Why do they share defense technologies...its so...words fail me..

You have unwittingly endorsed my reasoning. :) Americans were surprised by the developments in the USSR....so as long as nobody knew....chances of Americans attacking USSR would have led to a massive defeat for the USA, right? Now when we buy technologies..........defense technologies..........others know what we have....these are large transactions and cannot be hidden. As you have already mentioned China may have stolen F35 blueprints and developed its own J31............ but there is no confirmation if that is equal. Would you like to take a risk by attacking China to confirm the capabilities of J31? Any development within the country keeps others guessing about capabilities of that device....and that serves as a deterrent...against wars. But when we buy ..capabilities are all well known...because these technologies are for sale....Rafale ..was not exclusive for India. If Israel ordered it, France would give it to Israel too. Should Russia get into nuclear conflict, and China sides Russia, and France asks us to take a stand against China....knowing fully well, how ill equipped we are to take on China, would we be in position to say no? So what are we losing to get those technologies and equipment? Our ability to stay non - aligned. In a way, our independence. My contention is...why we buy it...why don't we use the same money to have our own Research and Development facilities.....

@crafty01 1. If China and Pakistan collude leading to war, we are not winning no matter how much tech we buy. 2. China has no designs on India per se...the size of our population is too large for it to control. It does witness uprisings and they are difficult to quell. And Chinese are a different race so cannot spy on us as easily. The other reason they won't attack us is, we are a market for their produce. Pakistan cannot pay, Sri Lanka too, nor the African nations that they are slowly drying out, so India becomes a market for them. Arabs can afford American or European stuff. Indians cannot. We opt for cheap Chinese phones rather than slightly expensive Korean or American stuff. Destroying source of income...what will they gain? 3. Technological developments are at snail's pace....increase the pace then...spend more on it than on Statues and Temples. Buying makes us perpetually dependent on others...not atmanirbhar. (self reliant) We should not be exactly prejudiced....just because we are being told they didn't do this they didn't do that...and what not. Logically, at the time of independence, we had very little to begin things for ourselves. There were not enough schools, and colleges...there were not enough industries because the Brits took raw materials from us and used in their country or elsewhere to produce what they needed. So we were agrarian economy. There were not enough educated folks around. So we had to accept half baked knowledge too...better than uneducated people. Lack of technical training and education meant, inability to set up industries as needed. Inability to assess what can be done and what cannot be. There could not be a road map prior to independence for obvious reasons, and looking at developments from contemporary knowledge, and technologies, we do people of that era a lot of injustice. After all, what could Nehru have done when people were starving and diseases were rampant. All factors including rehabilitation of those who arrived after partition landed on his table. Without sufficient data, decisions were bound to be wrong...that is the injustice we do....sitting in contemporary environment. Could we have used the services of automobile engineers? Nope. Could we have used services of Mechanical engineer? Nope. Simply because there was not enough money to start most of the projects. So we suffered brain drain. The few that were qualified left the country because there was no employment for them. 3000 crores for one statue.... how long do you think it will take to recover that? ...could that not go towards research and development? Were the votes of Patels more important than developing indigenous technologies? Mind questions. Don't give me Tourism song. Sri Lanka depended upon tourism, and it has become a pawn in the hands of China. 4. We have Statue of Unity (1000 crores), more are planned...Home Minister promised to make a temple as high as sky ... is that the job of our ministers? We give them tasks of defense, healthcare, infrastructure, law and order, education, industries, foreign policy, and employment...within each comes research and development. Surely what we have spent in the last decade on statues...and I am not condemning only the BJP...even KCR down south spent on statue of Santosh Kumar, there was a Statue of Jesus somewhere, and Shivaji....and well, Kamalnath spoke of 100 plus statues of Gandhiji...are we into Statue culture? Chandrababu spent a lot on building a large building for MLAs, just a decade and a half later, KCR came and demolished it all to get a new structure. Is that how our taxes should go? In an era when meetings can be conducted on laptops, we want parliamentarians to sit in cozy buildings ..why bother decorating walls and ceilings....they cost and so does their maintenance....there goes my tax which should have gone for research and development. But the ultimate punch was Statue of Unity ... really, we paid 1000 crore to China for it...even after Galwan...we have such short memory of our martyrs....because we build a statue for them, and are done. Pls. check the list and guess estimate how much we are losing towards these since last decade.....because of which we are short of time as well as resources for defense research and development. I am not saying what people did in the past was right...I am saying we have wasted our resources, and the speed of wastage has increased...we cannot say we did not have time or resources. 5. I agree about our military assets being old. But buying or getting it from outside, only exposes what we have. Our TV anchors and who is that Major...keeps on revealing what he should not. If we are better equipped it prompts Pak to spend on its defense. Effectively, we compete like two cats while the seller of technology behaves like the monkey. Don't you think? If we spend on research and development, nobody will know how capable we are. Nor how badly equipped our armed forces are. Don't you think China was be better off attacking us before BJP took charge...after all all equipment was old...as you have mentioned...and China has really huge set of such equipment...we are not even 1/4th.

