Is Reverse engineering a Good Option for India?

[xinhui]

I worked for a defense contractor, so it is both.

 

[xinhui]

Airbus delivers it's 11th Tianjin assembled A320 family aircraft
Published: Dec 16, 2009
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Airbus delivers it's 11th Tianjin assembled A320 family aircraft
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Airbus Final Assembly Line China achieves 2009 target
Eleven A320 family aircraft delivered from Tianjin on schedule and on quality

The Airbus A320 Family Final Assembly Line China (FALC) has achieved its 2009 target as the 11th A320 Family aircraft assembled by the FALC was delivered to Deer Air, an airline part of the HNA Group, on 16th December in Tianjin.

The first A320 assembled by the FALC was delivered to Sichuan Airlines via Dragon Aviation Leasing on 23rd June 2009. Since then, a total of six A320 and five A319 assembled by the FALC have been delivered and are now in operation with Sichuan Airlines, Deer Air, Shenzhen Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.

Airbus delivers it's 11th Tianjin assembled A320 family aircraft | | Company News | News | en.AvBuyer.com.cn

 

[xinhui]

So is Embraer


Embraer ERJ-145 | Airliners.net
Since mid 2004, the ERJ-145 is also assembled in China by Harbin Embraer.

 

[Honor]

China have 50 years of reverse engineering i.e. glorious term for faking/coping because they are world's biggest cheaters.

Get out of ur dreams 50 years ago China was not techonogically advance like it is at present.
Also Chinese manufacturing was nothing at that time they were busy in killing their own chinese people.

The Chinese advancement or expertise in coping comes after 50 years of continues faking.

There is no company in the world which have not get revenue losses due to cheap faking by chinese and this is not something to be proud of.

And the fact of the matter is the Chinese till date have not produced a single military marble which is not there in the world with US/EU or Russia.

You are wrong! We developed our ICBM in the 70s!

 

[Ruag]

LOL... the Chinese on this forum are bashing India for not having the capability to reverse-engineer modern weapons and proclaim themselves to be some sort of "experts" in this field.

India will never pursue reverse engineering because India always stands by its commitment to its military suppliers. Several nations have lined up to jointly manufacture weapons with India and have even agreed to transfer technology. And this shows the trust European and American defense contractors have.

China, on the other hand, is a different story. May I know China's military partners in the joint-development sector? Pakistan? North Korea? Lol.

So Chinese people... continue showing off your awesome "reverse-engineering skills".

 

[gogbot]

I already said my 2 cents on the reverse engineering issue, a while back.
Have a read if you have not already.

You know i was just thinking about the real reasons why China reverse engineers and why India doesn't

when i came upon this thread. And have been itching for reason to post my views.

Now this is going to be a but long winded but i feel it would be worth a read.

Now We all know China Can reverse engineer stuff, and they can do it really good. A mot of Chinese are proud of that, And why shouldn't they be. Not many people can do it.

But everything has a price and when you reverse engineer you get advanced tech really cheap, With very little R&D costs.
But the cost is usually the original supplier, who would be really pissed of. As is the case with Russia and China.

So Now the main Question why did China choose to reverse engineer things. well lets role the clock back to 1961.

Stalin is dead, Mao is pissed. Relations with USSR and CHINA go down hill(this is the short version of the story).

But now this leaves China with a real problem. Almost all their defense needs were served by the USSR. with their own defense sector very much in its infancy, and in the age before freedom of information and the internet. China had a huge technological disadvantage.

They had the US threat and A US supplied Taiwan, to deal with.
With absolutely no means of procuring weapons to defend them selves or their interests (bummer).

There were 3 major sources of Weapons back then, Europe, America and USSR. And not one of them was going to sell to China.

So what did China do the only thing it could, took the soviet inventory they already had. Broke it down and rebuilt all of it, under the Chinese flag. Which was not an easy thing mind you.

Sure China rolled out with some of her own gear as the decades rolled on. But then again their defense sector was still growing and still very much behind the USSR and the West.

But then 1991 happened, Communism lost, USSR imploded. **** got real. The world bloody changed.

But what about China, where defense was concerned, The Americans still wouldn't sell them anything. China is under the EU sanction, so nothing from Europe. Us blocking trade with the New Israeli defense market.

But China now had Russia and all the other Soviet fallout states, with Vast quantities of Soviet equipment, and no where near the money to maintain the whole arsenal.

