Studying foreign weapons during indigenous development

Why is indigenous development outside major European powers so often described as copying?

An unreasonable standard treats awareness of foreign designs as copying. Studying their mistakes differs from basing an entire weapon on another design.

Indigenous programmes face an unreasonable standard if any awareness of foreign work is treated as plagiarism. Studying a design can help avoid repeating its mistakes. That can save money and lives without making the resulting weapon a copy. The distinction calls for more careful assessment of how a programme actually used earlier work.