs.
The foreign companies that are comming here now to set up their own Research labs or manufacturing units are comming here because talented people and scientists are available, and the sole reason they are available is because India started developing these planse and tanks. There was a dire need of these engineers and scientists at that point of time when the government started these ambitious projects, but the country did not have them, so the market started producing them as the government spent a lot of money setting up universities to cater for these needs. Slowly and slowly, watching government universities, private players also opened their universities and college's on the same lines, and the foreign companies today come to India and not -say Afghanistan because these universities are producing Grade 1 engineers and scientists who these companies think are worth the premium they pay for them.
India has been licence building planes for a long time, and that would lead you nowhere, its certainly much better than buying the plane from the host country, but not even near to developing your own plane...That is a whole different game. You say the end result is delivering the product to the services is the main aim-you are very wrong. Even if the indegenous plane costs much more than a fly away plane purchased directly from any country, it is better to produce it at home.
Pakistan has just started on its licence building plane path, it would do that for many years, then when it has the necessary infrastructure, the necessary research base and technological base, it would start its own project without any other collaboration apart from some core technologies that just cannot be developed in the given time-like engine technology. It would go through the same spiral that India has gone through/is going through.
Like i said, hopefully Pakistan would improve its own attempt by realizing from India's mistakes in its path, but it would definitely give it a try. As of now, Pakistan is a generation behind India in these things-research base, industrial capacity, technological base.
If the project is scrapped now as you say, the next attempt to develop the plane would be just as delayed, just as flawed, because India would have missed the technological evolution of current products to develop the technologies needed in that generation. There is no direct way to a future plane without the LCA. To get to say the MCA, we HAVE to go through the LCA. Otherwise the technologies needed then would not be there again, and we would have to develop them from scratch.
As regards to a product changes over the years, it was not DRDO who though the IAF should have this or that, but the IAF that constantly changed its GSQR's to get what was the latest in the market as opposed to the Mark-1/2/3 type approach.
I am not saying India has not committed mistakes, it has and glaring ones at that, but the basic path is inescapable if you want self reliance.
