Price is not the only problem for the Israelis wrt the F 35. The main problem as i see it is that they do not want identical hardware that the Arabs are also going to get. Well i doubt they will have much choice in the end, may be they should go back to the French and buy Rafales.

They have a great record with French Planes.

Government to set up chain of radar sensors along coastlines

Source

The government has launched a project to set up radar sensors along the country’s coastlines for surveillance in order to avoid a Mumbai-like terror attack during which Pakistani terrorists took the sea route to enter the city.

The Rs 350-crore project to set up the chain of radar sensors along the entire 7,517-km coastline, Andaman and Nicobar islands and Lakshadweep is implemented by the Coast Guard.

The radar sensors will be fitted on light houses at 46 locations, out of which 36 are in the mainland, six in Lakshadweep Islands and four in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Radar sensors use Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) to reliably detect moving or stationary objects even in the extreme weather conditions.

“The government has been on continuous basis reviewing the security arrangements of our coastline in the light of the emerging challenges, including those from the terrorists. The decision to set up a chain of radar sensors has been taken to strengthen the coastal security,” an official said.

As a part of the overall coastal security, the navy has been designated as the authority responsible for the overall maritime security which includes coastal security and offshore security.

The Indian Coast Guard is additionally designated as the authority responsible for the coastal security in territorial waters, including areas patrolled by State Coastal Police.

The existing Coastal Security Scheme provides for the setting up of 73 coastal police stations, 97 check posts, 58 outposts and 30 operational barracks, equipped with 204 vessels and vehicles in the nine coastal states, four coastal union territories.

So far, 66 coastal police stations have been operationalised. Supply of interceptor boats to the states and union territories has also started and 109 boats have been supplied till last month.

Besides, the ministry of shipping has been mandated to streamline the process of registration of all types of vessels – fishing as well as non-fishing – and also to ensure the fitting of navigational and communication equipments on these boats.

Of India’s total coastline, 5423 km is along the mainland and 2094 km in the Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands.

Cameron’s Wooing

Towards a holistic relationship

The 126-fighter jet deal has political overtones and cameron is likely to push its case strongly with the Indian leadership

British prime minister David Cameron will miss Myanmar’s military ruler Than Shwe by a mere day during his visit to India, but both leaders have weapons on their minds: Trials for India’s 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) deal, worth $12 billion, concluded earlier this month, and it is said the news is “good” for the Eurofighter Typhoon — a joint production of the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain — compared to its Swedish (Saab Gripen IN), Russian (MiG-35), French (Dassault Rafale) and US (Lockheed Martin’s F-16 and Boeing’s F/A Super Hornet) rivals.

In these testing times of recession, the award of the 126-fighter jet deal to any of these countries will not only significantly bump up its bottom line, it will also effectively send out a signal to the nation on which India wants to bestow her affection. That is why this deal has strong political overtones — and Cameron is unlikely to lose an opportunity to push its case with the Indian leadership.
With Britain likely to post a mere 2.6 per cent growth rate this year, Cameron knows he’s got to kick-start the economy. Britain must live up to its reputation of being the world’s biggest shop-keeper by not only finding more creative ways of pursuing trade and inward investment, but also reorient foreign policy tools such as international aid.

That is why the acquisition by Tata Steel of Corus, worth £ 6.7 billion when it was concluded in 2007, then India’s largest deal, and by Tata Motors of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), worth £ 1.15 billion, are always the focus of such attention. Tata employs 15,000 people at JLR’s three factories in the UK and believes that expansion into new markets, such as China, could sustain growth and minimise losses (although Corus had to lay off 3,000 jobs at its factory in Teesside).

R Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons, discounted rumours of despondency in the UK market. “We are perfectly happy with our acquisitions. Both Corus and JLR are in their second or third year, we are not looking at making money so far. Moreover, we have no reason to regret the acquisitions,” he said.

Asked what strategic value the Tatas would have gained from investing such large sums of money in Britain, Gopalakrishnan agreed that Britain “had reached its peak decades ago, but the fact remained that it was an easy country to work in.” Moreover, he added, it’s not as if the Tatas decided one fine morning that they were going into the UK — it was a combination of factors that resulted in their doing so. “The strategic intent was to grow the international business, UK didn’t happen by design,” he added.

Among its assets, Gopalakrishnan counted off the English language, a good insight into Anglo-America as well as easier access into “new geographies” like the former Eastern Europe and China. (Over the last year, the Tatas have sold $3.6 billion worth of goods to China, including Jaguar cars.)

And, he added, Britain may look jaded on several counts, but it “still has very high-quality engineering skills.”

That may well be why bilateral trade is currently pegged at a respectable $12 billion (some say it has the capacity to reach $40 billion by the end of the decade), and that Britain, which was India’s second largest trading partner until 2002, has since been overtaken by China (due mostly to the import of iron ore from India), the UAE (Gulf trade) and Belgium (diamonds). But India remains the UK’s largest export market in the developing world, ahead of China.

FDI inflows from the UK into India are still weak, however, and focussed on oil and natural gas (Cairns) and telecom (Vodafone acquiring Hutch). New areas such as IT (India is the second largest presence from Asia in terms of projects) and bio-technology are gathering their spurs; Astra Zeneca has established an R&D centre in Bangalore, while Cairns Energy, Shell and British Gas have promised to speed up investment.

Britain’s loss as India’s pre-eminent political partner in recent decades has meant heightened interest in the US — especially after the Bush administration slam-dunked India to de facto nuclear power status — and increasingly, a wary circling of China. In recent weeks, with Delhi’s request to Moscow for enrichment and reprocessing technologies for use in the several nuclear plants that nations like France, Russia — and in the near future, the US — are going to be building in India, Britain’s own nuclear cooperation deal with India seems like a minnow among the whales.

