European firm offers missiles for IAF’s Su-30

European consortium MBDA has offered their 300 km-range Taurus stand-off missile system to the Indian Air Force (IAF) for its fighter jets such as the Su-30MKI.

“We have received a Request for Information (RFI) from the IAF for a stand-off long range missile from the IAF and we have offered the Taurus missiles as we feel that it meets all the desired requirements,” Anders Axebark, the business development manager for the missile systems told a group of Indian journalists here.

The Taurus air-to-ground missiles are manufactured by the Germany-based Taurus Systems GmbH, which is a joint venture between MBDA and and Swedish defence major Saab.

MBDA is a missile manufacturing firm based in Italy, Britain, France and Germany.

India is going to upgrade the first batch of its Sukhois in collaboration with Russia and is looking to enhance the capabilities of the aircraft by equipping it with new radars, long-range weapons and avionics.

Axebark said the IAF has already been briefed by the company at the Air Headquarters in New Delhi about the operational advantages that the missile would provide.

“The German Air Force is also planning to carry out a test-firing of the missile for the IAF in November at one of the field-firing ranges in South Africa,” he said.

Axebark said that his company has also briefed the DRDO about the system and is looking for opportunities to co-develop anti-ship, surface to surface and transport aircraft-launched versions of the missile with the research organisation.

The Taurus GmbH is also offering the ground-launched version to the Indian Army.

The company claimed that the missile system can be used to take out hard targets such as bunkers and concrete shelters from a stand-off range of 300 km and it can track its target without using the GPS navigation system.

The MBDA has also offered its MICA and Meteor missiles to the IAF and said that they can be integrated with various types of aircraft operating in the IAF.

Interesting Taurus for the Su 30, I guess both Typhoon and Rafale can use it as well. But the key is their offer to integrate Meteor with all aircraft in IAF. 😎 MKI with Meteor. Makes sense to standardize on meteor and Astra in future, Russians may not like it though.

Do you have information that they tried to make a single engine for the MiG-29? 😉

It was 2 engined from the start.

I know prolly because they did not have a good enough engine for a single engined fighter back then ?

Anyway if it was single engined it would have fared much better in RuAF now.

“Empires that rose & fell, including one which was explicitly non-Indian in origin & at times (I know, not always) tried to impose a pan-Islamic identity . . . come, come.”

Point remains though that as Boom said, a pan India identity existed before Indian independence and multiple Indian empires hence sought to bring political unity on those lines & several even achieved it to a large extent.

India’s marxist historians and their moonbat obsession with their self proclaimed definition of the term secular and other shibboleths has made them a disgrace to the profession, leading them to deliberately ignore and even distort history, but earlier sources before they started their tender attempts, do note these details.

There was no way modern India would have hung together if not for the shared identity in the past which has coalesced into political unity several times over. All said and done, terms like bharat, bharata, bharatvarsh are universally understood because of the past identity.

Teer I respect you when it comes to the Indian Armed Forces, but I say I disagree with you and think you are misinformed in-terms of history. I cannot blame you as successive generations have studied propaganda from schools and very few people take history as a profession or passion and like you said it was long dominated by Marxists, but it is to be noted that colonial and even some nationalistic historians before them do not share the view of Bharatavarsha expressed by Boom here, neither do the historians which followed the Marxists. India was culturally distinct in the south and North East, while I give you that large parts of North India and Pakistan were culturally the same.

Modern India hung together because of a strong centre, and also because concessions made by the centre towards the state, linguistic and cultural autonomy for example. Try running a shop with Hindi/English boards only in Tamil Nadu and see how their reaction would be !

Food habits again the Southie shares nothing with the Northie there !

There is no denying a Pan India identity but that identity did not correspond to the current geographic extent of India.

The J 10 next to send shivers down British Spines.

quad, thanks for the last post. you will note that I deliberately avoided replying to your post.
as I said.

