 Welcome to NewsClick. The last several occasions, we have been dealing with the issue of Indian defense and government of India's repeated attempts to assure the Indian citizens that the military industrial sector will move in the direction of indigenization and make the country self-reliant where military arsenal equipment is concerned, to give our foreign policy a greater degree of freedom to maneuver and operate. Now in light of close relations that are developing between India and US, the question keeps on coming up as to how will close ties with the United States of America help India become self-reliant in military industrial products. We have once again with us, a member of the Delhi Science Forum and a defense analyst with NewsClick, D. Raghunandrat, Ragu, welcome again. In the light of the meetings between India and US always throws up the issue of interoperability and I raise the issue of interoperability one, if you can explain to our viewers what it means and also what it entails given that the Americans are pushing also India to buy more and more equipment of American make and they push the line of interoperability. So let us start with, can you explain what does interoperability mean and its implications? In military terms interoperability means the ability of two militaries to be able to work together in missions and to share facilities. Now although this may not strictly speaking require both the militaries to have the same equipment. In modern warfare which is increasingly network centric, this would require being able to communicate with each other's forces, being able to share signals, satellite information, positioning etc. which inevitably move in the direction of requiring the same equipment or at least having the freedom to be able to mutually use each other's equipment which will be very rare. So the more network centric you get, the more you push towards the ability to share the technology systems. For example, if India flies Sukhoi jets, there is no interoperability with the US services and if the US services want to deny you interoperability, it is easy to do because there is no sharing of, they can deny sharing of network intelligence, signal sharing, satellite signals etc. which means the interoperability goes. In any case interoperability between two powers unequally matched with one possessing the technology and products and the other being forced to buy equipment from abroad dependent on foreign original equipment manufacturers for products and for components and spare parts and all. It is not a fair exchange or it is not an equal relationship. How does that impact? Let me put it this way, if you look at the relationship between the US and its NATO allies in Europe, France may be using French origin aircraft in their air force, the British might be using UK origin aircraft but interoperability is ensured because of the sharing of satellite signals, aircraft and other such things will share transponders, will share communication devices, software for exchange which the US would supply as required to enable this sharing to be done. They would not do that for example with a country like India with very diverse equipment unless India agrees to a certain number of provisions then down the line. In order to encourage interoperability, there is no doubt that the US in this instance would be in a position to dictate terms as to the kinds of equipment etc. that you use. But Ragu, given the recent experience of Turkey, NATO ally and been a long time and has been a major importer of US armaments, it was also connected with US in developing, partly as I mean it was associated with development of F-35 also and invested money in that project. Now the US is threatening to impose sanctions and also they have stopped and they have declared that they are not going to be parting with F-35 to Turkey. Now it's also a NATO ally. So there are certain red lines that the US imposes. That's precisely my point. If Turkey wants full interoperability with the US and F-35's bought from the US would have enabled that. The US now is blackmailing Turkey saying since you are acquiring the S-400 anti-missile systems from Russia, we will not risk sharing F-35 technologies because your S-400 through its radar systems will be able to monitor and understand the technology systems of the F-35's. So we will not share that technology with you. So either you give up the S-400, then we can talk about the F-35 otherwise we are denying. So immediately again technology denial becomes the issue and full interoperability is called into question if you are using technology platforms of other nations. Now an interesting feature of this recent Indo-US meeting that took place in Washington between the foreign and defense ministers of India with the Defense Secretary and Secretary of State of United States. One of the major or concrete thing that emerged from that was that India and United States concluded this annexure which called industrial security annex that has been described as facilitating now collaboration between US and Indian companies as well as possibility for transfer of I mean secure transfer of very important or key technology. How do you read that because this is part of the defense trade and technology initiative and in a previous interview with you we had touched on this issue because the US had then announced that it is withdrawing from joint production of engines. And one of the reasons it cited was amongst others that the Indian party partner which is supposed to bring credible technology capability did not have that. Now given that now we have signed this industrial security annex and we are now talking about transfer of key technology is now that this has been signed. Do you see the trade and technology initiative change its orientation and move back to joint production of say engines or anything? I think we should clear some misunderstandings on this issue which is to a great extent caused by Indian governments way of articulating different aspects of a equipment acquisition process bought out item is one production of a technology domestically which is taken from