mattThis is too much of an open ended question and difficult to answer other than by going down a rabbit hole.
Take into accound the different hourly rates, IAF probably operate on £20/hour or so where as the RAF are probably about £45/hour-£65/hour depending on which system and function that RAF staffer is.
add to this pension issues, other issues such as constantly being in a fight since the 80’s and you starting building a smaller picture of why the RAF have less personel.
To counter act the hourly cost the MOD spends moneys on systems that have greater autonomy. A large part of the former UK R&D funding was related to this also.
There are probably hidden costs as well that we would not think of normally i guess, because its not just about the aircraft or helicopter there are probably all sorts of surveilance systems that we do not know off.
mattOne of the prereqs of Indian involvement, and incidentally the key issue that has dogged negotiations is this exact thing. India’s position is that it will not compromise on this aspect.
Well the one thing that gives me doubts is the boldness of the PLAAF commander, they dont usually bost so much for sake of loosing face if it were not to happen. There must be something there to give it such confidence and making a JF-17 or J-10 wouldnt give an industry suddenly to say that it can make a F-22 beater if it did not have some backing from some place..
not unknown for countries to help others a bit under the radar.
There are just soo many few occurances in my life reading all these news that i have seen a Chinese comander to be so uber confident of a system that did not even exist. Mind you cant generalise.
mattIts not enough that we have bought most of the RN ex-carriers now we are buying non exisistent ones also.
almost as good as the story that said IN would buy Ex US Super carrier.
Hmm comment about Gorshkov being 18months from operation by the time HMS Prince of Wales comes into service would be very funny if it didnt have any possibility of being true. who knows!
mattReally interesting videos, wont the smoke trails give the game away a bit?
Again out of my field of knowledge so its more of a question than a statement.
mattYou are correct but its not really about defaming the ISI they are doing what is required for them to do.
It is up to India to counter act that, and that is what this is about. not about defaming ISI they are doing a bloomin good job to make life hard for India. The ISI have done a great job of making sure that a country 2 times the size of its own country thinks twice, thrice before it makes any agressive acts. Although i do not like this and it makes me ill to the stomach i also have a lot of respect for them due to this.
India needs to do something to counter CIA and US congresses support of Terrorists.
One was is economical hurt US industry, Lockheed and Boeing have large lobbies in congress if they hear that India will cut them out for CIA acts they will soon lobby the congress members to cut it out.
and with the types of profit Boeing and Lockheed make you can bet that they will have very very very powerfull lobbies!
Thus india can control US policy by proxy if it is clever and the Indian Military need to realise that in the long run this is a lot better for Indian interest than any F-35 they could buy.
CIA winked at Pak Army training camps for LT: Paris
Saturday, November 14, 2009
PARIS: Pakistan’s army once ran training camps for the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LT) militant group with the apparent knowledge of the CIA, an example of complicity that raises questions about the current state of the nuclear-armed nation.So says former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, author of a new book that provides rare insight both into alleged past army support for the defunct Lashkar-e-Taiba and to the group’s connections to a global network linked to al-Qaeda.
The question of Pakistani military support for Islamist militants is crucial for the United States as it tries to work out how to stabilise the country and neighbouring Afghanistan.Bruguiere bases the information in his book on international terrorism, “Ce que je n’ai pas pu dire” (“What I could not say”) on testimony given by jailed Frenchman Willy Brigitte, who spent 2-1/2 months in a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in 2001-02.
In an interview, Bruguiere said he was convinced Lashkar-e-Taiba, first set up to fight India in its part of the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, had become part of an international network tied to al-Qaeda.
“Lashkar-e-Taiba is no longer a Pakistani movement with only a Kashmir political or military agenda. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al-Qaeda. Lashkar-e-Taiba has decided to expand violence worldwide,” he told Reuters.
He was “very, very anxious about the situation” in Pakistan, where militants are staging a series of bloody urban attacks to avenge a government offensive against their strongholds. “The problem right now is to know if the Pakistanis have sufficient power to control the situation,” he said. The problem was also “to know if all the members of the military forces and the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency) are playing the same game. I am not sure,” he added.
Pakistan has long been accused of giving covert support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed for last year’s attack on Mumbai in which 166 people were killed. It denies the allegation and has banned the organisation.
New form of terrorism: Bruguiere said he became aware of the changing nature of international terrorism while investigating attacks in Paris in the mid-1990s by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
These included an attempt to hijack a plane from Algiers to Paris in 1994 and crash it into the Eiffel Tower — a forerunner of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. The plane was diverted to Marseilles and stormed by French security forces.
