@Nilgiri really wish you write something on this , seems like the Chandigarh lobby will finally torpedo this gun .
Thanks Parrikar for the Tejas deal otherwise it would have been endup in bin like Arjun
Honestly too long and boring subject to talk about indian defence bureaucracy....not my cup of tea to get into or analyse as its a irrational psychological issue driving lot of things there in the end.
I very much welcome Parrikar, Gadkari et al...people of mindframe to actually change something around them...rather than occupy time and space with bare minimum or worse.
But they are somewhat flashes in the pan...we just luck out on them.....
Rest is mostly long sludge of inertia from socialist-statism baked into the decision making and basic attitude of priorities.
That whole mindframe that only bureaucrats have the highest national interest at heart and are also supremely competent on what factories and labour organisation involves etc etc...
i.e that only Indian govt should make these things and when it comes up short, clearly "the best" India has... has failed (QED, no need to try anything else)....so buy something expensive from a colonial power....since the govt people fathers and grandfathers impressed upon them the colonial times psyche and resulting inferiority complex.
When this is case, of course all kind of vultures will circle and all kind of rats and moles will undermine....however few they may be....all it takes is one insect to ruin whole lot of grain.
So maybe there will be some change by generation change coming into bureaucracy so a critical mass is there of decent to good (reasonably competent and patriotic)....but that will take a long time and India suffers while that churns out.
=======================================================================================
As for this artillery one specifically, there is specific clique pronouncing doom and gloom (ever since shukla seeded this w.r.t ATHOS).
It is their opinion in the end, I think army is still quite favourable to ATAGS especially....once the issues that cropped up during field test are corrected.
Pity dhanush will be OFB-built, so I don't hold any great hope for that one...
But ATAGS has still good shot in orders and production of worth, lets see. Artillery has made no-import list after all.
That will combine with it being a somewhat straight forward design component diversity wise ...(unlike a tank or aircraft)
But then again we have had INSAS debacle on something that should be straighforward "gun"...
But anyway right now it's different to Arjun case....there is at least blockages+constrictions today to "time fill paper fill and then easy import street" (and whichever lobby)....the exceptions need to be proven more rigorously now.
i.e at least import lobby babus have to use up more time and resource and spread more thin than before, lowering their success rate overall....its a start.
This kind of internal battle in south block simply did not occur before to begin with.
Somehow (even in that earlier time period), nukes, missiles, radars and such were important enough to surface and setup fairly well past this debacle of a system.
At least that was able to manifest....but been slow learning + application to things past those.
IMO in hindsight, India should have never went for Arjun and simply made more T-72/90 licensed production (and done RnD on T-72/90 improvements) and focused its RnD in that time in getting the bofors stuff converted to indigenous gun on a war footing.
Same thing with INSAS, should have never been done, just license produce FNC or something reliable+modern in bulk and work on getting its upgrades + accessories good over time.
i.e Give as little scope to bureaucrats and OFB shenanigans as possible.
Stretching this out and trying to do all kinds of projects at once, inventing wheel each time with the scarce competent human resources available.... with state of defence bureaucracy as it is, has cost India immensely.
Just like this larger approach has costed Indian economy as whole too.