I rest my case. 😉

corrosion, it has nothing to do with what part he comes from, most people from that part are far more intelligent and informed. no one has monopoly over idiocy and ignorance as dear quad is hell bent on proving. 😀

I have torn your arguments to shreds. I can corroborate what I talk with evidence. Can you ? My ignorance ? What makes you more qualified than I am to speak about Indian History ? Tell me who your favourite Historian is and what books you have read ?

Anyway I have never resorted to personal abuses as you are apparently indoctrinated.

I am not a Marxist. I just despise them less than communalists. Keep your mind open don’t let ‘isms” cloud your judgement.

but what’s changing masters to a communist, most comrades have their kids in US while they stage demonstrations outside IAF bases against exercises with USAF.

Finally a point we can agree on.

[QUOTE]

Broadly speaking, overall culturally India is pretty much one entity. Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana depict India as one entity. “Indian” Caste system that is widely practiced all over India even today and it is distinctively Indian phenomenon and is homogeneous. Well one can always argue that one group influenced others, but then we are moving in circles. And don’t nitpick some border states. Majority of India has more cultural similarities than differences. Don’t confuse Race, religion, way of thinking, nation state, kingdoms, geography, Indian civilization. All are separate concepts. It is very simple, either you believe that there is India or you don’t.

The ‘Caste’ system is but a hierarchical way of social fragmantation, and the status of ‘castes’ varies in different parts of India. There are many places where it is unheard of and many places where in which it was imported as a result of migration from the North. The Geographical Area mentioned in Ramayana and Mahabharata is vastly limited compared to the Present day India, It does not include the South and the North East.

People will choose only one concept and argue about it.
Some will choose race: Aryan race, Dravidian or Mongol and argue they are different.

I choose culture and identity, people of India have different identities culturally, they have the same identity politically.

Some will choose religion: People of Dharmic religions will believe India is more than a nation state, while generally Muslims and Christians will believe more in constitutional state, due to obvious reasons.
Similarly, some will choose other aspects.

All this is a later day invention the ‘Dharmic people of North India have more in common with their Muslim and Christian brethren in North India and Across the border in Pakistan than people of the same religion in South India. And the word ‘Dharmic religions’ is tailored by people who want to assimilate Buddhism and Jainism into Hinduism despite apparent differences,

Basically, if you want to see differences, you will see differences.

There are more differences than there are similarities.

LoL @ Quadbike, please list your School, college and university. So that it can be checked what influenced your history books that you studied. Just joking. You would have surely heard of Xuanzang, famous chinese scholar who visited “India” approximately 2600 years ago. He would be a good person to ask what he considered India.

I will give you personal info on PMs. India is a loose term invented by people outside its borders to describe the land near Indus, so when Hieun-Tsang mentions ‘India’ he does not mean the present day reality of India. He did not visit India 2600 years ago he did during the time of Hasha of Kanauj who ruled during the 600s. I think between AD 630-650.

British definitely made possible the political re-unification of India as/into a modern state. but at same time important parts eg Indus Valley Civilisation land area was cut off.

Re-unification is a lose term, the word should be ‘formation’ for many parts of South and North East which form present day India were never a part of it under other empires.

Ok ok and What about Mughal rule, Dr. quadbike?

Just another Dynastical rule. The Kushanas were outsiders, There is evidence to prove that the Modern Rajputs descended from Indo-Greeks, so because a tribe comes from outside India and establishes its Empire here, does not make them outsiders and the subject people their slaves. One of the follies of the British Raj was that the Brits never settled in India like the Mughals and Turks did, thus remaining essentially an alien ruling class.

nearly every text from the 1 century BCE onwards start with an explicit description of the geographical extent of the land of Bharata (which is what Indians call India, in case you did not know. as well as being the official name of the country according to the constitution. Indian Air Force is thus Bharatiya Vayu Sena), without reference to any political power. even back then the difference between nation of people and political nation state was widely recognised.

Indian history does not start from 1st century BCE. And the extent of Bharatavarsha according to the Vedas/Puranas is rather limited to the stretch from Kandahar to the borders of Bengal and from kashmir to Vindhyas.Many of the Indian Epics and Puranas antiquity and authority will be questioned by all seirous historians as its not secular ltierature.