China steps in and buys as much of it as it can, and at low low prices.
And since the original supplier was less than concerned about what China would do with all these new toys. China reverse engineered all of it, they jumped 10-15 years in a matter of 5 years. Absorbing the capabilities of the old USSR and then building on it. Other wise its defense sector would only be a shadow of its former self today.

Even Russia so strapped for Cash could do little to stop China making the J-11 a rampant rip of the Su-27, instead they choose to compromise and take in what sales it could to china's as they still controlled the engines. and thus limiting China's own exports.

And that my friends is why China reverse engineer's, it was more due to cause and effect, then capability. The situations it was in facilitated this kind of system, and it has served them rather brilliantly in My opinion.

(my next post, why India does not reverse engineer, at lest not publicly. that post is both equally long winded and i believe there is a limit to how many characters you can have in the post )

Why India does not reverse engineer ?

Well many people would jump the gun and say India cant that why , and to some extent that's true. But that's because that's not how the Indian defense sector has developed. It has different goals and is subject to a vastly different situation than that of China.

You cant ask someone who's been training for a Marathon to race in the 100m sprint. its just not the same.

So whats different.

Pakistan that's what. India's main security concern. Now once again we are rolling back the clock to the 1962.

While at this point China could not find any one to sell weapons.
India could still buy from Europe and Russia. That's the key deference we had suppliers.

Guess who else had suppliers, Pakistan getting some of the most advanced weapons in the world. from America and Europe.

Coming out of the Indo-china conflict as the losers, there was an increased focus on the armed forces. which more than doubled in size by 1965.

Of course that meant that the Indian defense establishment had an almost non-existent defense sector. So all of the weapons had to imported and Munitions plants constructed to kick start the Indian defense sector. Imports were primarily from Russia to counter the American Equipped Pakistan.

See that s important to note, India has an active conflict with Pakistan, and thus if Pakistan had American made tech. India's only option was to get Russian tech to counter it.

1965 proved just that, India's efforts to improve her domestic sector (if unhindered would have been somewhere along the line of Turkey which is a good example as turkey was not engaged in any active conflicts had access to most arms suppliers and could build it capabilities over time.), had to take a back, to our arms race with Pakistan.

we need equipment that could compete with the US built stuff that Pakistan was fielding. India needed to get soviet tech and alienating it with attempts at reverse engineering, would just put India in a tight spot against a US supported Pakistan. as we would also loose a powerful ally.

In 1971 our relations with USSR forced the US to back down, which in the end worked out for India.

But The game changed for the defense sector after 1975, India detonated a Nuclear bomb, the west places heavy sanctions. USSR still sell to India.

But India has countered almost all of Pakistan's conventional power.
It no longer had to worry about every little thing Pakistan gets as in the long run India had the Bomb and Pakistan did not. So India started a lot of her first Indigenous projects(at least the big ones) at about 1976. And if Pakistan got something Game changing in the conventional sense, India just bought the Russian counter.


But those years of Peace at Gun point by India, allowed the defense sector to Improve and Grow for the first time, Our missile projects were initiated back in the 80's . Once we pulled out of the Arms race as it were or at least slowed the Pace. Domestic sector was what captured the defense budget.

But the Game changes once again as during the Rajive Ghandi's terms in Office the economy was liberalized by the then Finance minister Manmohan Singh. Granted India was facing Bankruptcy if it didn't its still the most important recent event in India's history.

The India economy started to grow at an astonishing rate. And by 1998 when Pakistan Detonated her first Nuclear device.

And the threat of low scale quick conventional wars surfaced, for evidence look at Kargil . India had a lot more money than Pakistan.
even though both nations had significantly more mature domestic defense sector.

Pakistan as a result still relied on imports to offset the R&D costs.
India on the other hand showed that it could import and simultaneously fund domestic projects.

This was further helped by the fact that India could import from almost anybody today, reverse engineering imports would just serve to alienate suppliers and let India loose a Position that not many nations have,
- A capable Domestic sector
-A huge budget
-Foreign suppliers lining up to get a share of the Indian defense market

How best do you take advantage of this Situation.

-you use that Extra cash to pay for ToT and Offset clauses, forcing foreign suppliers to invest in the Indian defense market to get these big deals.

