The US "Diplomatic" bimonthly website published an article on November 1st, saying that in July, Lockheed Martin announced that it would produce its most advanced F-16 fighter jets in India, which is Narendra Modi. Part of the Made in India program. Lockheed Martin is likely to produce the aircraft together with Tata Advanced Systems, which has a long-standing relationship with Lockheed Martin to produce C-130 transport aircraft and S-92 helicopters. The news was quickly ridiculed by defense policy experts who thought the F-16 was an outdated product being used by an Indian rival (Pakistan). However, this agreement may be truly revolutionary and will turn India into an exporter with a true global market fighter.
F-16 fighters have many "destroyers" in India. Some people say that they can't trust the United States, suggesting that Washington will hinder this kind of collaboration when India relies on this system sometime in the future. After all, this happened to Pakistan in 1990. Others claim that the real purpose of the agreement is “insatiable†– Lockheed Martin just wants to use the recent intensified tension between Pakistan and India to sell different versions of the same system to both countries. This raises another question: Some people will reject the aircraft for meaningless reasons (India does not want to use the same weapon system to fight Pakistan). This concern has exposed ignorance of different versions of aircraft fuselage, avionics, sensors and ammunition.
More sinisterly, some people in India simply cannot understand that Washington wants India to become a world-class power because they believe that (there is no basis) that the United States wants to retain "the status of Pakistan as an Indian balancer in the region." For these skeptics, there must be a negative explanation for this agreement, even if they don't know what the explanation is. Perhaps this agreement is to throw an old redundant platform to India, which may prevent India from getting the 5th generation fighter.
More serious criticism comes from the Indian military aviation community. They believe that India needs a twin-engine aircraft to win the "air fight" with its opponents, while the F-16 fighter jet has only one engine. In addition to ignoring the 76:1 win-loss ratio of F-16 fighters in air combat, this view overemphasizes an increasingly meaningless strategy, and India's Su-30 and "Gust" fighters have performed well. India's multi-purpose aircraft must be reliable, sophisticated and flexible enough to launch multiple attacks in limited warfare and high-threat environments, and the F-16 can do this without much effort.
The views of the "destroyed" F-16 fighters have varying degrees of legitimacy, but they ignore the larger and more important aspect of the agreement - through which India will become an exporter of a highly deadly fighter platform. And this fighter has a vast global market. The aircraft that India is considering is not able to provide such a big opportunity. If the Indian card is right, it will be able to veto the country that harms India’s interests, such as Pakistan.
Although the technical advantages of the F-16 fighter are comparable to those of other aircraft, the uniqueness of this program is that it will give India a leading position in a long-term supply chain. The F-16 fighter's parts and upgrade market is larger than other aircraft because it accounts for 15% of the world's total military aircraft inventory. Because most of the world’s warplanes are behind generations of the US and Indian Air Forces, the maintenance, repair and overhaul of the F-16 fighters will be in the decades after the F-35 has completely replaced the previous generation of fighters in the West. There are billions of dollars in the market.
India is likely to use its market dominance to sign additional agreements with the US “tributary states†and participate in the development of innovative technologies for the next generation of aircraft. In this case, India can become a price setter from the so-called price receiver of the next generation fighter.
At the same time, successful cooperative production will lay the seeds for the training of a number of new local businesses and the labor market. Indeed, initially India needed external technology, capital and human capital to complete production. However, external investors – Lockheed Martin and local recipients (probably Tata) will benefit from subsequent capacity building. The result could be a vast network of contractors and subcontractors, as well as research centers and by-products that these companies may create. This may prompt some immigrant high-tech talents to return to the motherland or invest in the motherland.
One of the best technology transfer in the contemporary aviation sector has emerged as a springboard for economic development in China. In the 1980s, Chinese aviation companies and Western companies established small-scale joint ventures, and later climbed the value chain. By the beginning of the 21st century, all top engine and airframe manufacturing companies, including General Electric, Rolls Royce, Boeing and Hewlett-Packard, had established joint ventures in China. It is no accident that China’s defense spending has soared at the beginning of the 21st century and its arms imports have fallen. During the same period, India’s imports increased. The expertise gained by China's manufacturing industry has greatly increased the production of its fourth-generation aircraft, the JH-7 and FC-1, while the latter (known as JF-17 in Pakistan) has become the main force of the Pakistan Air Force.
It is not a rational reason to refuse to strengthen the capacity-building joint venture if it does not trust foreign technology suppliers and prefers to import from abroad. Even Japan (to date the most successful model for autonomous development in the field of aerospace engineering) has developed its military production capacity by cooperating with the United States in producing more than 20 weapon systems.
Through the F-16 agreement, India can make up for lost time. It does not need to change Western civilian technology to military, as in China's aviation and shipbuilding sectors, and there is no need to learn Japan's gradual approach. India can in fact build the world's top military manufacturing companies overnight, and at least for the next 20 years to establish itself as a pivotal role.
In other words, this is not an airplane sale. This is a large-scale industrial change and a major strategic victory for India.
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