Albynau wrote:Thank you, that was very helpful.
The Akasha Colony wrote: But otherwise they weren't willing to invest in building the industries necessary to supply the rest of the components for the tank.
This part has me curious though, if there was a will to invest in the industries, what would happen then?
It would depend on the state of the existing industries. In the case of vehicles like the British licensed version of AH-64 Apache, the British already had a suitable engine and electronics industry, they just had no experience in the design and development of attack helicopters and weren't willing to spend the money and time to develop one. So they just bought the license to Apache but substituted their own equipment where they had the industrial base to do so.
On the other hand, Japan at the time it originally licensed F-4EJ did not really have these industries, although they were developing them. Thus, the important parts of F-4EJ were largely imported but over time some of these systems were replaced with Japanese equivalents as they became available. By the time F-2 rolled around, the Japanese were able to contribute much more to the program, including domestic electronics and they now had the facilities to build the engines locally as well. Japan wanted to do this because they wanted to actually wanted to develop these industries for their export potential, but they started with an advantage because they were already an industrial power with a large manufacturing base and a skilled workforce.
Spain was not willing to do this for Leopard 2E because their industries were nowhere near the level needed to be competitive with Germany, France, and other defense industrial powers in Europe. Spain was never going to develop an automotive industry that was competitive with Germany's so they were never going to develop their own tank engines, nor were they going to develop an optics or electronics industry on par with Germany or France or the UK. So they had to content themselves with some basic final assembly work, because they weren't interested in spending tens of billions propping up new industries until they were competitive with existing powerhouses (and doing so probably would have been illegal under existing trade agreements anyway).
For a nation that wants to be militarily self sufficient with regards to supplying itself, yet has no desire to engage in the international arms trade, is it even viable to to go the route of just purchasing license permits for everything and making the stuff for yourself? It seems a bit wasteful to spend large amounts in R&D if there's no potential for export sales if you could just find something that works and make more of it.
The problem is that having the industry to handle the domestic production of licensed products (beyond very basic final assembly of imported knock-down kits) means that the nation already has already developed this industry somehow; it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Britain could build a helicopter like Apache domestically because it had already designed and developed helicopters before, it just didn't want to spend money to develop an attack helicopter. Japan wanted to develop the ability to build aircraft like F-2 and F-3 because it wanted to develop (and has developed) other military aircraft. It is no surprise that Mitsubishi is also the company leading Japan's civilian aerospace sector.
And the notion of "just purchasing licenses" while remaining "militarily self-sufficient" is a bit mutually exclusive. A nation that is reliant on foreign licenses and designs even if every component is produced domestically is still dependent on foreign firms for perhaps the most important part of weapons development and procurement. One of the biggest reasons why nations want to develop these industries are because they develop intellectual talent that can be applied to other uses. But if you simply import licenses, you have eliminated the need for engineers to practice their skills and develop experience in their industry.
Licenses are a stepping stone to true defense self-sufficiency, but over-dependence on them is detrimental because it stunts the growth of actual design and engineering talent.