The Government and military absolutely wants the private sector involved.
It’s a good idea. Even if every military industrial installation is combined, their size is that of a small to mid level industrial group. The private sector, has a lot more capacity for both production and research. Plus they have their own economies.,of scale.
But the private sector has its own issues.
Such as
1. Erupting expansion in cost. These are corporate entities, who need to show a profit to their shareholders. Since a lot of military hardware involves small scale production and a limited client base, this means to keep them viable, the price will have to be sufficient to make it worthwhile.
2. Security. Look at the US and UK. The biggest leaks have been through the contractors. Once you have a diffuse, mostly civilian based workforce, your security problems grow exponentially.
@Oscar said elsewhere.
Again, our industry’s motto(for better or for worse) is to only undertake indigenous research and production of technology that is either not available to us and/or is a low hanging fruit.
The issue is the allocation of resources. They can either go to production or research. So it has to be divided.
For
really high level stuff, like strategic missiles and warheads, we have done really deep R&D. Which has resulted in some shocking lethal and advanced stuff. Such as the various iterations of GLCM and SSM. Stuff, the Turks and others can only dream about.
We have certainly followed the other way for mid to high level stuff. And continue still rely on exports for some alarmingly low level stuff. Like mortars.
I would begin a phased policy of contracting out various stuff to private Industry.
Starting with small arms and munitions, and as many vehicles as possible.
Then we can go onto more advanced stuff, like aviation.
As an aside, I think one of the reasons the AK Tank project struggled was since it was being made in HIT. I would ideally like to see HIT and POF converted into mostly a research and develop,met Organization, which contract out production. With perhaps a secondary focus on training,
Once a tank is designed, the actual nuts and bolts is simple.
Let private industry bid for large scale manufacturing contracts of HIT and POF designs.