another country is the second. And the third is acquisition of technology know how along with like you said the earlier idea of joint development of technologies like in engines. I think there is a great deal of confusion in general commentary in the media even among industrial specialists and of course of the governments concerned in confusing these different terms. For example it is often assumed that if India establishes a production line for an original equipment from the US or Europe this is tantamount to transfer of technology it is not. India has been doing licensed production of French equipment British equipment Russian equipment for the past 50 plus years but we are not acquired the know how and the technology to the extent that if India tomorrow wants to develop a new aircraft on its own its unable to do so unless it does it completely indigenously which is what we have done and start from scratch you mean and start from scratch or start from what we know. So a licensed manufacture or a joint manufacture does not necessarily give you technological know how and even more the next step is the capability to develop new technologies. So that is one aspect in the context of the two plus two arrangement and the industrial security assurance if in the fighter aircraft deal which is supposed to come up 114 there are two American aircraft on the cards which are in the short list that is the F16 now modified version of the F21 or the F18 Hornets if at all an assembly line for either of these two is going to be established in India. India would need to sign some agreement of this nature with the US to permit this and what this agreement actually says is to put boundaries on the nature of technology transfer and its use and of course the use of the equipment you are going to manufacture then they will say you can manufacture but you cannot export you can manufacture but you cannot sell you can manufacture but you cannot share the know how with somebody else that is one kind of thing end use monitoring and the other is it will lay a boundary around what is the extent of the technology that they will transfer to you for example Turkey has an assembly line for the F16s if the Americans withdraw today from collaboration with Turkey Turkey cannot manufacture its own F16s it will not have those technologies because they have not been given so they will be in the production line of the F16s if that comes to India or of the F18 elements of the aircraft which the Americans do not want to share with you will be just given to you as a black box say the engine you may not get to manufacture the engine at all the engines will come to you in a box which you fit into the aircraft that means you learn nothing about the engine similarly there will be various aircraft components which you will not manufacture here but which will be supplied to you so all these ways of closing in in fact it is very interesting you because in the defense trade and technology initiative the recent talks it became very clear the Americans have discarded joint production of engines and now pushing for sharing technology or joint production of components and parts see that's precisely what you say absolutely and let me again clarify you also have used this phrase joint production the talks that were going on earlier was joint development of engines it's not joint production okay joint development it is let's you and I work together and develop a new engine and the Americans were right in saying India does not have even that know how yet to say let us jointly develop so the Americans knew and were putting it down on paper that what you really want us for the Americans to come and teach you how to develop engine technology we are not going to do it so the point I'm trying to make and I've been making throughout our discussions is this belief that India has been propagating and which it continues to propagate through the make in India programs through the defense acquisition systems that private sector will get involved with foreign OEMs which will bring in new technology and therefore we will enhance our technological capability is a complete falsehood and it's a myth because your private sector has no capability so if a foreign OEM comes in to quote unquote share technology which is not sharing it will be done in such a way that any Indian firm will essentially be a subcontractor they will agree to set up a factory here they will supply crucial components which obviously you will have no know-how about then you will do a screwdriver job manufacture less important items and you will say made in India but there is no effective sharing of technology that takes place and precisely that is what the Americans have now come down to say okay let us share technologies for making components which means you become part of the supply chain for American original equipment manufacturers so you supply bits to let's say Lockheed Martin which then Lockheed Martin can use it gives you still no technology know-how about the system as of so therefore let us be very clear the more India goes down this path of continued dependence on foreign OEMs and particularly on the US which has no history of even licensed productions of technologies outside of their extremely close military allies the British the French with whom we have collaborated over 60 years do have such experience we have taken on licensed production from them we are still at the stage where we are only talking about licensed production right now with the US not even as far as we have gone with the European partners there is no way in which this is going to lead to technology transfer let's be clear about it the maximum you will get out of it is a co-production agreement where you are the very obvious junior partner essentially doing screwdriver technology or small sub-components which are not the critical components that's the extent to which that will go there is no shortcut to self-reliance other than actually developing that know-how yourself thank you Raghu this is all for today if you have any comments I have any feedback do let us know keep watching news click