The other advantage of buying the Super Hornet is deep maintenance can be conducted in America with a relatively short trip and engines could be kept in a common pool with the USN. If an engine needs deep maintenance it is dropped out of the airframe put on a truck and driven over the border and down to the appropriate facility, for Typhoon they would either have to set up a maintenance centre in Canada or fly the aircraft and parts back to Europe.

Maintenance and support personnel familiar with the Hornet and F404 will find the transition to Super Hornet and F414 far easier. All the munitions carried by Hornet right down to the cannon ammunition are common to the Super Hornet. If you are qualified on the Hornet transition to the Super Hornet is easy, here is a quote from Ricardo Traven the chief test pilot for the Super Hornet and an ex RCAF Hornet pilot:

The transition from a Hornet to a Super Hornet is super easy. The way the airplane is laid out, the way you start it and fly it – the man-machine interface part is almost exactly the same. I was on the program before there was a flight manual. I read some tech orders, started it up and went flying, having never been instructed. The transition for anybody qualified in the Hornet is minimal.

Obviously he is going to be biased considering his employment but nevertheless it is a fair consideration. Like Australia it would allow draw down of the older Hornet and be a good transition platform in itself to the F-35 with its newer avionics and AESA radar. A decision can be made later to retire it in favour of F-35 or operate a mixed force like Australia. By buying Super Hornet first they also get the chance to push any F-35 purchase to the right when hopefully costs will have been driven down further.

To reply to JangGoBo first there is no chance that Vietnam would give up some of its new Submarines even for lease to India, Vietnam desperately needs to get those submarines in service themselves.

To reply to Yama, Indian/Russian relations are as such now that I don’t think there is any issue with India leasing some Kilo “as is” rather then in some form of degraded export variant. Any lease of Russian Kilo would most likely be standard variant examples with little to no changes for Indian service.

I must admit that I do ponder about the Iranian F-16 order. If the revolution had happened a bit later once that order was complete what would be the trajectory of the Iranian airforce now. Would so much effort be put into reverse engineering the F-5 whilst they operated the superior F-16, I have a hunch the F-5 would still be in Iranian service but I doubt the Saeqeh would be in existence. What would an Iranian MLU and SLEP of the F-16 look like? Certainly we could look to the recent F-4 upgrade program for an idea, new Chinese cockpit displays, Chinese and Iranian avionic sub systems and Chinese HUD. Possibly the Chinese KLJ-7 which would allow integration of the SD-10. It is an interesting puzzle certainly. The reality is with the current SLEP and upgrade program the F-4 have around ten more years of service in them, the F-14 have been SLEP’d with some returned to service again giving possibly ten years of service. The J-7 have a fairly short airframe life and the Mig-29 can soldier on a bit longer but will in the end become unsafe. The F-1 continuing service is a surprise that again gives them a decade of further use. The Su-24 are solid and popular with the Iranian airforce but how many more years they can be flown has a question mark over it. That leaves the mechanically simple F-5 that in theory an indefinite remaining service life. Looking at all that Iran will hit a serious capability crunch in about a decade with a large number of airframes becoming unsafe. Either they pull back from a serious manned fighter jet equipped airforce or bite the bullet and purchase a new type which as it stands can only be serviced by China.

Fedaykin,

A report in ‘Miltary Technology’ stated that Switzerland was interested and that the aircaft would have been upgraded by Ruag; not sure how acurate this was though.

Came across this –

http://www.defense.gov/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=5108

20 Sidewinder Xs have been ordered.

Doesn’t surprise me the Swiss like the Finnish plan to operate their Hornet for many more years, the Malaysian F/A-18D+ must be very attractive for the Swiss. I could almost see the Finnish and Swiss both bidding on them in competition with the USMC. Then again the US will have on-sale restrictions for those Hornets so the USMC might well have first dibs on them!

A fire in a submarine is bad enough but by the sounds of it the torpedo compartment was caught up in it, the amount of energy contained in there is huge!

here is a yank’s take that both the RN carriers and SSBNs are built for pride.
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2013/07/sinking-entire-navy.html

Well that Yank is entitled to his opinion but I think he is wrong.

I fear thread drift is setting in! Lets leave questions about the Royal Navy to another thread.

new Chinese aircraft carrier under construction. Looks to me like an evolution of the Varyag and my best speculation is that it’ll be a bit bigger.

http://china-defense.blogspot.com/2013/08/identified-under-construction-chinas.html

Hmmmm, apparently according to the Chinese blogosphere that has been around a long time, also it is scaled in a rather odd way. In my opinion it is a proof of concept allowing the yard to practice the techniques needed to build a carrier. The gap for what appears to be a deck edge elevator is very narrow and except for the top right there appears to be no doors or holes for ancillary services. Some on the Chinese blogosphere have said it is a mock up and whilst I could be wrong as could they I doubt this is part of the much talked about indigenous carrier.

P.S. QE class with have planes but operated in a different way, STOVL means you don’t need to permanently attach an airwing to maintain a minimum level of skill.

Thanks for info. I had the impression that England will have carrier but no planes. There is no doubt to my mind that England were/to some extent are masters of the air carrier and ship building art but their skills are rusting or fading away. Modular construction is relative new for India and west is again master in the art. But we are catching up slowly and surely.

The comparison I quoted was clearly an absolute measure, not adjusted for circumstances, which blows your point 1 out of the water. In absolute terms, IAC is (i) taking longer to build by any measure, & much longer by some measures & (ii) a far less ambitious project, being a single carrier, much smaller than QE, while the UK is building two carriers, with the build overlapping.

My point stay relevant for everything. Once again … you can’t construct something if basic material is not present. e.g. Could not import or seller refused to deliver for one or another reason. So, we had to go back and forth, first produce raw material then only start working on a final product. Some unfortunate accidents also delayed timeline. From our point of view, it will be a great achievement for India if IAC can be in service any time before 2020. It is irrelevant for us, if QE or PoW will be flying or not :very_drunk:

I am on high dose as nuclear boat went critical 😀 😀

Even if we allow for accidents that delayed the timeline and count out the time needed to get the steel it is still the case that the IAC is well behind the QE class. I say again the UK has one virtually complete 70’000 ton aircraft carrier with most of its major subsystems already installed sitting in a dry dock and most of the Superblock sections for the second carrier complete and fitted out waiting for the dry dock to be ready for final assembly. In comparison Cochin has one empty shell of a 40’000 ton carrier awaiting significant fit out before it is ready. We are not putting down India or the achievements of its industry just pointing out it is nonsensical to say the IAC is a significant achievement over the QE class when it comes to construction.