India, June 16 -- Defence minister Rajnath Singh has framed this as a shift from "Made in India" to "Owned by India". To many, this may sound rhetorical, but it is more than that. A platform manufactured at HAL under licence, with control software written in Moscow, Paris or Tel Aviv, remains a foreign capability for every operational purpose that matters. The new framework recognises this and seeks to price it into procurement decisions.

This matters because military platforms are not static assets. Their relevance depends on periodic upgrades, new weapons integration, software patches, electronic warfare library updates, sensor improvements and interoperability with other platforms. If India cannot independently modify or upgrade a sys...