British diplomats admit that British companies are willing to supply the full range of components that make up a nuclear plant, short of the nuclear reactor itself, such as turbines which go into the French Areva reactors; an MOU with L&T was signed in February for the manufacture of these turbines.

The message, said a well-placed British source, is that the UK is “much more open and communicative to India” after the passage of the India nuclear deal through the Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2008.

The British source pointed out that Cameron’s UK is focussed on areas like education, climate change and defence ties. India and the UK already have as many as 400 tie-ups in higher education, including the training of faculty, joint programmes and the building of research bases. “We are interested in educating India’s youth bulge, as it were,” he said.

But with India’s neighbourhood in such ferment, Indian diplomats say the time may have come for its friends around the globe to stand up and be counted on issues that matter to Delhi. On the question of terrorism, for example, Indian and British officials have often differed on interpretations between militants and freedom-fighters, with London persisting with imparting human rights to terrorists.

Things have often come to a head over Afghanistan-Pakistan issues, and in fact, even David Headley’s confession to interrogators over the Pakistan intelligence agency, ISI’s involvement in the attacks, are being taken with a pinch of salt in London.

Moreover, as Gopalakrishnan pointed out, governments often tend to compartmentalise issues like security, labour, migration, climate change, trade and investment, and the time may have come to rebuild the whole, which is more than a sum of its parts.

“There is a great opportunity to build a relationship which is far more holistic. It hasn’t happened yet, but it certainly needs to,” Gopalakrishnan added.

Source

The French Collaboration on Kaveri Revival will become all the more significant if Israel and go at developing the AMCA together.

L1 should be L1, stratigic gain comes second to price right?
So it should be getting most out of the L1 bidder. Nuclear enrichment tech have all the bidding countries, but it sounds like breaking the Non Proliferation Treaty?

why apeas the russians?

1. Wrong the AC are comparable strategic gains are more important but i doubt how much strategic leverage one can buy with 11 billion dollars.

2. India have an NSG waiver but deals with U.S is dictated by complex regulations. So in effect although they helped us get the waiver, the actual deals with Russia, France etc offer us more than what we are getting from Americans. They may want to use MRCA deal to change that…

3. Because Russians supply most of our weapons and still co-operate in fields no one else will (Nuclear Subs). I am not sure if MiGs will be ordered outside the deal but it was reported, and it makes sense since we already operate the type will not cause additional logistical footprint like a deal for 40 Rafale outside MRCA (which the French want) will.

Did you miss the Cuban Missile Crisis? The US is perfectly willing to attack nuclear armed countries if the situation warrants it. The idea that a few dozen nukes, that cannot be delivered against the continental US, will make Third World backwaters impervious to US attack is one of the biggest falsehoods going.

There’s this:
The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6638568.ece

And this:
Israeli Air force aircraft landed during the past weekend at a military base in Saudi Arabia and unloaded large quantities of military gear, according to a report published Wednesday by Islamic website Islam Times.

The report, which has questionable credibility, claimed the equipment was unloaded at a base in the city of Tabuk, in the north western part of the country, ahead of a possible strike on Iran.
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3909732,00.html

The fact that Pakistan has the “Islamic Bomb” is obviously relevant to the long-term geopolitics and balance-of-power in the region.

No I did not miss the Cuban Missile Crisis. Placing Missiles a few hundred miles from Flordia will obviously trigger such a response.

Fact remains that in an all out war even a country with modest nuclear arsenal can cause more causalities than America will ever be willing to take and there by that nuclear deterrent is valid.

You really do not have to kill a guy who will quit fighting once he loses a toe nail. America is just like that strongest kid in the block who can probably beat everyone else in a fight to the death but who will quit if he gets hurt a little bit. Seen that in NAM, In Somalia etc.

MMRCA Flight Eval Report Coming This Week

The flight evaluation report on India’s much-awaited medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) will be ready by the end of July.

Indian Air Force (IAF) chief Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik told selected reporters in Bengaluru recently during the Defense Avionics Research Establishment (DARE) Raising Day celebrations that the $11 billion final contract for 126 aircraft would be signed within a year. “Our selection will be based on technical evaluation and we submit the decision on that basis,” Naik said. The IAF will submit its report to the Defense Ministry, which will then start the price-bid evaluation process.

He said feedback from IAF pilots, who have test-flown the various contenders (the F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-16 Falcon, Gripen, Rafale, MiG-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon) has been satisfactory, although he declined to provide more details about any one particular aircraft.

On another matter – the expected arrival of Russians for the Su-30 MKI upgradation – the air chief told AVIATION WEEK that “everything is in place and as planned.”

Concerning the Defense Research and Development Organization, Naik said scientists must marry technology with the needs of changing times, and he wants them to be one step ahead to give IAF cutting-edge capabilities. “You should be telling us what you can give us. You should be setting the technology agenda for us,” he said.

DARE has designed and developed complete avionics for MiG 27 aircraft that has been accepted by the IAF. The lab has also developed the Tarang radar warning receiver system on various airborne platforms, in addition to a missile approach warning system and a multi-sensor warning system on Avro aircraft and the Cheetah helicopter. The lab has also contributed extensively to the Su-30 MKI avionics suits.

Source

I remember reading an old article by a USN pilot who regularly flies the F 18(normal hornet) about his experience switching to the F 16. He may have been biased towards the Hornet but according to him it fared very well in both A2A and A2G wrt to the Viper.