Featured Project Azm: Pakistan's Ambitious Quest to Develop 5th Generation Military Technologies.

[Akh1112]

All rumors I've heard ( KLJ-7A ) of in house Aesa production I've heard here...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1299451191584264193

 

[SQ8]

I'm okay with throwing R&D to the curb if we correctly manage our economy so that we can bankroll the imports. Unfortunately, whatever administrative constraints the military is facing, they pale in comparison to the circus on the political end of the spectrum. The culture thinks the money is all just there, so just import the car or the fighter jet, economics and industry be damned. Defence takes a huge portion of our spending, but we need that spending to somehow stimulate the economy and enable long-term growth (R&D). Otherwise, our defence will suffer.

So long as you have incompetent people in charge this will continue to be. It’s not like there arent senators or house members in the US who bring snowballs to congress or think submarines can travel at 200 knots - but, the underlying system that advises them is somewhat competent.
There is no competency in Pakistan - Mr. Engro was picked as finance minister only to find himself out of his depth and procrastinate the already dying economy to critical life support - yet half of Pakistan was expecting miracles in six months. That’s because Pakistanis are ignorant and uneducated as a majority on even the basics that they cannot recognize actual knowledge and competence.
Just throwing words around like Machine Learning, Kubernetes or Blockchain doesn’t automatically make me an expert on those subjects leave alone being able to manage a large scale distributed artificial intelligence infrastructure project.
Unfortunately in Pakistan, because the audience has no idea in the first place what these things are, a mechanical engineer is assigned to manage a product on IoT while the guy only knows how to build a biscuit making machine.

What is needed is a complete cultural overhaul and general boycott of this culture by graduates of good universities. That will only happen if they get into a startup mentality from day one and simply abandon the R&D infrastructure while clearly stating they aren’t interested in having a retired colonel from MES run an artificial intelligence project on a budget for a potato farm.
Either hand it over and sit in as customer representatives only for confirming requirements or waste a few million rupees on buying land and photoshops after which you can run to the Chinese or Turks to buy off the shelf.

 

[SQ8]

I sometimes get honest to God panic attacks thinking about that



I like to think the JF17 program as PAF learning how to MANUFACTURE a 4th gen jet airframe and assemble some avionics. Anything in the design sphere that was done by Pakistanis was on a small scale and not institutionalized so basically wasted.


What you are alluding to, and what I have written about a lot here is that military officer is the exact opposite of a research engineer. Being a military officer is entirely antithetical to the idea of being a researcher. Of course I mean the military officer from PAF (and not USAF people in AFOSR for example who are career researchers). PAF, being an air force, has engineers that have spent their lives maintaining, and to some extent overhauling and manufacturing jets. This does not qualify you to become a designer of jets.

If Bala Denter got up one day and said I'm going to design a car, you'd call him crazy. But PAF is doing the same and nobody bats an eye. That's the problem. To most Pakistanis what PAF does at PAC is the same as what Boeing does in Seattle. It is NOT! And the PAF has started to believe the same. Unfortunately, ExACM Sohail Aman is one of these people - not taking away anything from the man just criticizing one aspect of his vision. The desire to have your own design for an FGFA is admirable and definitely not impossible for Pakistan. However, the way PAF thinks it can do so is just like Bala Denter going "main garhi banaoonga".

We need to start working from the ground up. Bala denter needs to get a job in Honda first. Learn the ropes. Rise to a managerial position. Start his own company making automotive parts to supply Honda. Then slowly expand his operation. Reinvest profits into R&D and hire experts in automotive DESIGN (NOT other bala denters). I hope you can follow the analogy.


That's a very long term game that I don't expect us to play because of the lack of appetite for long-term things.

It doesn’t even have to be Bala denter level - at the end even the repair supervisor or the head of radar production isn’t qualified to manage an entire 5th gen project. Heck Turkey is struggling and they are 4-5 decades ahead in R&D.

There are many many smart people in Pakistan who make me look like a low IQ/EQ dropout - but they aren’t in charge or when they are they are given budgets that even the most basic Fintech startup has more off prior to their initial Funding rounds

 

[Bilal Khan (Quwa)]

It doesn’t even have to be Bala denter level - at the end even the repair supervisor or the head of radar production isn’t qualified to manage an entire 5th gen project. Heck Turkey is struggling and they are 4-5 decades ahead in R&D.

There are many many smart people in Pakistan who make me look like a low IQ/EQ dropout - but they aren’t in charge or when they are they are given budgets that even the most basic Fintech startup has more off prior to their initial Funding rounds

The best part is that Turkey said it needs 10,000 engineers to support the TF-X, and they're open to hiring outside (including, ironically enough, Pakistanis in the US and UK). Then we got qaumi cheerleaders telling us Pakistan's ahead on FGFA development despite lacking the industrial base, budget, and high-level manpower.

