mattSee the IAF has set a deadline of March 2008 for the 6 companies to submit their responses to the RFP. The IAF shall then expect demonstrations of each fighter plane in India in various locations from Himalayn region, to western desert and southern coastal region. This is expected in 2-3 years time.
Thus, the IAF cannot entertain fighters which are yet not even produced by a company. It is not entering a risk-sharing JV for a yet-to-be-produced concept..
Most the aircraft on offer will not be produced, they will all be representations of what will come except say maybe the Eurofighter or the Rafael, all other aircraft have a short comming either in terms of budget or capability and will all have to be modified accordingly.
So although the capability level maybe the same as what india might get in real terms because systems may need to be downgraded or secured (US planes) or beefed up (Russian and Europeans) all systems will need to be modified to suit indian needs.
matt, actually Tejas’ max. payload is around 4,500 kgs as compared to 7,000 kgs of the F-16. But in A2A and ECM capability the Tejas should be equivalent to the F-16.
However, F-16 class fighters rarely have ANY mission profile that allows them to carry loads beyond 2000-3000 kgs. The Tejas can also carry these loads with ease at combat radii equal to F-16 or F-18, given that its airframe is very light and strong owing to composites.
I dont understand, the Tejas is or isnt as capable as the F-16.. if it isnt then its a failed design, if it is then “Instead of regressing toward making Tejas a trainer, HAL might consider making an NG version of Tejas to bring it on par with F-16.” is false..
this is the danger in comparing aircraft i suppose.
mattInstead of regressing toward making Tejas a trainer, HAL might consider making an NG version of Tejas to bring it on par with F-16.
Though true that Tejas is yet to obtain an IoC, by the time that it does in 2008-09, it can be hoped that the IAF considers it for the MRCA role also.
Trouble here is that the LCA is already supposed to be equel to the F-16 in most if not all requests.. and i do not mean the earlier blocks or F 16 i mean the new beafed up ones!
mattFrom Defense Industry daily report on Gripen NG
Hungarian Air Force Colonel Nandor Kilian:
“In Hungary we just don’t have large numbers of aircraft to train with, but in Spring Flag we faced COMAO (combined air operations) packages of 20, 25 or 30 aircraft. The training value for us was to work with that many aircraft on our radar – and even with our limited experience we could see that the Gripen radar is fantastic. We would see the others at long ranges, we could discriminate all the individual aircraft even in tight formations and using extended modes. The jamming had almost no effect on us – and that surprised a lot of people.
Other aircraft couldn’t see us – not on radar, not visually2 – and we had no jammers of our own with us. We got one Fox 2 kill3 on a F-16 who turned in between our two jets but never saw the second guy and it was a perfect shot.
Our weapons and tactics were limited by Red Force rules, and in an exercise like this the Red Force is always supposed to die, but even without our AMRAAMs and data links we got eight or 10 kills, including a Typhoon. Often we had no AWACS or radar support of any kind, just our regular onboard sensors – but flying like that, ‘free hunting,’ we got three kills in one afternoon. It was a pretty good experience for our first time out.”
July 2/07: Gripen International continues to tout its aircraft for India’s MRCA fighter competition. India Defence reports that the firm has gone one step farther than the July 2006 promise to have all airframe production take place in India. The firm stresses that the aircraft would be next-generation “Gripen Demo” aircraft, and adds that they were “willing to provide all the know-how for India to carry out modifications according to its needs.” This is a very high level of technology transfer, and resembles the benchmark adopted by the partner nations in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter consortium.
Its interesting that this is another nation which is dangling the F-35 carrot in front of india
mattThe Gripen is a considerably smaller aircraft, although I dont doubt what you say. The fact is that despite all the bitching the American offers are technically good solutions.
But havent the sweeds offered india development work for the newer longer legged Gripen N or what ever increment that beautiful little plane is at now?
mattWhere is it located?
The Su-30KN was at KnAAPO for a bit, there’s an old GE screencapture on my blog, in the FLANKER article.
That picture is a crop of a screen dump i took while browsing the google earth map posted above of IRKUTS factory.. i hoped i had found a mokup of PAKFA.. but the YAK does have similarties to the JSF in some rare fronts i guess.
mattwouldn’t this be negative for countries like India who seem to prefer integrating various non-Russian systems on Russian aircraft?
UAC has already been formed if i am not mistaken.. hope it gets stronger .. would mean it has more leverage with western european avionics companies if it needs it which is a good sign for the customers…
mattmatt, I disagree with your view. Firstly, a fighter plane is composed of not only avionics, but also the airframe, the engine, flight-control, and the stealth features. In these, India has nil role to play. Only in the section of avionics has India been provided some role, which is 20%.
