It has many other options, it saw what they were worth and went with what it knew worked.

I know its a conceit amongst several folks that they know best and GOI never does, but things are never as black or white as that.

I do not believe there is any conceit, if you look through the news archives since my original posting you will see the government is desperately trying to g up the Indian private sector for defense items.

With your level of general knowledge I would think you are pretty upto date with Indian defense related news items and would not deny such reports.

I am surprised that India is not even planning on the development or acquisition of a long range bomber, like you said it is a valuable asset against the PRC.

It would be more cost effective for India to stand up a second artillery corps type scenario than a strategic air command..

Let the heads of the three service command the Indian version of SAC.

May be they can integrate the both in a hybrid..

What else did you expect ? instead of marked targets they would attack targets across the border ?! 😮

Now now we musnt use the army to do its intended job of protecting people…..Its only there as deterence hm.. wait no thats not working either…. oh well…head scratch i wonder what it is for..

Its all about options Matt; something is better than nothing. 800 odd km with a 1 ton warhead, could mean well over 1000km with a 500kg warhead. Of course, in a few years you may see a longer variant or an Agni variant. Promising start though.

USS.

You are right about the promising start, lets hope the sucess carries on and there are no issues with the Arihant.

However, and i am sure people understand this already, I wanted to point out that 1 sub and 7 missiles with a 700km range is not yet a 3 deterent, it is a good start to one granted.

Depends on which altitude you are talking about. The lighter one has better advantage of altitude climb, and more nimble. It is optimization and tradeoff.
Besides, if the heli can’t climb to a certain altitude, its capabilities at intermediate altitudes don’t come to help in real application.

The pilot won’t be comforted that it save MoD lot of money, he will be comforted that there are 4 more pilots with similar machine bought with same amount of money so that he is not outnumbered.

In that sense, don’t look how much an individual heli carries. If it costs 4x less than you have to see firepower carried collectively by 4 against 1 and a physically distributed presence of firepower in airspace that greater numbers provide as against concentrated physical presence provided by one that can be knocked out easily by a missile.

Good points, but then i was not saying that the LCH was bad or not of use, it is of use and the IAF do need greater protection than that offered by the Cheetahs at high alititude and the LCH should be able to provide that.

My objection was to having the LCH being compared to things like the Apache and the SuperCobra. It reminds of the trap a few, including myself fell into when we first heard of the LCA back in 1995 completely ignoring the L for light.

Its 4 times cheaper than the Apache, etc well yes because it is not designed for heavy attack roles i am sure manufacturing costs etc would come into it some time as well. I doubt if the designers and engineers working on the project thermselves would be as bold as to compare it to the Apache or Mi-35 etc..

I do not follow your second paragraph very hard to read, could you elaborate? I am sure somewhere within the broken bold highlights there is a very intelligent point..

Tempering of the chest beating sometimes would not be a bad idea.

yes, but it also will cost nearly 4 times less. and the Mangusta is not any bigger than the LCH. it falls in the same size/weight class as the LCH..and the Turkish Armed Forces evaluated it and chose it to develop it as the T-129 attack helicopter when it was in competition with the AH-1 and the Apache..even if politics were involved, it still won, so there is plenty of potential even with that size. BTW< a Mistral was recently trialled on the Weaponised ALH (W-ALH) Dhruv, and it was a successful test fire. the LCH will also feature Mistrals and hopefully the HELINA (HELI-launched NAg)

Well good point that it cost 4x less, but when the pilot is facing heavy fire he will not be comforted by the fact that it saved the MOD a lot of money. To give them their dues the MOD have realised this and thats why they are trying to buy helicopters.

Also the armour on the LCH is probably only good for small arms fires if it is the epoxy/BMI ceramic pellet armour system that TAAL were advertising.

The LCH is great and will give the army/airforce greater protection than the cheetaks/Alouettes and that you cant take away from the LCH.

Article excerpt from Defense Update

India Unveils Shaurya – Submarine Launched Missile

One of the new weapon systems on show was the Shaurya missile – a submarine-launched medium-range ballistic missile, capable of carrying one ton of a conventional, or nuclear armed warhead over a range of 750 km. The Shaurya is specially designed for the new Indian submarines, offering India ‘second strike’ capability, significantly adding to the country’s strategic deterrence. Together with the Agni III missile, that has a range of 3500 km, Shaurya could reach all major cities in mainland China, like Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai, when launched from a submarine off the China coast. It can also cover all the area of Pakistan from off-shore positions in the Arabian Sea. India’s first nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant is currently under construction and could be equipped with the new missile. Shaurya was developed in parallel to the K-15 ‘Sagarika’ ballistic missile, built with significant help from Russia.

Source: http://www.defense-update.com/products/s/shaurya_missile_170210.html

That is assuming that you can reach close enough to the coast of China, that in itself will be a challange and i have my doubts about how 1 or three subs are going to get close enough!