Arms tenders followed from requirement to delivery: bid evaluation, offset obligations, unit pricing, schedule slippage and the politics inside an award.
An offset is a negotiated obligation with a ledger, credits and penalties; industrial participation is the political label pasted on the same paperwork, and confusing the two misreads every big fighter deal.
Offsets turn a weapons import into a negotiated package of local jobs, technology and credits, and the paperwork behind them is larger than most headlines suggest.
A weapons tender is not a form to fill in but a pipeline with six gates, and most failures happen long before anyone sees a proposal.