I was thinking about an apparent incongruity that I have encountered more than once in defense indigenization projects: we are tasked with replacing a part of a larger system, and because our replacement needs to fit into a legacy system, we often build digital circuits that mimic the behavior of much older circuitry, down to its idiosyncracies. This blog is about why such an apparent incongruity is actually the indication of a smart big picture plan.
The inventory of missiles needs to be tested at regular intervals to ensure that they will fire when needed. This is done by using a dedicated computer to provide test signals to the missile and verify its response. Each subsystem of the missile is tested right up to the point which says “Fire”. The final link is kept inactive so that the missile does not actually fire. This concludes the test, and the missile can be stowed away.
In the late fifties, dedicated computers for testing missiles were built using transistors, which was a more reliable technology then electronic valves. A small computer occupied half a truck. One such computer used a punched tape to store the control program. The tape would be loaded on an optical tape reader which was controlled by the computer. The contents of the tape were the control program to test the missiles.
After years of use, the tapes started degenerating and would get stuck in the reader, even breaking during operations. In the absence of the control programs, the missiles could not be tested. So the country might have had a stockpile of missiles, but it could not rely on them. The tapes and the readers were a very small but critical component of the entire system, and it became the point of failure that would have led the powers that be to dump the entire system and the stockpile.
The original equipment was several decades old, and the foreign supplier had discontinued the product a long time back. No spares were available. The only way to ensure that the missile stockpile remained useful was to indigenize the tape and its reader. Since the computer and other components were not to be changed, this meant replicating the original system exactly, in all its detail. In other words, inefficiencies or the design architecture in the older design had to be replicated, even if superior alternatives were available.
The indigenized substitute for the tapes and its reader costs let’s say $15,000. The missile testing computer that used the the programs on the tapes would be worth half a million dollars, but the cost of the missiles themselves would be in hundreds of millions, and their strategic importance – priceless.
The next weak link is the computer system itself, which is the logical next module to be replaced with an indigenous substitute. This incremental effort starting from parts and working through the system part by part is the most cost effective way to prolong the lives of strategic assets. Not only this, the expertise gained, and the ultimate impact of this expertise is worth much more.
PRAVAK 