This new style of international terrorism was quite unlike militant groups he had investigated in the past, with their pyramidal structures and political objectives. “After 1994/1995, like viruses, all the groups have been spreading on a very large scale all over the world, in a horizontal way and even a random way,” he said.
An early encounter with Lashkar-e-Taiba came while he was investigating shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who tried to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight from Paris in 2001. This investigation led to a man, who Bruguiere said was the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s representative in Paris, and who was suspected of helping Reid — an accusation he denied. Bruguiere said the link to Reid was not proved in court.
Brigitte, a Frenchman originally from France’s Caribbean department of Guadeloupe, had gone to Pakistan shortly after Sept 11 to try to reach Afghanistan. Unable to make it, he had been sent to a Lashkar centre outside Lahore. A man named Sajid Mir became his handler.
“He quickly understood that Sajid belonged to the regular Pakistan army,” wrote Bruguiere. After 1-1/2 months, he was taken with four other trainees, two British and two Americans, to a Lashkar camp in the hills in Punjab province. The Toyota pick-up which took them there passed through four army checkpoints without being stopped.
During his 2-1/2 months stay at the camp, Bruguiere says, Brigitte realised the instructors were soldiers on detachment. Military supplies were dropped by army helicopters. Brigitte said he and other foreigners were forced four times to leave the camp and move further up into the hills to avoid being caught by CIA officers. They were believed to be checking if Pakistan had kept to a deal under which the Americans turned a blind eye to Lashkar camps in Punjab provided no foreigners were trained there.
In return, Bruguiere said, Pakistan under then president Pervez Musharraf helped track down leaders of al-Qaeda. Double standards: Western countries were at the time accused by India of double standards in tolerating Pakistani support for Kashmir-focused organisations while pushing it to crack down on militant groups which threatened Western interests.
Diplomats say that attitude has since changed, particularly after bombings in London in 2005 highlighted the risks of “home-grown terrorism” in Britain linked to militant groups based in Pakistan’s Punjab province. After leaving the camp accompanied by Sajid, Brigitte was sent back to France.
Sajid then ordered him to fly to Australia where he joined a cell later accused of plotting attacks there. Tipped off by French police, Brigitte was deported from Australia in 2003 and convicted by a French court of links to terrorism.
Bruguiere said he had personally questioned Brigitte in the presence of his lawyer to check his testimony. Information provided by Brigitte was also crosschecked by French police based on mobile phone and e-mail traffic.
Bruguiere went to Pakistan himself in 2006 as part of his investigations into the deaths of 11 Frenchmen in a bombing outside a hotel in Karachi in 2002. He stepped down as France’s best-known counter-terrorism expert in 2007 and now represents the EU on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme in Washington.
mattAll of the above is great news for the USA!
Not for India, India is not yet under the US Empire it is a soverign country.
I do not care if the CIA is doing best for US interests i would expect them to. Indias interest at this time run counter to those of the CIA. Especially as the above report mentions the ISI who fund terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir are carrying on AS USUAL
What you posted proves the points exactly the US is doing all it can to fund the CIA in killing anti US elements in the borderlands and pakistan while allowing the Kashmir element to thrive and carry on as is.
It is not the place of India to make the life of the US easy, it is its place in life to ensure and secure the lives of its own citizens and armed personel!
Give the CIA some hard choices; its life!
From the above times of India artical..
US officials are glossing over worrying reports ranging from clandestine nuclear transfers between Pakistan and China, to the Pakistani military running terror camps under the CIA’s nose, in order not to offend Islamabad.
mattWe all knew this was coming, if the money is used to fund the Army then great.
But i suspect this will not happen.
You have to wonder if there is a helicopter shortage etc than how will the UK cope in Afghanistan with a reduced RAF? Or would the plan be to put the helicopters under the Army?
maybe the plan is that by next year the UK will pull out hense the RAF/RN/Army could live with the cuts?
mattMatt,
You have the same about PAF getting Block52 and at the same time being bombed by Predators or the rumour that CIA is behind the internal problems inside Pakistan. I think there is no way Pakistani army or politicians are behind attacks in India. They would not risk a war. I think it would be great for India to have mix of the best from Russian and American side. Surely it will cost a lot but I think it is needed cause these times you cannot afford to put all your eggs in one basket. India is not a small nation and it will develop and diversify. Hence US-Russian best options.
Please do read up on sub continent history your points are a bit ill placed.
Secondly the ISI and all credit to them are very shrewd more so than there Indian counterparts and now how to play the game. For that I have to respect them. They do support terrorism etc because they know they have US support and patronage.
Any country supporting Al queeda or the Taliban is suseptable to US attack as the US deems it that any country supporting them or harbouring these people is just as guilty as the terrorist themselves. These same Ideals need to be employed by the GOI when dealing with the US.