-You sign JV with foreign suppliers to get Even more TOT and intellectual property

This is in essence having the Best of Both world, What you import is essentially adding to you r domestic capabilities. Lets say for example
India in five years will be manufacturing 3 different aircraft, the MKI, MMRCA and LCA. Will all be built from scratch in India. Imagine the improvement in manufacturing capabilities alone.

while today India defense is more focused on countering China's growing power.And what better way is there to counter the capabilities of more capable nation, then to get capabilities form an even more capable nation, which in turn will improve your own capabilities.

That's a little but contrived but i hope you get the gist of What i am saying.

And that my friends is why India does not reverse engineer at least publicly. Its not in our best interests to do so. Our Domestic sector can grow and expand a lot faster if we work with and learn for the foreign supplier we buy from, rather then going at t all by our self which China was forced to do. Now i know people may point out that China is years ahead of India , well China really did not have any choice but go at it alone, Which nearly 40 years latter payed of. with the soviet collapse and subsequent fire sale. also China stated developing its domestic sector in the early 60's as opposed to India in the late 70's so given that there is a gap of at least 15 years. There will be an obvious disparity between the two in comparison today. But India is catching up, And i guess we have to see what happens in the future.

Thanks for reading

 

[TruthSeeker]

All innovators "reverse engineer". The entire history of engineering and science is replete with one improvement being built on the base of what came before.

The problems with reverse engineering are mainly two: (1) mistaken application to a new problem and (2) patent infringement. In the first case the "dumb" reverse engineer, only copying and not understanding the technology, may mistakenly apply it to a different problem or make a substitution of materials or parameters which spoils the functioning of the technology. In the second case, if the reverse engineered product is to be sold in the country where it was originally engineered it may infringe a patent in that original inventors areas of patent protection. For defense technology this isn't a problem if the technology is never exported but may "bite" the reverse engineer in the tail if/when he wants to sell abroad to increase production volume or to bring in funds.

 

[faithfulguy]

You can certainly say that about India.

Wait, wait. India is producing a ABM against ICBM even though it doesn't even have any ICBM to test against. The single military marble from India is that it would field an ABM system without first testing it as India knows the parameters of an ICBM so testing is not necessary. Believe me, this are words from Indian members on the India can handle both China/Pakistan simutaneous thread.

That member was non other than me, But As you lack in reading English properly you missed out me saying that We would be testing on an ICBM by either purchasing it or Testing it Against AGNI-5, And I said that ABM will be built by the Data parameters available, Its not necessary to Build and ICBM before making an ABM. And Moreover If you agree or Not AD-1 and AD-2 development is really on.

No one would sell India an ICBM because it would be against the law. Secondly, it would take a long time for India to develop an ICBM so in the mean time, the developers of AD-1 and AD-2 wouldn't be able to come up with the requirements as it doesn't have ICBMs to study the tragetory and characteristic of one. All the claims about developing and ICBM interceptor by India, if indeed had been done, is a farce. No not hold your breath.

As I mentioned before, if the US develop a ICBM interceptor and regard it as operational base comparing it with data parameters, then we would have a ICBM interceptors back in the late 80s. Its only through testing that we know we have not succeeded thus far. And US had ICBMs since the early 60s, best technology in the world and the development process still take a long time (a development process difficulty and length that is comparable to LCA development). So if Indian can do this within 50 years, its all talk.

Also, US is far ahead of all countries in terms of technology. But I guess you disagree.

 

[faithfulguy]

Hopes that I'm not wrong.

Why you need an ICBM to test an ABM system. An ICBM is just like an IRBM with extended range. So if you got an IRBM which India has, is there any need for specific missiles.

If this is the case, Hitler could have extend its V2 to hit the US.

You are wrong.

 

[Red Dwarf]

If this is the case, Hitler could have extend its V2 to hit the US.

You are wrong.

Then please explain the difference between an IRBM and an ICBM.

 

[Honor]

LOL... the Chinese on this forum are bashing India for not having the capability to reverse-engineer modern weapons and proclaim themselves to be some sort of "experts" in this field.

India will never pursue reverse engineering because India always stands by its commitment to its military suppliers. Several nations have lined up to jointly manufacture weapons with India and have even agreed to transfer technology. And this shows the trust European and American defense contractors have.

China, on the other hand, is a different story. May I know China's military partners in the joint-development sector? Pakistan? North Korea? Lol.