“The country (varṣam) that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhāratam; there dwell the descendants of Bharata.”

You think they meant North of Cape Comorin ? There are many places in India where you can stand and say the same.

Bharata referred to here is a Rig Vedic tribe that emerged victorious in dasrajna (battle of ten kings) and the name bharatavarsha or bharat for short derives from it.
whichever corner of India a text was written in, it started with a similar declaration.
in some ways it was similar to the greek city states, if an european example helps in your understanding. even though they all had their individual identities and frequently fought savage wars among themselves, there was always the recognition of an overarching hellenic identity.

Rigveda shows the systematic incursion of Aryans into India, The first phase which occupied places up to the Punjab were called ‘Sapta Sindhu’, then they moved further east called it ‘Brahma varta’ and finally upto Bengal and called it ‘Arya vrata’ basically meaning spheres of influence. Aryavarta corresponds to Bharta varsha. Most of the latter parts are mentioned in Puranas which were authored much later.

perhaps not as much as you say (not 50’s and 60’s but earlier) but there is some truth to that. Indian identity was never a melting pot type, it still is not. it is more like a thali where local allegiances maintain their identity but come together to make a whole dish.
ironically, for all the hoopla I hear about how the british united India (the worthies of the India office must be turning in their graves) local identities did become much more prominent in british India, especially among the uneducated. helped in no small measure by segregating the BIA into little regional regiments. national identity became the preserve of the educated who could see through the divide and rule machinations.

these same people however had no problems fighting together in much tougher circumstances in organisations like INA.

Indian identity exists because the Indian state exists not the otherway around. Again read about the regional strifes the country had to face after independence. The British did unite (for their own gain not to help the people) a diverse set of people under the current Geographical area covering India Pakistan and Bangladesh. All of them never shared things in common to be a nation state, throughout their history, and parts of them were never part of Empires of the past.

sure, because I know a bit of european history.
but I do not think it is very similar to India. if I am not wrong it was napoleon who argued for a pan european identity and that was essentially a top down identity. European identity is not yet at the same stage of evolution.

Many of Europe were once part of Rome for example, England and France have more in common than Tamil Nadu & Bihar.

only if you apply thoughts that are clearly modern in origin. national identity is not a new thing, it has only changed its form. it did not emerge out of nowhere in post medieval europe, as some would have it.
a doctor from 1st century CE is still unmistakably a doctor even though he may not wear a stethoscope or know what MRI is.

The idea of national identity in an Indian context is certainly a modern invention, invented by certain nationalists during British rule as a tool to Unite the Areas under British rule against the rulers.

mauryan empire (most of what we identify today as Indian can be traced back to this 4th to 2nd century BCE empire. even the coinage system used right up to british India was a modified version of the mauryan coinage system till it was changed to a decimal system post 1947. this is just one example),
gupta empire, sunga empire, harshavardhan, dharmapala’s empire, rashtrakuta, mughal empire, maratha empire leading on to british India and finally independent India.

Mauryan Empire did not stretch to the far south. The Southern States had friendly relations with the Empire of Asoka that is all.

Gupta Empire again left out much of the South. Sunga did not even have most of the North West and was essentially a North North Eastern Empire, Harsha ruled Central and North India, Palas & Rashtrakutas ruled different parts were at war mostly. Mughals again could not influence parts of the south. Maratha empire was rather limited in scope as many of the chiefs were not interested in expanding geographical area but collecting booty and tributes, and were again defeated by the Afghans so they could not expand further.

So what you have is loose political and certainly very loose cultural entities which under different ages have belonged to rulers ruling from different parts of India from Pataliputra to Agra to Kanauj, even the biggest of these empires did not constitute to all parts of Modern India, Pakistan & Bdesh.

Let me ask you this, During the time of the Imperial Cholas of south India parts of Sri Lanka was conquered as were parts of Indonesia and Indo-China. Are you going to claim these parts too ? As part of the greater Indian identity circus ?

But we digress. Back to aircraft.

Fine.