Written by: Express News Service
2 min readNew DelhiNov 20, 2009 04:10 AM IST
First published on: Nov 20, 2009 at 04:10 AM IST
Two days after he said women could be recruited as fighter pilots only if they did not become mothers till a certain age,Vice Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal P K Barbora today took a swipe at the political class,saying politics over defence purchases impinged very badly on the countrys military requirements.
As far as defence goes,we dont even match up with Pakistan, Barbora,while referring to Defence exports,told an aerospace seminar organised here by the CII.
The internal politics over the years is such that whatever defence requirements are cleared by the government,they are opposed by the opposition parties and the same happens when roles change and the opposition sits in government. That impinges very badly on our defence requirements.
He asked the private defence industry to take note of the China example on reverse engineering of defence technologies. Forget about ethics. China has done reverse engineering. Has anyone ever had the courage to ask China why are you doing it? No one cares a hoot. If you cant do it yourself,you should know how to do reverse engineering.
He took on the defence PSU sector,especially in the aviation industry,saying India does not even contribute to one percent of the global industry. He said Indian PSUs have remained happy manufacturing doors of Airbus aircraft while China has gone ahead and started mass producing commercial jets.
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