mattApparently not a rare thing for contractors to be picked which may or may not have had fuller fat milk.
mattNEW DELHI: India will spend Rs 17,269 crore in the overall d
evelopmental programme of Tejas light combat aircraft, which was first approved in 1983 at a cost of Rs 560 crore to replace aging MiG-21s. This represents an almost 3000% jump, as per revised “sanctioned costs” of the entire Tejas programme, including the fighter’s naval variant, which will run till December 2018. IAF pilots are, of course, still forced to fly virtually obsolete MiGs since Tejas is yet to be inducted. Latest figures also show each of the first 40 Tejas fighters will cost around Rs 150 crore, over and above the huge developmental cost.
This comes even as defence minister A K Antony this week assured parliamentary consultative committee on defence that long-delayed Tejas will finally get its “initial operational clearance” in December. The “final operational clearance” is slated for December 2012. While Tejas’ per unit cost compares favourably with similar fighters like Gripen ( Sweden), its developmental cost — coupled with the fact that it has already been 27 years in the making — is way too high.
Tejas, incidentally, has clocked around 1,420 flights with 10 prototypes till date. Its FSED (full-scale engineering development) Phase-I till March 2004 cost Rs 2,188 crore. The Phase-II, to be completed by December 2012, will cost another Rs 5,778 crore. To add to that, there is fabrication of two Tejas Mark-II, with alternate engines, to be completed by Dec 2018 for Rs 2,432 crore, along with development of indigenous technologies for Rs 396 crore. Naval Tejas FSED Phase-I, in turn, is to be completed by Dec 2014 for Rs 1,715 crore, with Phase-II slated for completion by December 2018 for another Rs 1,921 crore.
Tejas will, of course, also be powered by American GE engines, with its indigenous Kaveri engine flounderi
ng despite Rs 2,839 crore being spent on its development since 1989. Towards this, India recently finalised a $822-million deal for 99 GE F-414 engines. While the first 20 Tejas for IAF will be powered by GE-404 engines, next six Mark-II squadrons will have the more powerful GE F-414 engines.
Wonder how many dollars it pounds that is, have to wonder how much has gone into pvt swiss accounts
mattNot necessarily, 2 billion on asymmetric warfare won’t even go noticed.
mattI would use the money to plant lots of trees for cover. randomly chuck large sharpe objects in shallow waters add a few mines. Invest in microlights and endure everyone on the island spends 3 months a year on military training. With eats left I would create massive rocket artillery with various ranges. Also invest 30% in rnd for island defence. Small items not big ones.
mattGood points there. But isnt an long rage ALCM verson of Brahmos under way? I assume it can be N-tipped. This will give India a good opportunity to launch pin point nuke strikes at selected targets.
I think there is a tomahawk style cruise missile in development.
mattyou have answered your own question here, the aircraft based systems are not for striking 6000 miles away (the places at that distance from India are canada, tasmania, mali etc so I don’t quite see the point anyway)
deterrence vis-a-vis china can be maintained with land based BMs and sub based ones, as and when that is available. china is a rational player who has more to lose in a nuclear war, the multitude of nuclear situations are unlikely wrt china. of course, the tactical nuke option against china can be shouldered by the aircrafts.
please keep in mind that NFU policy does not mean India will never use nukes, if the NCA has reason to believe that a nuclear strike on Indian forces is likely they are quite likely to opt for a pre-emptive strike. the tactical strike option might be used as a retaliation against a similar strike against Indian forces without escalating to wiping out each other’s cities.most of pakistan is however within a few hundred km of India’s borders, many important ones are within 50-60 km. counter force is a very real need for India in case pakistan’s army goes over completely to the extremist’s side, which is a fear expressed every other day by someone around the world.
Firstly I do not believe i have answered my own question, you may not have understood what i was trying to say.
My example of striking 6000 miles away was a exageration and for the sake of clarity i should have kept it out.
However what i would say and correct myself on is the fact that if you have a stratigic air command you want aircraft that are able to travel very very long distances whilst carrying a nuclear missile equally able to fly a very long distance. Thus allowing you to play the shell game.
A stratigic air command with aircraft is wasted for the western front, we have enough missiles and the arihant has sufficient ranged missiles to hit most targets. However this is not the case for the north, one sub with missiles that have a limited range of 700Km against say 30-40 subs and a equally massive navy is not a deterent and the current land based missiles can not reach most targets.
If anything it is of better use to deter or confuse the north and the best way to do that is not to have short range fighter aircraft to drop or fire nuclear bombs. Because our airforce will find it just as difficult to penetrate their airspace as our navy will to penetrate into the south china sea.
Only real way to get around this is to have a long range large strategic bomber that can carry a long range missile so that you can give your opponent the impression that you can be to the right or left of him and still be able to land a blow in his strategic core.
i.e. the shell game.
I do not understand what you mean when you say China has more to loose. You do know that this is the country whose leader once said
“Let us imagine how many people would die if war breaks out. There are 2.7 billion people in the world, and a third could be lost. If it is a little higher it could be half … I say that if the worst came to the worst and one-half dies, there will still be one-half left, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist. After a few years there would be 2.7 billion people again”.
