Yet China now basically can carries out basically everything military projects the US can afford to carry, with only 1/6 of the military spending of USA now and only 1/3 of the military spending-to-GDP rate comparing to USA.

With an economy that is about to surpass USA in absoultely GDP number soon, you can see why more senior and smarter USA military/civil leaders are not very optimstic about the coming arms race with China.:diablo::diablo::diablo:

The issue is, that China has some real biggies to compete with. Sure, if this double digit growth continues, China will be able to overtake US, US + Japan, maybe, US + Japan + India (only if India and Japan really screw up for the next couple of decades), US+Japan+India+EU, very unlikely. You are seriously underestimating the level of cooperation rest of the world has with each other. Almost half of the US allies pitched in to make JSF possible. If France wouldn’t have seperated from Eurofighter project, it really would have been the eurofighter. Look at NEURON ucav project. Aegis destroyer cooperation between US and Japan. Pak-Fa between India and Russia. These are just the big ticket items, cooperation extends from stealth fighters , guided munitions, takns, artillery, information systems to the smaller items like better fabrics, battlefield medical procedures, better boots and even kevlar underwear. If you look at it in a proper way, China has already lost the arms race before it even started.

But of cause, the less informed, simplier minded people can continously to prefer to live comfortably in a fool’s paradise as long as they want:diablo::diablo::diablo:

you might want to reconsider what you said.

Aircraft are designed by people not countries you know. The people who designed the great soviet fighters of old are no long around. The current crop of Russian designers have done nothing but come up with endless mods and re-hashes of existing designs before the PAKFA.

The current generation of Chinese designers working on the J20 have the J10 and JF17 under their belts. Both of which showed far greater ingenuity and innovation.

Its hard to bring out new designs when your economy is down the gutter and the only way your aerospace companies manage to survive is because of rapid expansion of two of your biggest customers. To be fair, all the later model fourth gens are endless mods and rehashes of existing designs, because the designs are good enough, can accommodate better avionics and powerful engines.

PS : I think it was just last month that PRC publicly unveiled a bird which was more or less a mod an rehash of a legacy soviet era naval design, displaying minimal ingenuity or innovation. Its funny, I have trouble recalling it, can you help me with it ? :diablo:

Here is a photo makes me feel funny

Cockpit of J-20?

J-20 cockpit even has a mouse :p (look at the second pic, close to the stick)

The Bars already has great performance, allowing for the Flanker-H to get the first look advantage despite the large RCS of an untreated Flanker operating even without jamming.

Operating in training mode in Red Flag, the Flankers racked up good scores at Red Flag-08, despite presence of heavy jamming.

At Indradhanush, earlier against Tornado F3s, the Flankers held their own & more. The RAF Force Commander referred to his aircraft as X Wing tech as versus the Flanker H which he said was death star tech. Again, the IAF operated the Bars with reduced number of modes.

Against the RSAF, the MKIs won all engagements against RSAF F-16 Block 50/52s, even while the F-16s were on an even keel versus the Mirage 2000 & MiG-29 both non upgraded, but superior to the Bisons (this worried the IAF a bit which set out to evaluate, improve its Bison’s tactics)

Against the French in Garuda (the latest), the French noted the Bars had excellent range and gave IAF pilots the first look advantage (to which they too employed countermeasures).

My point is that a Bars with an AESA antenna, with improved transmission power (having increased average power & reduced losses in the Tx channel common to conventional TWT radars), plus LPI modes (possible if the Flanker radar is a derivative of the NIIP radar developed for the PAK.FA), and the huge 1 Mtr array advantage, will make the Flanker-H dominant in the first look arena.

Add some RCS reduction which India already has access to via the LCA & other programs – i.e. treated canopies, RCS paint etc & some Russian assistance (e.g. ITAE methods) – and the Flanker will improve even further.
Will probably be not used at peacetime to save on operational costys.

The Super30 upgrade per reports will also come with improved avionics including improved EW fit. If we see the current MiG-29 EW upgrade, improved jammers are also possible. Data fusion is also something conceived as part of the upgrade. The R118 RWR used on current Flankers already fuses data & presents it on a single screen. The Russians are also sensor fusing the data on the Su-35.

