TrangleC said:
Take the 10 000 brightest heads of any random country and give them the recources needed for the basic research and the following design work and production facilities and they will build you everything.
It is all just a question of money, time and education.
And since the elites of most third world countries send their children to western universities, i see no reason why an ethiopian engineer for example, shouldn't be able to do what a american or european engineer does, given the same resources.
I agree, but you also need a significant industrial environment to back up those smart and well trained engineers. If (as is the case almost everywhere) the defence industry is owned by the government or depends heavily on orders by the government to live, then you need sustained levels of R&D for decades to build up the environment that can help those smart engineers come up with something innovative and that can technically be produced in large numbers.
I think the countries with strong enough defence industries to develop all main weapons systems (sea, air & land) by themselves, if the need did arise, and if money were available without limits, would be :
> obviously US (lockheed, boeing, northrop grumman...)
> russia with its huge military-industrial complex
> the main EU countries linked by joint ownership of EADS, MBDA, etc : Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and of course the UK
> UK because of BAE, Vickers, etc
> Italy because of Agusta Westland and the rest of the Finmeccanica empire (Oto Melara, WASS, Selex Sistemi Integrati ex AMS, Avio, etc)
> France because of Dassault, DCN, Giat, etc
> Germany because of its central role in EADS, besides HDW, etc
> Japan with its industries' partnerships with the US ones (Mitsubishi for ex)
> Arguably Sweden in most sectors (gripen, SSKs) but not all (the latest MBT being German, not Swedish), and Spain as well (great Navantia in shipping industry).
On their way to join the list above I see obviously China, India, S. Korea...
Then there are countries who in theory could develop anything because of their level of development and rich economies... but who haven't developed a sizeable defence industry (probably a good choice, as money is definitively not limitless and taxpayers get angry fast...) : Canada, Australia ...
cheers