You have to remember that they have a lot more weapons if India does get into a mixup with China then it will have more to loose and the best way it can defend itself or deter escalation is to ensure it has some aces up its sleave (or atleast make them think it does).
Also Indias no first use policy means that it will not use nuclear force first it is as clear cut as that.
No complex theories of what if the indian SAC found out that someone was going to launch a pre-emptive strike against them. what if that country thought india was to launch a pre-emptive strike for the pre-emptive strike?
mattDifficult to hear the starting of this vid thanks to the chatting.. but better than nothing.
F-16 hmm if only they had offered the XL…. oh well.. or a weaponised X-29 😀
mattThese systems would be very usefull in Sikkim protecting the army.
mattmy point exactly: if it’s so difficult for UAVs to identify a target as they stay on station for tens of hours without being detected, than what chance does a manned aircraft have, that can only stay on station for hours at most, and will be easy to detect? as an attack craft, the UAV is the most patient one, meaning they have the best chance of hitting the right target
and even if you don’t want to attack, UAVs are still your best option in a pure recon form: without weapons they can fly longer and higher, improving their time on site and stealth and thus the chance of seeing the enemy make a mistake, and this at a price no manned aircraft can hope to compete with
I dont get your first statement as it does not marry with my statement that although UAV’s have killed a lot of people we can not be sure if they are civilians are otherwise.
I can understand UAV’s being used for surveilence and think it makes perfect sense but dont understand why you would want it to fire weapons at some abstract dot on your computer screen. What is that is the mother figure in a clan or comunity? You have not just alienated another 20-30 people and turned them against you…
mattFor the sort of money being bandied about to create such an air force you could create a democratically elected governmental system. Then the need for such an air force would disappear and the political establishment could concentrate on external threats.
Regards
As this is not the case and we are assuming that we are where we are what would you bring in for COIN operations.
matt– psychology: experience in Afghanistan shows that insurgents fear UAVs because they cannot detect them, and they could be there watching, ready to strike at any time, kind of like Big Brother with a sniper rifle. at the very least this takes away insurgent options, forces him to adopt less effective tactics, like only moving at night
UAVs are best for this, as they are much harder to detect by sight or sound, and can stay in place much longer, making them more efficient at this job
Not sure if UAV’s are the best thing for COIN, dont forget insurgents in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq, and the NWF have been using a readily available piece of software to hack into the UAV video feed and possibly even put them off course.
UAV’s have killed a lot of people in the region but none of us can be sure that those deaths are combatents or civil by standers.
Have to agree with djcross, do need people in COIN and again I have to wonder if part of COIN is not to kill or mame but to stop people perform certain activities allowing the idealogical war to be faught.
mattWill the USAF have a specific electronic attack version of the F-35?
mattIf the insurgents can hear your COIN airplane, they can avoid it by going to ground. In Central and South America, insurgents go as far as using trained dogs to alert them to approaching airplanes. Noisy Predators fail, Reapers fail, Hunters fail, helos fail, as do all the ’60-’70s vintage airplanes already mentioned in this thread. The inability to counter-the-countermeasure provided by insurgent ears is why COIN airplanes are viewed poorly by those in charge of counter-insurgency operations.
To counter-the-countermeasure, you need significant standoff distance to stay out of earshot, which requires powerful senors to provide usable NIIRS. Airplanes with those capabilities are not cheap.
Surely depends on the strategy used does it not? There are ways to obfuscate the direction from which a troop drop will happen and the position of the drop.
If tactics are so predictable than could that noise not be potentially used to round up target or push it in the direction of where the special operations team were? Yes you could kill them from miles away but then you have missed an opertunity to gather intelligence.
I do believe long range mortors or artilary or dropping bombs from 30,000 ft (on their own without ground presense) makes little sense in an insurgency. If you move from point A to B by air and do not travel the ground routes you make your own occupation of that land abstract, all you really hold are the two points from which you leave or enter the insurgents are free to move around as they wish. Yes you may loose a lot fewer troops but inversly you have not done much damage to the insurgency either physically or idiologically (by saying with your presense, look i am here and i am here to stay, look i am not scared and rule the land i am walking on).
The point of the Mi-35 is the ability to robustly defend itself whilst carrying troops and if required offer limited counter attack capability. I do not mean for the Mi-35 in my list of aircraft to be used for attack. That would be down to the AC-130.
mattWell cant say i disagree, although i do not know the details i am not conviced that having a flight of medium size fighter aircraft alone can be a “Strategic” detterent nuisence at best and pyrite at worst.
mattI quite agree, matt.
But surely, these matters can be, and should be, discussed in a mature and sensible manner without resort to nationalistic trolling and flaming?
Anyway – that’s enough from me. Carry on discussing the subject at hand. 🙂
GA
Fair points and agreed. No reason or merit in name calling or demening people(s) or deminishing their dignity.
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