@vandana7 If I understand you correctly if we rely on foreign technology They will influence our foreign policies. This might happen for Pakistan. We have much more grave and immediate danger than somebody else influencing our foreign policies. Kargil Battle, Attack On Indian Parliament, Mumbai Attack opened up shortcomings of military doctrine and machinery of India. Direct attack from China and Pakistan is a possibility. China could twist Pakistan's arm so that Pakistan could be used as a base to attack India Second attack from Himalayas, from the North India doesn't have the luxury of time and funds for war technological development. Before Modi's rule defence modernization was at a snail's pace. We have shortage of planes , radars , Navy ships, tactical missiles, submarines, troops transportion vehicles, planes, dedicated railway line, roads for forword posts , surveillance technology and so on. Whatever military assets we have is old. It takes lots of maintenance hous and resources. There are few new additions as you mentioned about Rafale Including some advanced ingenious attack helicopter, surveillance technology, drones and Israel's tactical rockets. I believe these shortage of war machinery could be compensated by Swift Action Of Formidable Indian Airforce. Military doctrine states that if enemy has superior numbers and advanced weapons and superior force, then you must attack them before they reach to meeting room to develop their plan of attack. A classic example is six days wars of Isreal in 1967. Past wars of India before Kargil Battle proved that India has powerful counterintelligence. As you know that TYPE 1 person with no sense of music gets to play Grand piano will make only noise, and TYPE 2 is somebody with great knowledge of music can create soothing music with just two sticks and a bucket NOW Indian military intelligence and strategist is like the TYPE 2 person. We may have less number of weapons, less advanced weapons but combination of old and new war machinery with superior counter intelligence and military strategies, we can defend ourselves. This is what makes China and Pakistan unable to break our protective shield. India is always ready for War. But we need rapid procurement of new weapons and weapon training to military personnel .

Russia has already moved its nuclear weapons to Belarus.

@LindaOHio Nuclear war is not too far.

@vandana7 What does that mean?

I agree over analysis paralysis does exist. But if I have the money, I would start research and development institutions. However small. And periodically allocate money to sustain it. This generates employment, prevents brain drain, and well, technological innovation then belongs to us. My contention is...we buy those Rafales and Bofors, and Jet techns and MiGs and drones and whatevers........we pay for both the product, modifications, maintenance. The recent Russia Ukraine conflict would have put us in awkward position. If we talk against Russia, they can paralyze substantial amount of our airforce. Likewise, if take a stand against France, the Rafale agreement clauses cannot be enforced in earnest. In a way, we surrender our independence when we go to other nations for our defense requirements. We not only pay hefty price, and royalties, we also are left with no money to spend on research and development. Over analysis paralysis is when there is no alternate method in mind. I do have the alternate method. Right? Start small...sustain, grow big...keep your developments a secret ....so as long as others don't know what you have, they would not take the risk of attacking you. Once you have told them what I have........... they will equip themselves with somethings that are equal or better...then we will be out there shopping once more...pretty much Keeping up with Joneses, isn't it? Band mutthi lakh ki, khuli to khaak ki...(if the info is exposed it loses its value).

@vandana7 All those are valid points. But think of it in a pragmatic way. Can we go slow and steady? Do one before other? How long can one do that? Especially when you have hostile neighbours and you need to be ready all the time. I have mentioned it earlier too in one of our interactions that things have to go parallel. That's more practical. Not like something should get fully done and then move on. And sharing these kind of things is a big part of running global economy and building relationships ( these are dynamic). Nothing is constant. No person can be a island in itself in a society and no country can run on its own without having such relationships with other. There are various ways to stay in power game. And each country has to do what suits it to be there. And the proverb that you used is situational. In certain cases, it can be beneficial to open the mutthi...you share your advancements with other countries to generate employment, to get better infrastructure etc.