IAF and the Kh-31P/A

its good to keep the enemy guessing about our capabilities..else the enemy can come up with tactics/strategies to deal with weapons if they know that they are in service with the IAF.

You are suggesting that “enemy” doesn’t know these things? Sure you might be able to keep photos out of circulation but how do you control all the people who come into contact with the weapons during the course of training etc. Aircrew, groundcrew, civilians responsible for logistics etc, government officials responsible for oversight and thier staff etc etc. Then there are all the folks in the supplier country who know. Personally I think the only way India could keep such things secret is if they have something along the lines of the US “Area 51” arrangement. An elite, high security unit, probably with only a small inventory of the equipment in question, preferably operating from a somewhat isolated locality to allow for better control of the surrounds, in house procurement of systems (since involving foreign components leaves you trusting people over whom you have no control) etc, etc. Thing I don’t see is just whats so important about ASMs that they would be so particularly secretive about them as Harry suggests. India’s major opponents are land powers with any naval conflict likely to be peripheral at best. I can sort of see the reason for keeping ARMs as under wraps as possible since they are a critical part of taking out an enemy’s air defence network and opening him up for air strikes. I still doubt that the knowledge of anything but a small “silver bullet” capabilty could be kept secret from other powers for long.

Daniel

its good to keep the enemy guessing about our capabilities..else the enemy can come up with tactics/strategies to deal with weapons if they know that they are in service with the IAF.

i also dont understand for some reason we dont see any IAF aircrafts with missiles or LGB’s . You never see anything like a Recon pod or Russian ASM or even a russian ECM pod or any AShM’s on indian fighters. they rarely even show off the AAm systems, only recently did they show the R-77.

danrh, the IAF is quite secretive about its ASM inventory and is very selective about showing them.

Actually I was going to bring that up since yours truely did post the very first pic of an IAF Armat (with the Jags) on this very forum. 😀

What about the Sea Eagle? Would anyone have known that the Il-38s carry them?

Are the import of EL/L-8222s or Litenings mentioned? Griffin LGB kits? KAB-500/1500s?

What is actually formally documented is but a small fraction of higher profile equipment.

The SPIRI database purports to be of “major conventional weapons”. I belive this is the reason why items such as the EL/L-8222s, Litening II pods and Griffin kits are not mentioned. I did some cross checking and there is no mention of these things under the Israeli section and since I know Australia has purchased the ECM and targeting pods as well I checked there and also no mention. However its seems there are plenty of listings of AShMs so apparently they fall within the purview of the monitoring group. I note that the Russian section even details the sales of the Kh-31 missiles to the PRC yet no mention of the same to India. The Sea Eagles are not mentioned since they predate the 1995 start date of the database. Of course the SPIRI database is not the only source of information that details deliveries, inductions etc to the IAF. Other sources such as BR, Janes etc regularly break news of deliveries, induction services, displays etcs yet all that we hear for Kh-31 is that a) the delievery platforms are in service and that some missiles were apparently ordered in 1999.

Maybe the IAF is, as Harry says, just particularly paranoid about anybody knowing it has AShMs. Not quite sure why the great secrecy on this particular class of weapon when we regularly see parades of Brahmos, BMs, SAMs, displays by new planes, port visits by new ships, have requisite disclosure of the purchase of torpedos (if the there is any weapon that could be kept secret it would have to be submarine torpedos) even such relatively mundane items as new small arms or armoured recovery vehicles.

Anyway this really isn’t important and I apologise for having taking so much of everybody’s time. If anyone check the links I posted earlier to our db encyclopedia they will have noted that the missiles are still listed on the MKI just with a later in service date so anyone who would prefer to utilise them still do so.

cheers

Daniel

danrh, the IAF is quite secretive about its ASM inventory and is very selective about showing them.

I think you could also remove the ARMAT missile from IAF inventory since no known photo exists of that.

Actually I was going to bring that up since yours truely did post the very first pic of an IAF Armat (with the Jags) on this very forum. 😀

What about the Sea Eagle? Would anyone have known that the Il-38s carry them?

Are the import of EL/L-8222s or Litenings mentioned? Griffin LGB kits? KAB-500/1500s?

