Our neighbor, India, has many similarities with China and is the most populous country in the world. Half a century ago, India also went through many trials and tribulations before finally achieving independence. At that time, India's comprehensive national strength was actually not much different from China's, and its total GDP was similar.
With China's decades of reform and opening up, India's economy has grown by leaps and bounds, and India has begun to catch up in the past few years, and now their GDP has surpassed their former suzerainty, Britain, to the fourth place in the world. When it comes to defense budgets, Indians are notoriously willing to spend, and their defense budget as a percentage of GDP was once the highest in the world.
In the early days, India relied more on imported armaments, but in the past decade or so, India's domestic R&D and production capacity has also performed quite well. For example, this howitzer, known as an Indian artifact - "Baharat".
The remarkable thing about this Baharat howitzer is its range, which is said to surpass the United States and rank first in the world. Baharat's excellent performance attracted the interest of the Saudis, but when their deal reached the final stage, the Saudis suddenly repented and even turned their heads with the Indians.
The birth of Baharat
Speaking of Baharat, this has to talk about the historical ties between India and Pakistan.
On the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh used to be the same country in history: the Mughal Empire, with a huge territory, and in the 18th century, the Mughal Empire was in civil strife, which also gave the British an opportunity. After the arrival of the British, the subcontinent was unified again, but its internal contradictions were not completely resolved.
It was not until 1947 that Britain withdrew from India, ending two hundred years of colonial rule in India. At the same time, the British left India with a complex choice question. The first is the establishment of a federal state, and the second is the partition of India and Pakistan.
Speaking of which, this is indeed a very complex historical issue. Neither can we simply blame the British for planting a mine in India when they left, nor can we blame the problem on the lack of calm of the two major Indian forces after the British withdrew.
In fact, the Congress Party and the Muslim League in India, like two brothers, had been separated and merged, but they had never created a harmonious unity, but with the arrival of the British, the problem was covered up.
After World War II, the British took care of themselves, and they really could not do anything about such a complex historical problem, and it was someone else's family affair.
So before the two sides could agree on a result, the two major Indian parties began to entangle again as a massacre broke out during a demonstration. The two brothers couldn't explain it reasonably, and finally invited their former parent Britain back to preside over justice. But the British obviously don't want to wade through this muddy water anymore, so let's divide the family, it has always been difficult to be fair and just, and this time is the same.
On August 14-15, 1947, Pakistan and India declared their independence.
It shows that from above, brothers and harmony end, and it seems that good days are coming. But a hasty separation is only the beginning of a dispute.
After the separation, a long migration began. However, this large-scale migration broke into countless violent conflicts, and Mahatma Gandhi, as we know it, went on hunger strike to advocate peace, and Gandhi's behavior inspired countless Hindus and Muslims, and the two sides have a great tendency to get back together.
But at this time, the fanatic group sent people to shoot Gandhi to death, and what was quite touching was that before he died, Gandhi also warned everyone not to hurt the murderer.
Gandhi's death was a great loss for the people of the Indian subcontinent. In the decades that followed, driven by interests, external forces infiltrated the land, and the situation between India and India was chaotic, and friction between the two sides continued.
In the winter of 1999, India and Pakistan had just engaged in an exchange of fire on the border, and in the face of the harsh winter approaching, India prepared to withdraw its troops.
But on the way to withdraw, they were ambushed by Pakistanis who had ambushed early, and the Indian army leader hurriedly sent a signal to the headquarters for help. Seeing that the army was about to be destroyed, the Indians moved all the inventory in the warehouse, including some weapons that had never been used, including an old, rusty artillery.
But no one expected that this artillery that looks like broken copper and iron, but played a huge role in this battle, and finally they turned the tide, in just a dozen hours, India like Pakistan's main force in the area where the main force is bombarded, the Pakistani army in order to avoid the edge, repeatedly retreated, but still by the Indian army's ultra-long range of this artillery is embarrassed.
After returning home, the Indian generals immediately gathered all the experts and carefully studied the humble artillery gun named FH77B.
