E-2c is very much required if the carrier has to operate far away from the shores. phalcon can’t follow it around the sea. Ka-31 can only act as a defensive system with limited capabilities.

No he is just a chinese who can’t comprehend that the Mig-29 is a better plane than the crappy J-10 and FC-1. It is quiet evident from his posts.

Jonsey, you forget how the Indian MOD works. The russians had offered the ship in 1994. It was finally signed in 2003-2004. I am not sure the Bazan ships would have come for $ 400 mil in 2004. I am really not a big fan of Rafale for carrier ops. Its range is not that great and with huge drop tanks I am not sure how agile or stealthy it will be in flight.

Secondly the idea was always to be able to construct carrier at home. Buying from bazan does not help one bit. Not to mention the hassle of dealing with spain, france, US and norway if NSM is required. The french can offer scalp but meteor is still not developed. The advantage with gorky was everything required was available from russia, from AAM’s to AShM’s. When Gorky was being negotiated did IN have an option of E-2 or Catapults from US? So these are Moot points. I agree in Future IN better try to get these items but since gorky is comming in 2008, I am waiting to see what its final complement will be like.

Yet, surprisingly the russian ships in IN and PLAN seem to be doing very well.

The sagarika is slated for first test flight in 2007. That would still give a couple of years for it to be fittesd on ATV.

Broncho,

Yep Ocean was built to Civilian rules but she’s serving quite nicely, after some initial issues!, thankyou very much and the fact remains this ‘free gift’ of an aircraft carrier is actually turning out to be a little pricey!.

We all know what free means don’t we? There are no free lunches in this world.

I’d stack Sea Eagle up against Kh-35 any day of the week and aren’t the Indian Sea Harriers the same ones that gave a bunch of Aeronavale Rafales a bit of a pasting in WVR a wee while ago?.

Thats your opinion. IN certainly does not think so. KH-35 is considered superior to sea eagle. Thats why IN is replacing the sea eagles with KH-35. WVR has nothing to do with sea eagle and harrier is a very limited platform. In order to have any sort of decent range they need to carry 2 drop tanks leaving only 3 hardpoints for missiles. Harrier can only carry 2 sea eagle while mig-29 K can carry 4 Kh-35 or Kh-31. The elta/derby combo can only do so much for harriers.

Either way, its indisputeable that the MiG is the more powerful aircraft of the two. As stated though all this really means is that its a bit better at performing the local BARCAP and it has a bit more range when tooling uselessly over the sea on SURCAP missions. Gorshkov will do Viraat’s missions better than Viraat I am sure….but no more than that and for the money spent I dont think thats good enough!.

I agree the gorky or ADS only seems to do viraats job much better than viraat. It is still not good enough to do any sort of force projection. 30 odd ac complement without E-2’s is not good enough for any sort of force projection.

Even in the links you showed bharateeyan the radar does have 360 degree coverage though coverage at 6 and 12 O’clock is poor.

Big whooptie do…So the chinese finally learnt how to operate subs??
Whats the big deal with this event? This is nothing new, IN’s Foxtrot class shadowed the Big-E carrier group in 1971. The russians and yanks have been playing this cat and mouse game for decades now. Japan, Australia, sweden, singapore all operate very good subs which can do the same if not better.