Russians know Chinese will get there with Engline tech as well. So they are making profit while they can selling the Chinese engines.

and whomever has the most left-over A/Cs “wins”?

Russians. Su 35 gets big export boost 🙂

Some people argued here before that the Eurocanards stand a great chance if ever they face an F 35 in combat.

Now to change the topic slightly, how do you think both or either would fare against a Chinese J-20, which according to many might be sacrificing maneuverability for speed and weapons load.

Might help change the discussion away from the Rafale vs Typhoon trend.

Alliances of the Air
Shashi Tharoor

Very good article.

U.S. asked India for more data on fighter setback

(Reuters) – India has agreed to provide the United States with more information about its decision last week to drop two U.S. defence companies from an $11 billion fighter competition, a top U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro reiterated the U.S. government’s deep disappointment about India’s decision, but he said Washington was still pursuing other defence sales with India that could strengthen ties between the two countries.

“Going forward, it’s important to recognize that we have a number of sales either in the pipeline or to be considered that will enable us to continue to build the defence trade relationship,” Shapiro told a group of business executives who are advising the State Department on export control reforms.

“Our strategic relationship is far greater than any one sale,” he said

Yes. The radar capability and situational awareness of the F-16 will be enormously improved over what it is now. Would I prefer simultaneously ground and air scanning, increased situational awareness, improved resistance to ECM and a greater degree of offensive EW capability over incrementally improved roll rates, AoA and acceleration? Damn right…

Yes against Indian Mirage 2000s/29 UPGs may be, not agains the Su 30 MKIs or MRCAs. Also as the SABR and RACR are limited by the lower thrust Block 50/52 engines its unlikely to have the detection range of an APG 80.

I should hope so. A $10b fighter project shouldn’t have anything less, though I note it wasn’t so long ago that the Eurofighter consortium didn’t seem to think it such a big deal, until they had to have theirs ready of course…

Many Typhoon fans here have written that part of it was becuase the Mechanical Array in the Typhoon offered wider scanning angles, and hence it was concieved as an Air superiority platform, the main benefit of the AESA (simultaneous A2A and A2G tracking) was not that important.

Both SABR and RACR claim to be lighter weight than the APG-68 and look up what Have Glass means sometime. You might be surprised. Basically if you’re seeing an F-16 with a gold tinged canopy, you’re seeing an F-16 with LO mods…

It seems awfully convenient how important the size of your personally preferred fighter is…

For Typhoon which has the basic nose geometry to carry a reasonably large radar antenna, it’s desperately important, but for the Rafale, nah, doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the software and processing power in the back end and the small front on profile of the aircraft itself whch matters most…

RAM coatings can only take you so far, if not we will not be seeing RCS reduciton measures built into all newer fighters. My personally prefered fighter did not make the MRCA cut.

Hmm. What do you know? Thought it was all about who had the largest radar array a few minutes ago…

Rafle might well have the better IR missile (might) but then the radar guided BVR missile is the primary A2A weapon even for the Rafale, as evidenced by the Meteor integration. So which is it too be? Is radar size and long ranged missiles more imprtant or is passive tracking and IR guided weapons, which will still require mid-course guidance and updates from an actively transmitting data-link for any real BVR shots?

Now the array doesn’t matter and it’s all about LO RCS passive detection and the rest of it…

Thats because for the Typhoon the Large Array is its Asset for Rafale its EW suite and Passive attack capabilites.

Different approaches to the same problem, in anyay superior to an MLU(d) F 16.

While there is discussion that the RBE 2 AA may have a lower detection range compared to the APG 80 thats compensated by the fact that Rafale has a lower RCS, moreover whether the lower thrust F 16s have the power to afford a radar of similar performance to APG 80 remains to be seen.

By the time PAF is not bankrupt and gets all these planned upgrades IAF MKIs will have AESA, Rafales may have cheek arrays (if selected) etc.

