Why is there animosity between you two?
It's nothing much. It's a problem most Indian Internet defence afficianados are facing in the post-COVID era, and he's a victim of that.
He became dillusioned that a lot of things I said were simply delayed, like MRFA. He's also frustrated because of the slow progress of modernization. Nothing short of India making Starship Enterprise or a Death Star will suffice now. DRDO has made some very good products, but the forces are not interested in it due to some deficiency or the other.
For example, we have an artillery gun called ATAGS that surpasses the performance of all existing guns worldwide, but IA wants to import the requirement after buying some as stopgap. Similarly, we have a wheeled armored vehicle called WhAP, but IA wants the American Stryker. Similarly he is a very avid supporter of the basic trainer HAL made called HTT-40, for which we had intense discussions in 2019. I held the view that it will be inducted well after 2025 and become useful only around 2026 or so, a prediction that became true. You can imagine the disappointment there. This is further compounded by the fact that even successful products like LCA Mk1A, QRSAM (IA's SAM for maneuver groups), MPATGM (an ATGM) etc are delayed.
It's the product of today's world, instant gratification. People are not patient. I blame his overuse of Twitter for it, which is why I avoid it for anything except news. The overuse of Twitter's made people antsy, especially post-COVID.
Logging on to X/Twitter is likely to exacerbate feelings of loneliness, boredom, outrage and political polarisation, researchers at the University of Toronto found
www.irishtimes.com
Researchers at the University of Toronto published their findings in the journal Communications Psychology, sharing that logging on to Twitter was likely to exacerbate feelings of loneliness, boredom, outrage and political polarisation. The study states that “people who used Twitter a lot were lonelier and more bored; people who retweeted a lot were more polarised; people who used Twitter to avoid their problems (escapism) had lower wellbeing and higher outrage levels; and people who used Twitter for social interactions had a higher sense of belonging”.
Veronica Walsh is a cognitive behavioural specialist (CBT) based in Dublin and says that many people find that doomscrolling is an unaddressed bad habit in their lives, and that many people aren’t consciously aware of how much it is impacting them. “There’s this idea that Twitter is constantly giving us doses of dopamine,” says Walsh, but it’s cortisol, and cortisol is the main stress hormone. It is a fact that too much exposure to stress every day can dysregulate you – like boiling a frog – it becomes normalised very quickly to be ‘trippy’ and alert in a negative way – physically emotionally and cognitively. So mindful regulation would seem to be a skill we should all be learning and applying in our daily lives.”
So that's what's happening to a lot of people online.
Instant gratification is a slow poison. That's why this weird sense of optimism that AMCA is enough. And this is not restricted to civilians alone, even experts are succumbing to it.
For example, this gentleman was responsible for flying both the SH and Rafale for the navy.
But you can see his suspicion towards the IN's position on Rafale M because the IN is apparently delaying the progress of TEDBF to keep the Rafale deal alive. Naturally TEDBF will survive as long as it meets requirements, but the lack of patience is evident here. People don't fully understand how tightly chained the forces are to the bureaucracy, especially under a nationalist govt that's tied itself to the pro-industry lobby as a byproduct of all the reforms they made during their first term, which in turn's slowed down imports.
Quite a few people have become both extremely pessimistic about our current conditions and the near future, although they are merely not privy to all the details, and have quite a bit of misplaced optimism about the distant future, like the expectations out of TEDBF and AMCA.
Anyway, Ignorants started off trying to pull my leg some day and I didn't take it well, so all the name calling and taunting. And now we are fighting to kill time.
We have a difference of opinion too due to his pessimism in some areas and misplaced optimism in others clashing with my optimism and realism respectively. For example, I believed that both P-75I and MRFA will happen, which a lot of people had written off. And now his misplaced optimism makes him believe AMCA will succeed, relegating MRFA to the bin, whereas I'm showing a realistic position of maintaining both programs.
To add to that, I keep bringing up inconvenient truths about all other existing programs, so you can imagine the reception in a hypernationalistic forum like this. My latest tidbit is LUH, the replacement for Alouette, is as much as 10 times worse than what it's replacing in terms of maintenance, which is the leading cause of friction between the forces and industry in the program, which has delayed its entry into service. LUH has medium helicopter level maintenance requirements when it's supposed to be light, because HAL based it on Dhruv. We need 400+, but are starting off with a much smaller number.
And to make matters worse, I'm also a contrarian, which means I take up an opposing view regardless of my own opinions. You've see that personally in our F-35 vs Rafale debates. That gets under people's skin too.
So, Ignorants has a lot of respect for me, but cannot find the words to express it. And he wants to pick my brains, so he does it all passive aggressive, like we are married, that's why his UK-France example.
Look at his post 5442. Some poppycock about metaphors and deep rot. He completely lacks the foundation to understand the subject, hence looking for answers. If IUSAV fails, we will just import once again. Such an obvious answer. The same if MRFA or AMCA fail, we will buy Russian. And the F-35 failed because of overconfidence in their "iterative capabilities," without understanding that his own point proves mine instead.
Conclusion: Misplaced expectations and Twitter have been bad for his mental health. And he should be excused because even local defense experts have fallen for it.
www.merriam-webster.com
a : destitute of knowledge or education
