I am not a big fan of China but to regard them like one would regard Iraq is a bit naive.

One fact you seem to ignore is this. Even if it will prevail ultimately can and will America risk losing several million people and several big cities ? Democracies usually have much lower causality tolerance (both civilian and military) than totalitarian regimes. So China’s deterrent is in place as long as it has the ability to cause unacceptable loss to American life. It do not really have to win !

See the Leverage for example North Korea has over the west and South. In an all out War it will most definitely collapse, but the South and West has more to lose than they have, so much so that the North can even get away with acts of War.

Having some Jaguars come off the RAF’s original order and get allocated to teh IAF certainly helped the plane to get chosen by India originally did it not?

🙂

Did they finalize on the AESA design for the Typhoon ?

I was being sarcastic. The IL 76/78 issue is very much specefic to its type and inducting AWACS based on the platform will only increase the woes. This is why IAF wants another type for their future heavy lift and tanker fleet.

Its a good thing that Hawk issue is resolved and we are going for more of these.

Just shudder at the thought of yet another AJT in the circus 😮

I say 3 different AJTs 2 Different MRCAS etc. Ours will be an airforce so diverse that it reflects the diversity of the country.

who said that it doesn’t increase RCS ? it does increase the RCS. the only thing that they found is that its not as big a RCS increase and the trade-off in removing a more complicated retractable system (retracting it requires motors) and associated costs versus RCS yielded a result that showed it was ok to place a fixed probe.

Yes even Dassault thought the RCS trade off was insignificant to be worth the trouble, but ADA thinks otherwise and thus may be delaying a capability which can be a had earlier in case of a fixed probe.

When the LCA was being designed India never had the IL78 Midas. A2A-Refuelling is very new in the IAF.

You missed the whole point. The significance of an internal IFR probe is that frontal/profile RCS of Tejas is kept small. 🙂

How significant is that argument ? The Rafale has very low RCS which atleast the French claim to be lower than fighters with an internal probe.

Gives it all the more chance in Indian MRCA IMHO.

It is speculated in all defence circles. You go to BR forum, there is almost universal consensus that Tejas Mk.2 will equal Gripen-NG.

While some of the guys there are knowledgeable its still only a forum. Now do not get me wrong MK2 may more or less equal Gripen NG in payload capability and electronic gizmos, but the NG will always have better aerodynamic performance.

Does British jag or Indian Jag have different airframe ? NOPE simply waste of time , i think even this Jaguar engine upgrade deal will go like Mig-27 ,dumped for purchase of additional MMRCA

No because being a western platform the Jags are much reliable than the MIG 27. And some of the airframes are pretty new as well, we will see them around for some time to come.