I noticed a couple of small errors in this news piece, but well-worth a read all the same:
George Fernandes, India’s Defence Minister, finished a visit to Russia today. That was a sensational event, what with Moscow talks for a tentative military-technological contract. It will involve India in R&D for, and eventual manufacture of Russian fifth-generation fighter aircraft, announced the minister.
His address came as India’s first official statement on its eagerness to join the ambitious project-which is all the more of a sensation as Russia’s first-ever to involve overseas partnership and investments for future-oriented military R&D. Even the USA does not dare to do so. Though its military-industrial corporations have long acquired a transnational scope, America prefers to make its fifth-generation fighters-the JSF, or F-35, and F-22-on its own.
Why, now, is Russia accepting Indian help?
India is Russia’s full-fledged strategic partner in an overwhelming majority of foreign political spheres-a point proved by President Vladimir Putin’s visit to that country, December last. Bilateral military-technological partnership involves an annual average two billion US dollars. Immune to the ups and downs of developments in the world, it means to protect either Party’s national interests, and is not spearheaded against whatever third countries.
On an unprecedented arrangement, imports from Russia account for close on 80% of Indian military technology. Those are tanks, frigates and submarines of pioneer makes, and a family of SU fighters and attack aircraft. SU 30MKI multipurpose fighters have joined it quite recently. The HAL corporation will manufacture a majority of them.
Russia is generously sharing the powerful MKIs with India even before its own Air Force receives them. Russia is putting up with all customer’s desires to equip the cockpit with gauges and software of Indian choice, and arm the craft with missiles India deems best to protect itself. Now, the Indian Air Force has a fighter plane spectacularly better than any other Asian country’s for technical characteristics and specifications.
Fighting efficiency indices put the SU 30MKI in between the best generation 4+ craft (FoA-18F, F-15E, Rafal and Typhoon) and the USA’s fifth-generation craft F-22A, whose supplies to the troops have not started as yet. Experts put the MKI above them all for air superiority. Super-mobile in dogfight thanks to its thrust vector control engine-for which Russian aircraft designers have always been famous, it equally excels in long-distance fights due to its Bars NO11M phased-array lidar, unprecedented air-to-air missiles, and an air-to-surface arms system.
One detail specially impresses experts. Team SU 30MKI R&D upgrades India from long-established purchaser of Russian warplanes to Russia’s equal partner in military technological development. A decision was made for joint SU maintenance, a specialised servicing centre to be set up in that part of the world and, last not least, the use of those gains to emerge in other Asian countries’ aircraft markets.
The SU 30MKI contract can be well expected to give rise to a new kind of military aviation business-pushing, possessing the latest financial tools, ready to risk, able to attract investors, and eager to start transnational partnership with East and West alike. The trend is very indicative for Russian-Indian economic contacts.
However excellent the SU 30MKI may be, and however great the scope of present-day bilateral military-technological partnership, Russia and India will not sleep on their laurels.
Russia’s renowned Sukhoi corporation has started R&D for a fifth-generation multipurpose fighter plane. The Cabinet has made an appropriate resolution, and President Vladimir Putin issued a related decree. A design concept is available, and a computer model. Information about the future craft and its characteristics is classified for now. All we know is that the new plane will hit air and ground/water surface targets, be super-mobile for low-speed controlled flight at big attack angles, and hard to discern in the optic, infrared and radar wave bands.
The MKI will be better than its US analogues-the JSF (F-35) and F-22-for profoundly original design and technological concepts, fighting characterictics, and the cost/effect rate, expects Mikhail Pogosyan, Sukhoi Director-General. MKIs will perform in team with a satellite group, AWACS aircraft, drones, ground-based reconnaissance and target designation systems, and computer and navigation centres. All that will together make an arsenal sufficient to repulse whatever danger comes from space, the air, land or sea. What is no less important, the pioneer fighter will be affordable to clients in Russia and wherever else.
Russian experts estimate the entire fifth-generation fighter programme at five or, at most, six billion US dollars, while the USA is ready to spend 35 to 50 billion. With that programme, Russia thrusts its door open to overseas investors it fully relies on-hence India’s priority.
Russian experts are sure India will gain with the Moscow offer. Partnership with the Sukhoi will give it, within the current decade, an unprecedented multipurpose fighter with no rival not only in Asia but in a majority of Europe’s best-developed countries. Indian experts will acquire the latest design and manufacturing knowhow for high-tec military aircraft. India will graphically extend its production basis and update its aviation through transnational cooperation.
Russian assistance promises soon to win India a place among countries which lead global aviation, putting it on a par with Russia itself, with the USA, Great Britain, France and Sweden-a chance hardly to be shrugged off.
Source: RIA Novosti via RusAviaNews (21st January, 2003)
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Steve ~ Touchdown-News
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January 21, 2003 at 8:57 pm