Looks like Tata is putting their 2.2l engine from old Safari/Sumo/407 to good use.
Aero India 2023 - Bengaluru
- Thread starter Ashwin
- Start date
Question is what is their objective of handling so many projects while delivering none on time. It could be considered as “job security “!!
Some yrs ago a curious development unfolded. An ex Batchmate of mine whose family owns a company which manufactures speciality chemicals & special tools used in the crude oil drilling biz & counts ARAMCO as one of it's clients had the DRDO hitting one of his vendors in droves coz this vendor happened to develop an item ( unrelated to my friend's biz but related to the biz of another of his clients) with dual usage which also had applications in the defense sector.
Apparently according to this friend of mine they used pure intimidatory tactics to get him to part with the mfg know how. No doubt they adequately compensated him apart from leaving him to utilize said item for commercial exploitation. But this guy was in the MSME sector with a rather sophisticated workshop if you like employing 40-50 guys , more like a tool room designing & developing tools with a INR 25-30 cr T/O, hence presumably lacked the clout to counter the intimidation . This was around 2016 .
So, if we go by this anecdotal incident they don't carry out all R&D in house. They also have an active "Talent Scouting Team " to help them in activities which presumably they claim credit for.
It means the private firm which was said to be developing the engine for Tapas was Tata, is it so sir?
TATA -JTP joint-venture has ended, IIRC. Both Tiago and Tigor JTP's production has stopped too.
Not very privy to such info (will have to search a lot) but Parliament standing committee on defense make quarterly check on all projects and MoD strictly involved on project sanctioning, so they must have some reasoning. But what is I am sure about, we do not get to see type of projects they handle. As I shown before, notice the type of projects they handle. The decision is of the top brass & govt so we are going to have some problems like other govt run orgs.
DRDO got shortage on manpower, sanctioned manpower for scientists ~ 7700 but available below 7000, circa 6900 something. So a good 10-12% shortage on scientist grade level (B-G OS). No major recruitment has happened since covid, almost 3 years now. Also shortage in technical stuff, research money due to which DRDO reprioritising projects ie some projects are being kept in backburner aka delay happening while some more important projects like Astra NGarm were chosen for early induction. Add with this, govt insistence of indigenous content percentage, so for a lot of subsystems, testing equipment etc they now have to find a local supplier (mandatory 50% indi content) to replace so that is adding to complexity.
All this is the reason why its faltering.
