I recall that in the 1990s, when China wanted to import AL 31 production from Russia, 14 academicians of AVIC signed a petition to the State Council. Said the introduction of AL 31 would destroy China's WS 10, it would destroy China's own engine industry
That's being corrupt.
This benefits only the industry, not the air force, that's stuck with old technologies. What India is doing benefits both.
We are buying both Russian and Western engine tech, modernising exiting engines (AL-31FP) on our own and developing new engine tech at the same time. Which is why we had such a huge advantage with the Su-30MKI against the PLAAF for so long. Imagine had the Rafale deal gone through a decade ago?
And even without owning any engine technology, we now have a massive engine industry.
Why does this work for us, it's 'cause we have multiple aviation programs. LCA will absorb possibly 100% of the F414, which probably has the best engine hot parts in the world today. We are already manufacturing 85% of the AL-31FP and replacing the rest with Indian parts. We are developing the Kaveri engine for UCAVs and will soon begin development of an AMCA engine with a foreign partner, combining Indian tech with Western tech. Plus if we manufacture the Rafale in India, we will get another 100% ToT for this engine. That's 5 engine programs. All that for just a few billion dollars.
So the IAF gets top notch technologies and the industry gets Western-standard engine tech. And development time is compressed to just 10 years.
China could have produced the AL-31F for the J-11A/B and developed the WS-10 for J-10 and J-16. Instead, China fell for the industry's trap. The same thing has happened in the Type 052. Instead of 1 larger S-band radar, PLAN was forced to accept two different smaller S and C band radars because the lab that developed the C band radar wanted to participate too. Something like that can never happen in India.