India and Pakistan have been vying for many years to seize the border, which is mostly mountainous, and in this terrain, artillery has played an important role in suppressing it. If they can gain an advantage in range, it will affect the development of the entire war.
After this conflict, the Indian army chose to stop fighting, and they invested a lot of manpower and material resources to study the multi-threaded technology of the FH77B gun.
In the past 20 years, India's situation has been relatively turbulent, while their neighbor China has opened its doors and vigorously developed its economy.
Indians began to pay attention to the development of domestic economy and people's livelihood, and after more than ten years, they have also achieved good results.
In 2013, India made a major breakthrough in copying the FH77B gun. Their first sample test, which shot only 17 kilometers, disappointed them. Because of the core technology subject to foreign countries, Indians began to break through the past thinking mode and innovate FH77B, so they launched the Baharat series.
In 2016, India conducted its last test of their improved Baharat gun, and the final result was shocking, Baharat shot a range of 47 kilometers, a country that used to rely heavily on imports of armaments, such a major breakthrough in the important field of artillery.
47 km, which is currently the longest range of artillery in the world.
After completing this test, the Americans raised the record to 48 kilometers. However, the Indians once again improved Baharat, and the improved range reached a staggering 50 kilometers.
For a time, Baharat became famous. At the same time, the Saudis were preparing to eliminate a batch of old artillery pieces and set their sights on Baharat. After consultation, the two sides negotiated a unit price of 9 million US dollars.
It has to be said that Saudi Arabia is indeed rich, because before that, the most expensive artillery was bought by the Americans, and it was only $5 million.
Just as the deal was going on at the last minute, the two parties were about to sign. The Saudis received information from the intelligence agencies they had commissioned.
The report from the intelligence agency provides a detailed analysis of India's Baharat artillery.
They found that the source of Bacharat's technology was not the early Indian copy of the FH77B, but the French T5-52 gun, and even some important parts were imported from France.
They compared the Baharat to the T5-52 and found that the Baharat had a significant decline in performance except for the range of their original T5-52.
First of all, in terms of power, in pursuit of the so-called range, the power of Baharat has shrunk by 40% compared to the T5-52, especially the killing radius, which is a full double smaller.
Another selling point of Baharat is its automation performance, which enables fully automatic reloading and firing, as well as a good rate of fire.
However, the Indian side obviously hides a more important point, that is, their artillery, there is another fatal flaw, that is, stability.
The role of artillery in modern warfare is to suppress areas through fire coverage, so stability is very demanding, requiring continuous combat within a day or even days, but Baharat's performance in this regard is obviously unsatisfactory.
Secondly, when the Indians experimented, they did not use conventional shells, but used a lighter but more expensive material. This allows their product to get a range of 50 km.
But in fact, if conventional shells are used, this range can only reach 36 km.
After a series of tests, they found that Baharat exploded 3 or more times in a month.
At the end of the report, a major flaw in Baharat is listed, that is, its bulkiness, so Baharat can only operate by carrying platforms in heavy trucks.
We all know that the territory of Saudi Arabia is dominated by desert, and heavy weapons like Baharat are even more mobile.
Overall, Baharat is a good gun, and under the right conditions, it is higher than the mainstream configuration in most countries. However, its price of 8 million, combined with the many flaws that the Indian side deliberately concealed, exposed a problem: greed!
In the past decade or so, India has had many scandals in the military industry. This Baharat artillery once again sent them to the cusp, you know, the Saudis are not short of money, as the saying goes, the richer the more desperate, what do people want? It's stability. No wonder the Saudis became furious when they learned the truth and swept the Indians out.
I have to say that India is really a magical country, they once used a set of imported parts, according to their own design ideas to reassemble a new type of equipment, and then claimed that this is their own independent research and production of equipment. However, even if you research and manufacture it yourself, it should have its own special features in terms of performance, strangely, the product they make, the effect is surprisingly similar to a foreign product, this is not an imitation and what?
How ridiculous it is to deceive yourself. For a country with a large population to achieve a breakthrough in the military field, it is not enough to rely on some fantastic ideas.