 

[SaadH]

So long as you have incompetent people in charge this will continue to be. It’s not like there arent senators or house members in the US who bring snowballs to congress or think submarines can travel at 200 knots - but, the underlying system that advises them is somewhat competent.
There is no competency in Pakistan - Mr. Engro was picked as finance minister only to find himself out of his depth and procrastinate the already dying economy to critical life support - yet half of Pakistan was expecting miracles in six months. That’s because Pakistanis are ignorant and uneducated as a majority on even the basics that they cannot recognize actual knowledge and competence.
Just throwing words around like Machine Learning, Kubernetes or Blockchain doesn’t automatically make me an expert on those subjects leave alone being able to manage a large scale distributed artificial intelligence infrastructure project.
Unfortunately in Pakistan, because the audience has no idea in the first place what these things are, a mechanical engineer is assigned to manage a product on IoT while the guy only knows how to build a biscuit making machine.

What is needed is a complete cultural overhaul and general boycott of this culture by graduates of good universities. That will only happen if they get into a startup mentality from day one and simply abandon the R&D infrastructure while clearly stating they aren’t interested in having a retired colonel from MES run an artificial intelligence project on a budget for a potato farm.
Either hand it over and sit in as customer representatives only for confirming requirements or waste a few million rupees on buying land and photoshops after which you can run to the Chinese or Turks to buy off the shelf.

It's not the minister's job to workout the technical modalities of the day to day operations in their ministries, they provide a vision and take executive decisions based on the input from the technocrats from their respective ministries. If anything it is a huge indictment of our bureaucracy, especially the babus sitting in the finance ministries who didn't have the experience, nor the institutional knowledge, nor the nuanced understanding of how to approach and/or deal with IMF based on the past experiences. No one anticipated or warned Asad Umer of the implications of delaying going to IMF, there was no risk assessment nor mitigation in case certain course of action didn't work out.

Unless of course the Nooni toon loyalists in the bureaucracy set him up for failure.

 

[SQ8]

It's not the minister's job to workout the technical modalities of the day to day operations in their ministries, they provide a vision and take executive decisions based on the input from the technocrats from their respective ministries. If anything it is a huge indictment of our bureaucracy, especially the babus sitting in the finance ministries who didn't have the experience, nor the institutional knowledge, nor the nuanced understanding of how to approach and/or deal with IMF based on the past experiences. No one anticipated or warned Asad Umer of the implications of delaying going to IMF, there was no risk assessment nor mitigation in case certain course of action didn't work out.

Unless of course the Nooni toon loyalists in the bureaucracy set him up for failure.

Then he really wasn’t the man for the job - the idea should have been him having expertise or the PTI picking someone who could anticipate national and geopolitical financial environments rather than picking a national level corporate leader.

 

[_NOBODY_]

So long as you have incompetent people in charge this will continue to be. It’s not like there arent senators or house members in the US who bring snowballs to congress or think submarines can travel at 200 knots - but, the underlying system that advises them is somewhat competent.
There is no competency in Pakistan - Mr. Engro was picked as finance minister only to find himself out of his depth and procrastinate the already dying economy to critical life support - yet half of Pakistan was expecting miracles in six months. That’s because Pakistanis are ignorant and uneducated as a majority on even the basics that they cannot recognize actual knowledge and competence.
Just throwing words around like Machine Learning, Kubernetes or Blockchain doesn’t automatically make me an expert on those subjects leave alone being able to manage a large scale distributed artificial intelligence infrastructure project.
Unfortunately in Pakistan, because the audience has no idea in the first place what these things are, a mechanical engineer is assigned to manage a product on IoT while the guy only knows how to build a biscuit making machine.

What is needed is a complete cultural overhaul and general boycott of this culture by graduates of good universities. That will only happen if they get into a startup mentality from day one and simply abandon the R&D infrastructure while clearly stating they aren’t interested in having a retired colonel from MES run an artificial intelligence project on a budget for a potato farm.
Either hand it over and sit in as customer representatives only for confirming requirements or waste a few million rupees on buying land and photoshops after which you can run to the Chinese or Turks to buy off the shelf.

Thank God things are changing now. Many youngster now want to work for startups instead.

