HAL’s test pilot Wg Cdr (retd) Unni Pillai, GM (Rotary wing), giving Thai pilots a walk around of Dhruv at U-Tapao, Royal Thai Navy Airfield.

Inside the cockpit.

Having no issues with the new layout.

Tejas Mk1 is an advance on MiG-21. Rather than risking getting into a situation where Rafale/Tejas Mk2 is late and needing to extend the life of MiG-21 aircraft, why not double Tejas Mk1 production? It’s a cheap insurance policy.

The double of zero is still zero 😉
But year, the latest report is that a sustainable rate of 16 Tejas will me achieved. Which means circa 2019-2020, HAL would be pumping out 32 aircraft annually. Had the procurement been not retarded and had Tejas been on time, that rate of production would have been achieved in 2016-2017 phase.

Update on ABM shield.

Saraswat, who has just been awarded the country’s third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, said that DRDO had been able to develop key RF (radio frequency) seeker technologies for missiles in cooperation with Russia, and that in the last missile test, the seeker used was made in India. Digital processing in any case is based on DRDO’s own software.

Without the seekers, a missile would be an aimless vehicle.

The RF and IR (infra red) seekers (?) are meant for proximity and precision engagement of targets, and both these technologies are required for the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) capability as well as all kinds of missiles. Saraswat did not give details but said that India also was working on seeker technologies with other countries. (who?)

As for an ABM shield, he said that DRDO had conducted four endo-atmospheric (within the atmosphere) and two exo-atmosphere (outside the atmosphere) missile interception tests and that all six had been successful. “We certainly need more tests but we can say we have been successful in developing this capability.”

The last one, designated Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile, and fired on November 23, was in fact a hit-to-kill test.

So far, DRDO has mostly been working on proximity, near-miss or zero-miss acquisition of targets. With these systems, an ABM missile blows itself up some nine metres from its targets. From now on, the effort will be to develop the hit-to-kill capability by directly impacting hostile targets.

http://india.nydailynews.com/business/ea2946ef54022f3d3eb2bf28a133a459/drdo-fires-on-towards-mirv-capability-with-image

IR seeker possibly under development with another nation. AAD has been confirmed as a hit to kill interceptor now.

F-15 with IRST

New air to air missile on F-2.
[IMG]http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss245/T-O-R-A/JSDF%20various%20photo…

Hey Don Chan, any info on the new Japanese AtoA missile with an AESA seeker ?

] missile with an AESA seeker ?

This?

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?headLine=Japan%27s%20Air-to-Air%20Upgrade&storyID=news/awst/2012/02/27/AW_02_27_2012_p27-428848.xml

“Japan’s Air-to-Air Upgrade

Japan already has bought Raytheon AIM-120 Amraams, so why is it spending ¥36 billion ($468 million) to upgrade about 60 F-2 fighters with the Mitsubishi Electric Corp. AAM-4B missile?”

Looks pretty much like Meteor, but with an AESA seeker.

With the advent of 5th Generation Stealth Fighters. Will AWACS Type Aircraft be able to survive???

Look at the number of countries investing heavily in bi static radar research. Couple that with greater processing power and in a decade or so, the odds won’t look as skewed as they look today.