India's Arms Industry Not Promissing

choi

Gardiner Harris, World's Biggest Arms Importer, India Wants to Buy Local. New York Times, Mar 7, 2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/busin ... s-to-buy-local.html

Quote:

"India is expected to spend about $11 billion this year buying weapons from abroad, despite decades of effort by the government to create a domestic military manufacturing sector. 'I don’t think there’s another country in the world that has tried as hard as India to make weapons and failed as thoroughly,' said Pieter D Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute * * * In the previous five years, India bought 12 percent of the world’s arms imports, and Russia accounted for 79 percent of India’s deliveries, according to the Stockholm institute.

"In one telling example, India could buy fully assembled Russian Sukhoi fighters for about $55 million each, but instead mostly relies on kits that are sent to the government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, which assembles them at a cost of about $68 million each — nearly a quarter more. In another example, government labs spent billions trying to develop an aircraft engine, only to abandon the effort and buy engines from General Electric for the recently introduced fighter, the Tejas [Sanskrit for 'radiance'].

"Because of poor infrastructure, stultifying labor rules and difficulties acquiring real estate, making anything in India is hard. The country’s manufacturing sector is declining and now represents 13 percent of the total economy — about the same share as in the United States.

"Much of India’s military, in any case, does not want Indian-made equipment. So many Russian fighters assembled by Hindustan Aeronautics have crashed in recent years that the Indian Air Force calls them flying coffins.

Note:
(a) "'While it’s more complicated assembling Sukhois than putting together an Ikea flat-pack, it’s not that hard,' said Samuel Perlo-Freeman, a program director at the Stockholm institute."

ready-to-assemble furniture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready-to-assemble_furniture
("also known as knock-down furniture (KD) or flat pack furniture, is a form of furniture that requires customer assembly")
(b) "In 2010, Sikorsky Aircraft, part of the American conglomerate United Technologies, opened a plant in Hyderabad that it operates jointly with Tata Advanced Systems. The facility assembles the cabin for its midsize helicopter, the S-92. The helicopter’s cabin was previously made at a Mitsubishi facility in Japan. Production was transferred to India not because costs were lower (surprisingly, they were not), but because having a local facility might encourage sales in India, said Ashish Saraf, program manager for the Tata-Sikorsky joint venture, of which Sikorsky owns 26 percent. But the challenges have been immense. * * * The plant sends its helicopter cabins back to the port; from there, they are shipped to Pennsylvania, where the aircraft are fully assembled. [The trip of suspension trucks shipping the cabins from Hyderabad to the port is assiduous.] At least two people are needed for each journey, since one must repeatedly get out with a long stick to push low-slung electrical wires up and out of the way of the truck."

The "low-slung electrical wires" refers to those hung between utility poles 電線杆.
(c) There is no need to read the rest. You may have guessed correctly about India.