 

[Blacklight]

That will only happen if they get into a startup mentality from day one and simply abandon the R&D infrastructure while clearly stating they aren’t interested in having a retired colonel from MES run an artificial intelligence project on a budget for a potato farm.
Either hand it over and sit in as customer representatives only for confirming requirements or waste a few million rupees on buying land and photoshops after which you can run to the Chinese or Turks to buy off the shelf.

Very well said Sir.

Issue faced is not only due to nepotism, and narcissism, but each new leader having his own vision, or rather lack of, and hence a new trajectory every few years. There is no consistency, which is the corner stone of the Chinese and Turks.

 

[Reichmarshal]

We went over this

Hope now u have ur source

 

[Akh1112]

Hope now u have ur source

For?,

 

[kursed]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Want to bet this eventually ends up as Faziya Housing Society at some point?

All of this is lack of having qualified people at the project head - the JF worked because of the Chinese guiding hand, in this case they look to be fumbling around without actual SMEs and Project management. Why? Because they want military and not civilians in charge who may be able to guide this better.

Even with the Chinese guiding our hand, once details of what was done by certain parties (until Sohail Aman's tenure) come out, people would want to do a lot worse to them than what PAF's done so far.

That said, I have never seen a more straight forward, honest to God discussion on mil R&D in Pakistan than this between @SQ8 @Bilal Khan (Quwa) and @JamD - what a breath of fresh air. Thanks for your contribution folks.

 

[SQ8]

Very well said Sir.

Issue faced is not only due to nepotism, and narcissism, but each new leader having his own vision, or rather lack of, and hence a new trajectory every few years. There is no consistency, which is the corner stone of the Chinese and Turks.

There is another aspect as well of “chadar dekh ke paon phelana” involved here as well. If Azm was a massive undertaking that you really are not prepared for - put a stop to it, re-evaluate your projects and work with a third party.

Half of Pakistani projects don’t ever get off the ground because they don’t have money. So to those dumbos I say - why start them in the first place unless you have no idea of project planning either. That money wasted on 50% projects not started could be allocated to projects that were. The budget can be allocated this way too.

But then bureaucrat mentality all over comes in to getting budget for their pet projects and also for TA/DA.
The country needs to be strong and not everyone needs to survive because that luxury doesn’t exist.
It sounds crass, it sounds selfish especially from someone no longer in Pakistan or with too many stakes - but if tomorrow Pakistan breaks up into 10 different fiefdoms, it will take 3 weeks for people to go back to normal and eat at McDonalds again. Democracy is and should remain a farcical component to a merit based system that is seen in institutions (be it private, civil government or military) but if neither functions properly at varying levels then you have the joker bazaar of Pakistan.

If Azm truly is in trouble as being reported then it should be scaled back - resources reallocated and all eggs divided into TFX and some into J-31.
Its better to have an imported product than a local mismanaged joke with no good output unlike the Indian Tejas which as @Bilal Khan (Quwa) points out; gave them an aviation base 30 years ahead of Pakistan.

 

[Rana4pak]

There is another aspect as well of “chadar dekh ke paon phelana” involved here as well. If Azm was a massive undertaking that you really are not prepared for - put a stop to it, re-evaluate your projects and work with a third party.

Half of Pakistani projects don’t ever get off the ground because they don’t have money. So to those dumbos I say - why start them in the first place unless you have no idea of project planning either. That money wasted on 50% projects not started could be allocated to projects that were. The budget can be allocated this way too.

But then bureaucrat mentality all over comes in to getting budget for their pet projects and also for TA/DA.
The country needs to be strong and not everyone needs to survive because that luxury doesn’t exist.
It sounds crass, it sounds selfish especially from someone no longer in Pakistan or with too many stakes - but if tomorrow Pakistan breaks up into 10 different fiefdoms, it will take 3 weeks for people to go back to normal and eat at McDonalds again. Democracy is and should remain a farcical component to a merit based system that is seen in institutions (be it private, civil government or military) but if neither functions properly at varying levels then you have the joker bazaar of Pakistan.

If Azm truly is in trouble as being reported then it should be scaled back - resources reallocated and all eggs divided into TFX and some into J-31.
Its better to have an imported product than a local mismanaged joke with no good output unlike the Indian Tejas which as @Bilal Khan (Quwa) points out; gave them an aviation base 30 years ahead of Pakistan.

Simple invest in tfx along with next fifth generation of jf17 ,in this sceNiro we will have both Chinese n Turkish (European) technology and have aviation base which we will further expand into six generation. Pakistan specially must have stakes in Turkish engine program

 

[Reichmarshal]

For?,

When I told u that any thing n every thing made in China is available to Pakistan.

 

[Akh1112]

When I told u that any thing n every thing made in China is available to Pakistan.

yeah no, you’re still wrong.