“There was this Prof Janardan Rao who came from the U.S. and set up a small unit. When I was doing liquid rocket engine programme I needed electro pneumatic system for testing. Under a shed in most abysmal condition, he was trying to do most sophisticated and advanced technology with whatever money he got from the U.S. He built the electro pneumatic system for me that enabled first liquid rocket engine testing possible. If it was not there, I would not have been able to test. Like that there were hundreds of such scattered stories where we could trigger small and medium Industries.”

And, “In the last 10 to 15 years I have worked in international collaboration with Russia, France, Israel, and I can only say that Indian R&D institutions and scientists are matching one to one with respect to best of their capabilities to contributing to JV or absorbing from there the right technology. This is not going to be teacher and taught relationship. This is going to be a relationship at par. Our research base and eco systems are strong enough to grow further with these partnerships.”

To this end, I’m really curious what the Indians have learned from the BrahMos project and how they will be able to apply it.

“The basic lessons are not spectacular. Nor are they controversial..” I concur. I think there’s value for missile experts, though, in knowing what DRDO thinks are the past and current technical shortcomings that they face.

The basic lessons are not spectacular. Nor are they controversial. But they are worth reiterating:

— WMD trade controls are not intended to shut down or prevent technology development
— The controls do succeed in slowing down technology development
— There are a panoply of items which states aiming to develop capabilities will need to import during whole decades of ongoing R&D for critical projects, and it is likely that controls will be effective for at least some of these specific items for a long period of time
— Controls penalize these programs because as a result they will have to reinvent the wheel, and that implies that their first attempts at doing that will be less than perfect.

“We had to develop the complete system” indigenously because controls at critical points interfered, the above account says. This rings true.

My historical files show that in some WMD-related programs in India and Pakistan (and no doubt elsewhere) the stuff they reinvented was third-rate for a considerable period of time.

I don’t know anything about Indian missiles. But I do know about KRL’s diagnostic program to address the short equipment lifetimes for uranium enrichment manometers it was re-engineering from US-made originals. Believe me, Pakistan over quite a period of time accumulated a substantial junkpile of failed pressure gauges. Today maybe they have solved their problems. But the drag effects were real.

During WWII the US built a nuclear bomb in about three years. India and Pakistan took a lot longer. There were many reasons why. One major difference was that in 1942 the US faced no trade controls. Forty years later and beyond, controls slowed Pakistan and India down. They had to reinvent and improvise.

The trade controls of course did not stop these programs in their tracks. There were smart and dedicated people running these programs. Nor did the designers of the export controls have any illusions that the controls would prevent India and Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. And they didn’t.