So Chinese people... continue showing off your awesome "reverse-engineering skills".

Indian are known to be incompetence. They cannot understand that reverse engineering required a competence understanding of design, process and production technology.

Other nation had agreed to transfer technology to India as they know that cannot compete with them in the long term.

Indian do not have the technology, lack quality control and lack engineering discipline.

Indian likes to talks and blah and that makes them a good lawyer/manager but "bad bad" engineer.

 

[jha]

chill down guys... this thread has got more attention than it deserved.....
reverse engineering is something which cant be excelled in overnight ...chinese are best in it....so whats the problem....it was never india's forte...chill down

mods plz close the thread ...this has turned out to be another nationalist pissing contest....

 

[xinhui]

LOL... the Chinese on this forum are bashing India for not having the capability to reverse-engineer modern weapons and proclaim themselves to be some sort of "experts" in this field.

India will never pursue reverse engineering because India always stands by its commitment to its military suppliers. Several nations have lined up to jointly manufacture weapons with India and have even agreed to transfer technology. And this shows the trust European and American defense contractors have.

China, on the other hand, is a different story. May I know China's military partners in the joint-development sector? Pakistan? North Korea? Lol.

So Chinese people... continue showing off your awesome "reverse-engineering skills".

Like to point out some mis-conceptions out there:

China's major joint defense partners are Turkey, a NATO nation, Egypt, Brazil, and French (the Z-15 is a perfect example). you can google the Sino-Turkey projects like the B-611 or the WS-2 family of missiles.

B-611 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DPRK has very little to do with China's mil-indu complex.

While I stated publicly that IP should be respected. However, in the real world, folks all over the world do pursue reverse engineering. Just check out the links I posted on Indian company that ad their reverse engineering service on the web.

Some Chinese companies do violate copyright law but at the same time, other Chinese companies also jointly manufacture weapons and other hi-tech systems.


Statement like this show you ignored some of the developments that are going on.

May I know China's military partners in the joint-development sector? Pakistan? North Korea? Lol.

 

[xinhui]

Our Domestic sector can grow and expand a lot faster if we work with and learn for the foreign supplier we buy from, rather then going at t all by our self which China was forced to do. Now i know people may point out that China is years ahead of India , well China really did not have any choice but go at it alone, Which nearly 40 years latter payed of. with the soviet collapse and subsequent fire sale. also China stated developing its domestic sector in the early 60's as opposed to India in the late 70's so given that there is a gap of at least 15 years. There will be an obvious disparity between the two in comparison today. But India is catching up, And i guess we have to see what happens in the future.

another mis-conception about China really did not have any choice.

China JV with GE on aviation and engines, JV with French on military helicopter, JV with Turkey on missiles, JV with England on Submarine DSRV.

Most of China's defense tech during the 1980s was imported from Israel, that relationship took a down turn during the 1990. My point is that Russia was not the only supplier of China's defense tech. In the 1980s, we also saw the US attempt to upgrade the PLAAF's J-8II fleet with the peace-pearl program. China's DDG112 is powered by the GE LM 2500 CODOG engine.

For all the attention pay to China from many members here, the lack of knowledge on China is surprising.

 

[RAHUL INDIAN]

another mis-conception about China really did not have any choice.

China JV with GE on aviation and engines, JV with French on military helicopter, JV with Turkey on missiles, JV with England on Submarine DSRV.

Most of China's defense tech during the 1980s was imported from Israel, that relationship took a down turn during the 1990. My point is that Russia was not the only supplier of China's defense tech. In the 1980s, we also saw the US attempt to upgrade the PLAAF's J-8II fleet with the peace-pearl program. China's DDG112 is powered by the GE LM 2500 CODOG engine.

For all the attention pay to China from many members here, the lack of knowledge on China is surprising.

what is the purpose of this discussion....

let the Chinese continue to do Copy Past....
nothing wrong the only disadvantage is they are always looking to others to devlop something so that they can copy.....

God save CHina if they are not able to steal others designs someday....

1)Also a copied product far inferior to the original ones...
2)The scientists are not scientists but mechanics... and with dull minds who cannot develop on their own....copy paste requires less expertise UNDER ANY CONDITIONS than R&D.....

India doesnt do copy paste.....India beleives in R&D so that there is real advancement of scientific community and they are able to make quality products of their own....