Buy, Build, or Steal

Countries whose overall level of economic development and relatively backward aviation industry limit their aircraft production capability have the three basic options of purchase (buy), indigenous development (build), or espionage (steal) in their efforts to develop a modern air force. For countries in this situation, all three options have significant limitations.

Buy

Buying imported aircraft allows a developing country to obtain more advanced fighters than its indigenous aviation industry can produce. Buying complete aircraft offers a developing country a relatively fast way to build its air force’s combat capability (although in practice it may take 4 to 5 years from the time a deal is signed until a unit equipped with a new fighter reaches ini­tial operational capability). Often a deal to purchase advanced fighters includes flight training, assistance with maintenance, and the acquisition of spare parts necessary to maintain operational readiness. This can not only speed the intro­duction of the aircraft into service, but also improve the acquiring air force’s human capital and overall capabilities. Because purchasers usually have the opportunity to “fly before they buy,” there is a clearer sense of what the capa­bilities of the aircraft will be and less risk of technological failure or inadequate performance.

The disadvantages of building a modern air force using imported air­craft include the relatively high cost, limited transfer of technology to the avia­tion sector, and continuing dependence on foreign suppliers. Buyers are also limited to the aircraft that supplying companies are willing to sell; advanced countries often restrict the type of aircraft or the sophistication of avionics and weapons systems that can be exported due to strategic concerns or to maintain a technological advantage for their own air force. A common approach is to export last generation systems or watered-down versions of the most advanced fighters. This enables the United States, Russia, and European powers to main­tain a long-term competitive advantage in military aviation technology and a measure of airpower dominance over their customers.

Purchases of complete aircraft do not produce jobs or technological spin-offs for the acquiring countries (though this may be partly overcome by the use of offsets in the contract that require the seller to accept payment in the form of goods produced by the buyer). Finally, the acquiring country will usu­ally have a limited capacity to produce spare parts for an imported aircraft or to modernize its systems, resulting in long-term dependence on the seller in order to keep the aircraft flying or to update an older aircraft’s systems. This can be problematic if the seller’s economy goes through a major transition (note, for example, India’s difficulty in acquiring spare parts for its Soviet air­craft following the breakup of the Soviet Union) or if changes in political rela­tions make the supplier unwilling to continue to provide spare parts and main­tenance (compare Iran’s U. S.-built McDonnell-Douglas F-4, Northrop F-5, and Grumman F-14 aircraft following the Iranian revolution in 1979). Varia­tions on the “buy” option such as coproduction are discussed later in this study.

Build

The pure “build” option requires planning, designing, and producing the desired fighter system utilizing only indigenous knowledge and production facilities. A developing country may invest significant resources in research and development (R&D) to build its domestic aviation technology production base. However, this requires a significant investment of both capital and human knowl­edge and presents large opportunity costs on both fronts. If a developing country seeks to push its aviation sector well beyond the technological development of its broader economy, this entails costly efforts with limited broader payoffs as scarce engineering talent and resources are focused on narrow military applications. If a developing country tries to push the overall technological capacity of the broader economy, this entails a much longer time period before improvements spill over and raise the technological level of the aviation industry.

The chief advantages of indigenous development are that a developing country can master the technologies required to design and build a fighter, limit its reliance on imported parts and technologies (and thus its potential vulnerability to a cutoff that might limit combat readiness), and diffuse some benefits of aircraft R&D and production into the broader economy (in the form of jobs and technology spin-offs). Over time, indigenous production can lay the foundation for a domestic aviation industry capable of designing, pro­ducing, and potentially exporting complete fighter aircraft.

The disadvantages are that a developing country’s aviation industry may only be able to produce low-quality aircraft with limited combat capability, that large technological hurdles and a high learning curve must be overcome to establish an advanced aviation industry, and that the long period required to learn to develop and produce a modern fighter may yield aircraft that are obsolete before they are fielded. There is also no guarantee that investments in aviation R&D and production capacity will pay off. Few defense projects his­torically have been more costly, slower, or more prone to unforeseen difficul­ties than those undertaken to produce new fighter aircraft.5 It is possible for a developing country pursuing the economic and technological spinoffs from indigenous design and production to spend much more than it would have cost to buy an advanced fighter from a foreign supplier, only to wind up with an inferior aircraft. Japan’s F-2 fighter provides a good illustration.

Steal

A developing country can use surreptitious means to steal design and technology information on aircraft and aircraft components that it lacks the knowledge to design and produce domestically. This can be accomplished using covert procurement (often through third countries), traditional espio­nage methods, or computer network intrusion methods to exfiltrate the desired information. Individuals with access to information on classified weapons sys­tems are prime targets of foreign intelligence organizations. Cyber espionage attacks against U. S. targets including military/government organizations and defense contractors have reportedly been successful in obtaining sensitive, though not classified, data.6 The “steal” option can be used to gain blueprints or examples of weapons to use in reverse engineering a subsystem or to develop countermeasures that make a threat aircraft less effective in combat.

The principal advantage of the “steal” option is the potential to acquire advanced systems or technologies that other countries are unwilling to sell. In some cases, espionage can allow a country to acquire advanced technol­ogy without spending funds on its own research and development. The dis­advantages include a developing country’s limited ability to absorb or repli­cate stolen systems and technologies without technological support from the manufacturer, the haphazard and potentially incomplete access to systems and technologies through clandestine or surreptitious means, and the potential for espionage to send a country’s aviation industry down a blind alley. In discussing the degree to which China has employed the “steal” option, we should differ­entiate its comprehensive efforts to collect and assimilate open source defense information (for example, through the China Defense Science and Technology Information Center) from its efforts to obtain restricted technologies covertly, by way of either traditional or cyber espionage. Exploiting the volumes of tech­nical open source information produced in developed countries is an effective, legitimate, and predictable way to acquire knowledge.7

Of these three main avenues to technology procurement, the “build” option is the only one with the potential to stimulate innovation and create a broad-based domestic aviation industry from a low initial starting point. The United States and Russia produce the world’s most complex fighter aircraft and, although they gained the ability in the midst of different economic and politi­cal circumstances, both were only able to reach this status through the ability to develop new technologies. Simply buying fighter aircraft from another coun­try, with no plans to reverse engineer or coproduce, does not help a develop­ing country move toward self-reliance. The steal option can have benefits if a developing country is able to obtain the information it needs without having to expend the necessary resources on R&D. However, simply possessing a blue­print does not guarantee success in reproducing the design, especially for a developing country with a limited aerospace production capacity.