Thus, India’s overall work-share in the PAK-FA is 5-10% only.
I understand what you are saying but if you think of the project itself, and lets be serious about this, if the project is not to be jeapordised and for the greater good of the project from which IAF will benifit also India really needs to stick to what it knows and what it has proven it can do and to be honest and as much as i hate to admit at the moment HAL has proven nothing not until LCA gets into full service.. yes we have the ALH but rooky mistakes like using resin systems with no tracebility etc proove that india does not deserve to lead in the production development.. there are a lot of computer trained indian engineers but put them in a production environment and they end up running riot wasting time of blue sky ideas that would take 20 years to come to fruitition. lets be pragmatic here. we would not even get a 100 JSFs and this level of investment from the JSF F-35 and if we tried to do the MCA we wont get it in the air until atleast 2030.
for upto 6billion US we get 126MMRCA possibly.. for 5 billion we get 100 aircraft that are generation ahead of that.. and judging by pics i have seen of Soviet production facilities I do not see how the Russians within that group would be slouches in areas of composite production and development.
There has been no mention of India having any so-called ‘rights’ or exclusivity to the Russian technologies in the PAK-FA. As we discussed earlier, Russia is providing the necessary means for India to modify and attach its own avionics (limited to 20%). It is this “right to modify” that is referred to in news reports and for which India is actually paying for, besides licence production rights.
I do not see russia signing any IP agreements with other countries.. that must be for a reason! Trust me no one with a life will want to bash out or iron out something like IPR unless they were for a valid reason. This does not inclue NDA which are just posh versions of toillet paper. The limit of how much final indian content goes into the PAK FA is up for the IAF to decided during its MLU. as for the rest of the avionics and again i dont mean to bash the DRDO guys brave effort and all but let them come up with proven sensors on actual systems befor letting them loose on such a major and pivotal project.. and for russia and even for India this is a pivotal project..
do you really think it cost russia only 10billion to develop a Fifth gen? 5 Billion is not a lot of money for the development including production development of an aircraft.
However if it does give you production rights and production technology then pay up and be happy that you were given a step up.
Lets not forget please that indian aerospace industry is still a nucleas and it will need to work a lot before it gets on par with the big players in aerospace.and the PAKFA will help it do that.
and yup i have said on other threads that we should cancel the MMRCA and fund the MCA i still think we should while working with the russians on the PAKFA
mattseems like a simple solution to me, russia needs more money and india cant be held hostage..
let russia do everything else and provide the electronics and engineers so that the indian shipyards can fit the wiring themselves with the supervision of russian engineers.
mattNo one seems to know why the C-130Js cost so much 🙁 damn it.. ok so who has the email add of the CVC or COW or what ever its called? Even the USAF or congress have questioned it!
Also that earlier report of transfering high technology to india may just be bullwinkle propoganda
mattWithin the initial development phase 20% of the avionics might be Indian but unless we know what they are we cannot comment.I do not see the point of india trying to develop a new IRST system when the Russians are the most expereinced and similarly for other aspects of avionics.. We also do not know the importance or roll of that 20% indian avionics content.
the claim of having 50% share can still come true if post development production is setup in such a way that India has 50 % work share in the program. And would mean that russia would have to facilitate this by providing india with the correct IP rights.
lets not get ahead of our selves a lot is at stake and until india can built and test aircraft to a competent level it is better for it to sit back and let the people who are experienced take control, as long as India can claim the technology developed
mattguys can some one tell me what this is please?
mattOnly depends on how the Russians and the french play things out and if the US would let the considerable amounts of Russian missile stock in IAF service to be used with the new MMRCA.
It also depends if IAF will get the JHMC and the new AIM 120 missiles along with its smaller WVR siblings..
Its still not too early for the US to shoot themselves in the foot.
mattI do not see sukhoi squandering its relationship with Thales and other western european companies by not getting them involved for the PAK FA project if the western avionics truely were superior.
Just as for India this 5th gen aircraft must last the russians for a long time to come and i do not see why they would want to be to miserly not in the long run anyway.
I also do not see what is the point of being misreable that india is paying 5 billion but yet was not involved in the initial design phase as much as they would have liked… I really do not see what India could have added to the aerodynamics or structure that the russians did not already know.
And yes if this was a true breed single role craft i would have a problem but as with most new designs it will be multirole and hense will have the compromises that go along with that type of craft.
Lets rejoice the fact that india was not involved infact! otherwise as the trend is going we would not see the PAKFA flying until 2150!
mattHas anyone else looked around at the factory? did they notice this? is this a yak 141 or something else?
Sign In