What is actually formally documented is but a small fraction of higher profile equipment.

I think you could also remove the ARMAT missile from IAF inventory since no known photo exists of that.

Thank you for the feedback 🙂 Part of the reason why I remain unsure about the veracity of claims of the IAF being operational with the Kh-31 series of missiles is stuff like this.

Note: As per the annual United Nations (U.N.) conventional arms register, the Indian Government reported that it had purchased 30 R-77RVV-AE missiles in 1999 and 120 R-77RVV-AE missiles in 2000. These numbers suggest that the R-77RVV-AE is operational with the IAF, at a minimum with the upgraded MiG-21s and the Su-30s. In October 1998, a locally-upgraded MiG-29 test-fired a R-77RVV-AE air-to-air missile.
BR – R-77

a look through the SPIRI database seems to indicate that India is fairly diligent in its notifications with many items listed inlcuding R-27, R-77 and R-73 AAMs, Harpy AR UAVs, Klub SSMs, T-90 MBTs, Talwar FFGs, various radars, SAMs and artillery pieces. Even the Su-30 purchses themselves are listed. The Kh-31 series are impresive weapons but I don’t really that they are so revolutionary and wonderful that India would choose to hide thier accquisition while disclosing all these other systems, icluding some smaller items they probably could hide if they so desired. I mean we are all expecting the IAF the Kh-31, it is afterall almost an Su-30MK series signature weapon. I have no doubt that the IAFs MKIs could employ the missiles just that they are a current feature of the IAF inventory.

My thanks to those who took it upon themselves to disabuse me of the notion that the IAF has any particular interest in what we do or do not include as part of a Harpoon database 😉 A not so subtle attempt to goad a response which did however succeed. My apologies. Of course since Harpoon is merely a game and the databases the product of private individuals utilising open source references what we choose to has zero bearing on anyone but ourselves. That said we do like to try and do things to the best our abilities hence why I would even care about this. If anyone should be interested in seeing why all the fuss here is a link to the Su-30 page of our database encyclopedia and the encyclopeida main entry page Thank you 🙂

Daniel

RVV-AE in first shown with 2002 induction of MKI, never seen with the K have they? That means Su-30K is not RVV-AE capeable. :diablo:

Litening??? he he he he isnt it ironic that we never see them with MKI but they have been ….sadly….recently 😡

Frankly I had never seen any IAF ASM armament pics till the old R-Day pic that Harry posted. Till then it was all rocket pods, KAB-500 training rounds, LGB and dumb bombs.

DanRh, if it floats your boat you can take off everything including the MKI from your site…its not gonna make or break the IAF, nor will it stop the speculation.
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IAF has started showing planes with LGBs mounted fairly recently even though the SAMP and Paveway2 kits were procured in the early 1990s. so far no pix of MKI with Litening also.

so I doubt any clarifications will be forthcoming before Aeroindia2007.

The Chinese can launch Kh-31s from their MKs so it shouldn’t be a problem with the MKI.

Ironic! China is secretive but people believe they lie about their capabilities when they say nothing in the first place?

“I am NOMAD! You say everything you say is a lie, but then you are lying. That does not compute!”

http://www.edefenseonline.com/default.asp?func=article&aref=03_10_2005_OM_01

Not sure about the validity.

i already posted it hence the argument, those statement about kh-31a were lifted off irkut press report that kh-31a was sucessfully integrated with Mki.

http://www.edefenseonline.com/default.asp?func=article&aref=03_10_2005_OM_01

Not sure about the validity.

well i am pretty sure you removing kh-31a/p from the harpoon database is not gonna magically remove all of kh-31a/p from IAF arrsenal, besides why would IAF open acknowledge such purchase it hasnt done so for other anti radiation/air to surface missiles in its arrsenal. Anyway there is more than enough info that IAF ordered in 99 and Irkut has tested kh-31a and validated its performance prior to delivering 2nd batch of Su-30mki for IAF.

So I’ll assume from the lack of response that there are in fact no sources to back up claims that Kh-31 missiles are actually in service with the IAF. Okay then we can take them off the current MKI version in the Harpoon database. Thank you.

Daniel