Offshore Patrol Vessel inducted into Coast Guard

MORMUGAO (GOA): The maritime security of the country’s west coast got a boost on Wednesday with the induction of a state-of-the-art new generation Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) — ICGS ‘Vishwast’ — into the Indian Coast Guard (ICG).

‘Vishwast,’ which means ‘trustworthy,’ is an OPV indigenously designed in-house and built by the Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL), the south Goa-based Defence shipyard, and was formally commissioned into the ICG by Defence Minister A.K. Antony at a ceremony at the GSL on Wednesday.

Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, Secretary Defence (Production) R.K. Singh, Director-General of the Indian Coast Guard Vice Admiral A.K. Chopra, JS (Naval Systems) Gyanesh Kumar, NM Flag Officer Commanding Goa Area Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai and CMD GSL Rear Admiral (retired) Vineet Bakshi were present at the ceremony.

This OPV is the only vessel of this class in the world with the sophistication, large range of facilities for pollution control, fire fighting, search and rescue and patrolling provided in a 90-metre vessel, GSL officials said.

The ship is primarily designed for patrolling and policing maritime zones, search and rescue operations, maritime surveillance, anti-smuggling operations, pollution response against oil spillages and external fire-fighting.

Focus on coastal security

Reiterating the Centre’s thrust on coastal security, Mr. Antony said: “The government has approved all that the Coast Guard has asked for in terms of assets and manpower so that their capabilities are enhanced.

“In all, 14 new Coast Guard stations have been approved recently, and fast track procurement of ships, boats and aircraft has been permitted.”

He urged the Coast Guard to be more professional and committed to duty.

“The delineation of the continental shelf and the resulting increase in the Exclusive Economic Zone mean that the Indian Coast Guard will have more sea area to monitor,” Mr. Antony said, calling upon the Coast Guard to rise to the occasion and ensure that response time to emergency situations was further reduced.

He praised the GSL for efficiency and asked it to sustain its performance and focus on delivery period reduction and cost-competitiveness as regards defence shipbuilding.

Modernisation drive

In his welcome remarks, Rear Admiral Bakshi said the GSL was on a modernisation drive that included the installation of a shiplift and the creation of GRP ship production infrastructure.

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This bird was used before for radar testing ,without any exterior give-away( Irbis radar), so its not excluded that it is indeed testing the PAK-FA radar atm …the author of the pic seems to be a big name ,and i guess its hard not to take his word…

Still the only way to find out 100% is to take the radome off , but thats not gonna happen too soon is it ?:p

Another way of reasoning would be that the PAK FA radar is actually smaller than the Su 30 one so even though its canted it will go into the nose of an Su 30 easily.

Would the nose not require mods to house the canted array of the T 50 ?

Rimmer’s link from last page

http://sify.com/news/us-delivers-cobra-helicopter-gunships-to-pakistan-news-international-kdqwEcjgjgb.html

Says Pakistan will get AH 1Z in 2015

Pressure Builds for More Hornets; Multi-Year OK Likely

Congressional pressure on the Pentagon to buy more F/A-18 E/Fs and use multi-year authority continues to build, with Sen. Kit Bond being the latest to leap on the bandwagon at today’s Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.

Bond sent a St. Patrick’s Day letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging use of the multi-year authority and he pressed the Navy’s top leaders on the need for more Hornets. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Navy believes Boeing’s February proposal for a multi-year deal meets the “threshold” for multi-year savings. The numbers are being reviewed by the Office of Secretary of Defense’s CAPE and Mabus told me a decision should be forthcoming in a few weeks, “sometime in April.”

The debate is sure to grow more heated with the news last week that the Navy and Marines were forced to red stripe — ground — 104 Hornets of models A through D. While it isn’t clear yet whether some of these planes will be pulled off the line there are already flight restrictions on the fleet of older Hornets. And that, a congressional aide noted, means the service life extension programs being considered for the Hornet may have to be scaled back.

The congressional aide, who follows the Hornet debate, said there are “No specifics on how many will be permanently grounded. Inspections ongoing. The big concern is that even after the visual inspection, there are still G limits on the planes until they get electronically inspected. This red stripe certainly raises questions about the Navy trying to SLEP legacy Hornets to 10,000 flight hours. There are all kinds of holes in the Navy’s plan to reduce the strike fighter shortfall. You can expect to hear more about it in the near future.”

However, Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, told reporters after today’s hearing that very few — half a dozen — of the grounded planes have shown serious cracks that warrant concern. The grounding, he said, is actually giving the Navy the chance to do more detailed inspections earlier than it had planned. And it should not deter the planned SLEP, he claimed.

The other big story of the hearing was the Navy’s careful efforts to fend off attacks on the Littoral Combat Ship’s request for proposal. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, where the aluminum-hulled trimaran LCS is built, criticized the Navy for not taking life cycle costs into consideration and urged Mabus and Roughead to “amend” the RFP.

“A lot of us are concerned that the pending RFP does not appear to take capability and life cycle costs into consideration,” Shelby said.

Mabus deflected Shelby, saying the Navy “has a lot of confidence in this RFP. It’s well written and well designed.” Asked by a reporter about the chances for a bid protest and how the Navy might handle one, Roughead said “a protest would be extraordinarily disruptive” to the service.

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The Russians seems to think that 1 seat is enough.

Again Russia has more assets than IAF. Russia for example I think has not really woken up to the multi-role game except for export orders. They have a big arsenal of dedicated A2G aircraft like the Su 24, Su 25, Su 34 and also heavy and medium bombers. Hence PAK FA will primarily fulfill the Air Superiority role in the RuAF for that single seater is enough.

I doubt they will go for super cobra.

Pakistan is getting the AH 1 Z (Super Cobra or Viper if you prefer) in 2015 ain’t they. In all probability IAF will go for the Apache Longbow.

My understanding is that the IAF prefers a 2-seater because it will be more capable in the A2G environment. The US, on the other hand, went with a single seat F-35 to do the same job. Can we infer anything as to the relative sophistication of the 2 aircrafts sensor fusion capabilities from this?

What I believe is this.

1. The USAF with its wide variety of assets takes a lot of workload off the Pilot and hence a single seater may be preferable in most scenarios than a twin seater.

2. The IAF on the other hand does not have that much net centric assetts and rely more on the aircrafts on board sensors, so two crew members instead of one would take care of things better in that respect.