One critical “weakness” in the Flanker arsenal is the lack of a real long range BVR missile. The RVV-AE & RVV-SD are only 80-100 km class missiles, with actual range likely to be halved against maneuvering fighter class targets. Thats a significant advantage (presence of a long range radar like Bars, or even a Bars follow on) wasted. The Astra1 & 2 will still be in the RVV-AE/SD class. India needs a Meteor class missile to truly make use of the Flanker radar advantage.

Until then, the Meteor equipped EF & Rafale may have the edge.

Great post Teer (except that nobody really wins in DACT). There seem to be a great deal of rumors around the super 30 upgrade, if we go by them then Mki’s are going to get:
1. Upgrades in radar processor followed by AESA array and cooling systems (in other words a new radar)
2. New Engines, most likely an even further developed version of object 117s, as a part of MLU.
3. Airframe strengthening on 40 airframes (and the last batch of 40 to be delivered in 2016 to come out as per super 30 standards) for Brahmos and Nirbhay
4. Enhanced mission computers and a Su-35/Pak-Fa type sensor fusion suite.
5. New helmet mounted displays from Pak-Fa program
6. Newer jammers and ECM pods(most likely latest Israeli stuff)

I mean seriously, if all of it is true, then its gonna cost a lot of money, something like 20 mil per airframe (and there is gonna be 270 of them)

That table appears to show the costs are from 2000, thus not represent for virtually any of the contenders now. Gripen NG didn’t exist back then, not even on paper.;)

@PELICANO

That’s an interesting question, I could well imagine that the IAF will purchase the Meteor and will supplant it with the ASTRA instead of MICA EM or AMRAAM (depending on which platform is chosen). Would make sense for me at least.

It’s already quite confusing how many weapons they will operate. R-73 for its Russian fighters, ASRAAM for the Jaguar if I’m not mistaken and Python 5 for the Tejas. So will they introduce another SRAAM with the MMRCA?

The same is true for the BVR department where they have R-27 and R-77 for the Russian fighters, Derby for the Tejas, ASTRA for possibly most of the IAF’s fighters and probably at least one additional BVR AAM for the MMRCA (I think Meteor is most likely here).

IMO they chose derby for Tejas as the radar on it is pretty much still El-2032. They are already using derby on Sea Harriers with EL-2032, so its the best stop gap solution till Astra-1 comes online. Now Astra-1 will be pretty much the standard missile from now on, on every fighter, starting with Mki and M2k, followed by Tejas and Mig-29 and later MMRCA. METEOR is a different game altogether, it is definitely going to be there on MMRCA but do Tejas and M2k have the required datalinks ?

Now the Russians are letting Indians integrate Astra on their planes…hmmm…. now the fanboy in me wants to see a METEOR on Mki :p

Probably won’t happen, but it seems to be the perfect armament for aircrafts with massive radars (F-22, F-15, Flankers), flying solo on air patrol without AWACS:cool:

I really don’t see what all the hooplah is all about.

J-15 and the fact that it is a “reworked from scratch” Su-33

Not sure if anybody picked up on this but the Indian Navy has indefinitely postponed any further Aircraft Carriers after the current two. So it looks like the Indian Navy will stick with its Stobar Mig-29K’s for some time. The possible Naval aspect of MMRCA has probably now disappeared

If they would have gone for naval version of MMRCA aircraft, they would have had 4 aircrafts types (post 2025) with less than 1/8th no of airframes of IAF which would have had 5 types (post 2025).

When IP infringement becomes a part of national DNA

Well, No,
My point is that even if you give somebody a su-33, (or superhornet for that matter) it doesn’t mean they can make a copy. you can copy it metal by metal part and the whole thing still comes out falling apart.
This is the nature of this business.

They can. Even Iran did that with F-5 to make Saeqeh . As far as I can tell, Saeqeh has new structure, flight controls, and new avionics package. To design a new flight control, they had to have good aero- and structure data. Americans as far as I knew never sold any thing like that to Iranians. They had to stick this thing in Wind tunnels and in CFDs and rework it from pretty much ground up.

To call Iranians cheats, 2 bit IP criminals, petty data thieves and copycats is pretty much western propaganda against the hard work involved in glorious make believe indigenous research, and it betrays some of commentator’s utter lack of experience in aeronautic industry.