Discounting US Aircraft from MMRCA is just a softer approach to doing this.
mattI agree about KALI- that would be great, and about Phalanx type things, we should look into Kashtan with the Russians. Of course, I’d rather the Tatas built it with DRDO/BEL, rather than the OFB being the prime manufacturer, which will be least bothered about developing it further.
I would just love to see the capability in the Indian Army i think it would save a lot of lives if our Jeeps had a phalanx on them or our pill box’s had land based phalanx. It would not be 100% efficient but when random mortors rain down on the IA or borderline villages every little helps.
What about a networked array of Phalanx in the Kashmir mountain border lands remotely operated with IR cams and MMW RADARS (or terrahertz imaging). Infiltration? What infiltration?
I do belive these kinds of “smaller” systems could be more useful/$ to India than some of the bigger ticket items.
mattAlong with the report below and the murmours that the CIA are still allowing the LET to train in Pakistan for Anti India Activity I do not see why any of the US MMRCA contendors should be in the contest other than to allow the IAF to get a good understanding of possible agressors.
This is not to do with planes granted but how many of us really think that military aviation is isolated from politics? Its all one and the same.
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http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4113.shtml
Special Reports Last Updated: Dec 10th, 2008 – 01:47:41
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Role of alleged CIA asset in Mumbai attacks being downplayed
By Jeremy R. Hammond
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 10, 2008, 00:24
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(FPJ) — The role in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month of an underworld kingpin that heads an organization known as D-Company, has known ties to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and who is alleged to have ties with the CIA is apparently being whitewashed, suggesting that his capture and handover to India might prove inconvenient for either the ISI or the CIA, or both.
It was Dawood Ibrahim who was initially characterized by press reports as being the mastermind behind the attacks. Now, that title of “mastermind” is being given to Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi by numerous media accounts reporting that Pakistan security forces have raided a training camp of the group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which evidence has indicated was behind the attacks. Lakhvi was reportedly captured in the raid and is now in custody.
At the same time Ibrahim’s role is being downplayed, Lakhvi’s known role is being exaggerated. Initial reports described him as the training specialist for LeT, but the major media outlets like the New York Times and the London Times, citing government sources, have since promoted his status to that of commander of operations for the group.
The only terrorist from the Mumbai attacks to be captured alive, Azam Amir Kasab, characterized Ibrahim, not Lakhvi, as the mastermind of those attacks, according to earlier press accounts.
Kasab reportedly told his interrogators that he and his fellow terrorists were trained under Lakhvi, also known as “Chacha,” at a camp in Pakistan. Indian officials also traced calls from a satellite phone used by the terrorists to Lakhvi.
But the phone had also been used to call Yusuf Muzammil, also known as Abu Yusuf, Abu Hurrera, and “Yahah.” And it has been Muzammil, not Lakhvi, who has previously been described as the military commander of LeT. It was an intercepted call to Muzammil on November 18 that put the Indian Navy and Coast Guard on high alert to be on the lookout for any foreign vessels from Pakistan entering Indian waters.
Kasab told his interrogators that his team had set out from Karachi, Pakistan, on a ship belonging to Dawood Ibrahim, the MV Alpha. They then hijacked an Indian fishing trawler, the Kuber, to pass through Indian territorial waters to elude the Navy and Coast Guard that were boarding and searching suspect ships.
Although the MV Alpha was subsequently found and seized by the Indian Navy, there have been few, if any, developments about this aspect of the investigation in press accounts, such as whether it has been confirmed or not that the ship was owned by Ibrahim.
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Read the rest on the website linked above.
mattIt would be funny and ironic if the PAK FA and Chinas new “4th” gen stealth plane are the one and the same and the FGFA is a thing for India like the SU-30MKK and 30MKI
mattI’d like to see DID (Defind daily’s) source for that report. On the face of it though, it is a bit odd.
Israel does have a shekel budget ie local mil spend which it uses for its local programs & export driven programs, whereas its US $ budget is earmarked for joint ventures, or US mil acquisitions. This is the first I am hearing of it, and it could be that DID is simply playing it fast and loose.
About PAD, it has benefited from the Arrow in a way. India worked with Israel to develop its own “supersized” version of the basic GreenPine, known as the LRTR (Long Range Tracking Radar) with Indian tx/rx modules etc. It has longer range and is able to track faster targets.
The Israelis themselves have also revealed a Super Green pine recently for their Arrow upgrade, 1-2 of which are being sold to South Korea for their proposed national ballistic defense system.
The point to note here is that India went with the LRTR and didnt simply get GP TOT because GP has US IP involved. So the Barak-US link seems odd.
It is odd, it was also odd that the US would do a BMD workshop with Indian scientists around the same time as when India was pondering whether it could buy the Arrow system or not.