Any AMRAAM? Better at what exactly? Yes the Meteor probably has a slightly improved NEZ than the AIM-120B/C5 AMRAAM variant that currently equips the Eurofighter, but of course superior models to that already exist and that missile doesn’t equip the PAF F-16’s anyway. C7 variants do and improvement over that operated by any Eurofighter user and of course further increasingly capable variants are in development.

Meteor itself hasn’t even finished it’s own testing. Improved AMRAAM variants are not very far behind Meteor, nor is the eventual replacement for the AMRAAM itself all that far away. However this is very much the “arms v armour” type debate and is predicated upon development timelines. Neither the Eurofighter or Rafale has a BVR missile as capable as the PAF C7 AMRAAM today. Meteor will best AMRAAM and then their next generation missile is likely to skip ahead of Meteor and so on.

However you clearly missed the point of the systems approach to warfare, so I doubt I’ll continue this chest beating exercise much further…

First of all PAF has C-5 AMRAAMS.

Secondly a perspective Indian Typhoon will always detect the PAF Falcon first AESA or no AESA.

The advantage of the Meteor over the AMRAAM is its use of a ramjet engine rather than a rocket engine, this gives it greater kill range and much higher terminal velocity.
This advantage it will hold over every AMRAAM till the U.S get something with Ramjet powered propulsion.

And seeing that the U.S only cleared C-5 for PAF and was offering C-7 for IAF, it will be a long time before any such missile is offered to the PAF. Meteor on the otherhand is on offer to the IAF with the MRCA.

The Chinese will be offering better missiles to the PAF than the AMRAAM in the Medium to Long term, so it makes sense for them to invest on J-10B J-11/Silent Flanker variants than spending their limtied budget on upgraidng Block 52s.

Ah, now you’re starting to think beyond 1 v 1 air to air combat and have come with another possible way to defeat an enemy air force. Excellent. Now we are starting to get somewhere. However what is it exactly that prevents an F-16 Block 52+ from launching a SLAM-ER, JASSM, JSOW etc from a safe distance and thus destroying the Eurofighter/Rafale base from a safe distance?

Well several things preventing such a scenario.

1. JASSM will not be offered to the PAF in all probablity.

2. JSOW/SLAM-ER are far inferior in capability even compared with a reduced range Storm Shadow.

Scary for someone who thinks that warfare is all about who has the fastest and the mostest. It isn’t. It’s about who can concentrate the fastest and the mostest at the time and place needed. Who is allowed to employ the fastest and the mostest at the time needed, who can continue to generate the fastest and the mostest, when the realities of combat start to take their toll (and that doesn’t just mean destruction by kinetic effects, it refers to tempo of operations) and so on.

Attempting to break warfare down to which aircraft radar antenna has 1000 TR modules and which has 1200 and which missile can fly 100k’s and which can fly 120k’s shows the limitations in understanding of the writer, not the limitations in a particular force.

The PAF better trained rumor was started by the west when they were in the Pakistani camp in the past. But as the Americans, French and British have found out in recent exercises the IAF is just as well trained, so what makes you think the PAF will have an advantage in being the fastest to respond etc.

I would hold both Airforces training and skill level to be the same.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Again you’re showing a lack of understanding about warfare as opposed to aircraft statistics. My advice wouod be to stick to winning the arguments about aircraft statistics… Thinking that a force structured and equipped as the PAF is doing (and as my name suggests, I’m not a local suffering from an overly developed sense of nationalistic pride in this debate) does not provide a “credible resistance” shows you truly are “out-gunned” in this matter…

Meanwhile the IAF is adding further sharpness to its attacking teeth as well. If anything the IAFs hand is getting stronger.

Non BVR capable F 16s vs BVR capable Mirages and MIG 29s in the past,

Now Higher number of superior BVR platforms against a few BVR capable F 16s.

SAR was used during the Andhra Pradesh Chief Ministers choper crash as well.