Barak NG. MR SAM LR SAM might be a way of risk reduction for PAD. India needs missile defense and its only going to be a good thing if there are two systems that can hit missiles..
We have all been reading about the green pine for some time now and 3D car etc etc etc..
One more of these types of technologies that India could really benifit from is the legendary or mythological KALI project or even a Russian/US/Indian/Israeli version of land based phalanx, not sure if Tunguska has the same capabilities (i.e. take out mortors etc..) but it would be great for the western fence and pill boxs dotted around Sikkim and Kashmir.
mattI wasnt talking about the Arrow. We looked at the Arrow & the Russian S-300V and went with our own PAD project.
Now where did you read that?
The Barak8/MRSAM/LRSAM are purely Indo-Israeli projects.Perhaps you mixed it up with the Arrow program which has US funding & technology contribution? :confused:
part of the same report..
i would not be suprised if pad has been helped a bit by arrow
The Navy’s Barak-NG project aimed to give the missiles a much longer reach, with the intention of making it India’s primary naval SAM. The project was later renamed Barak 8, and features funding from American military aid dollars, Indian cooperation, and private/governmental funding in Israel
mattBarak 8 is the Israeli designation for the common missile and apparently the system itself, at least the land based one.
But the systems differ in terms of capabilities. The original is the LRSAM for the Navy. It combines a four sided 2248 Elta AESA with the 70 km Barak missile and assorted C3I gear. This was the 2006 contract.
The next project is the MRSAM for the AF. It involves a new AESA, a single sided rotating derivative of the 2248 being developed with LRDE involvement, called the LB-MF-STAR, and land based battle management systems ie C3I & of course the 70 km Barak missiles themselves, iirc 8pack VLS to a launcher. This was the recent contract.
The Indian side will be deeply involved with the missile itself eg DRDL was supplying the propulsion units per MOD report, the C3I and radar customization, plus assorted systems such as the launcher. The system is likely to be based on some Indian made vehicle platform.
There is also another project which we can infer from public sources but lets leave that aside for now…;)
Well its no secret that Indian was shown the ARROW system.. Would not be suprised if ELTA/IAI etc and India worked to make a version for India or adapted a version for India.
What suprises me about the above report is that there is US funding in the Israeli-Indian Joint venture.. how did that get squeezed in and how much control does that money actually give the US?
matthttp://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/india-israel-introducing-mr-sam-03461/
Great article from defense industry daily.
The Barak, and Barak-8
Barak Components
(click to view full)Barak is a supersonic, vertically-launched short range air defense system, with an operational range of about 10 km/ 6 miles. That pushes it past the standard ranges of shoulder-launched options with naval counterparts, like the MBDA Mistral/SIMBAD or Saab Boofors’ RBS-70, but short of other small vertical launch options like the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow. Its closest western compettors on the international market are probably Raytheon’s horizontally-fired Amero-German RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, and MBDA’s flexible Crotale VT-1/NG. Key attributes include a compact 8-cell vertical launching system that weighs just 1,700 kg, coupled with an equally compact 1,300 kg fire control system. This makes it easier to instal in small ships, and to retrofit into older vessels.
Snip_______________
The follow-on Barak-8 project involves a land-based system, intended to replace old Russian systems. The DRDO Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be the ‘prime developer’ for the MR-SAM project, which will reportedly have a Rs 2,300 crore (INR 23 billion, $450 million) indigenous component within an estimated Rs 10,000 crore (INR 100 billion, about $1.93 billion) total. The 4-5 year project aims to provide India’s military with 9 advanced air defense squadrons, each with 2 MR-SAM firing units. Each unit, in turn, would consist of a command and control center, an acquisition radar, a guidance radar, and 3 launchers with eight missiles each. The total would therefore be 10 C2 centers, 18 acquisition radars, 18 guidance radars, and 54 launchers, armed with 432 ready-to-fire missiles.
Israel Aerospace Industries will be the key partner, and will contribute most of the applicable technology, just as Russia did for the BrahMos by offering its SS-N-26 Oniks missile as the base platform. As of its approval by the Cabinet Committee on Security in July 2007, MR-SAM surpasses the BrahMos project in size, and may be the largest joint defense development project ever undertaken between India and any other country.
India Defence reports that IAI and its Israeli partners have agreed to transfer all relevant technologies and manufacturing capabilities to India. Indian sources estimate a 4-year, $300 million System Design & Development phase to develop unique system elements, and produce an initial tranche of the land-based missiles.
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One thing did leave me a bit confused is the BARAK 8 the same as the MR SAM?
Is it the one and the same? Why the two contracts one in 2006 and one recently?
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