Agni-V trials in final configuration to begin early next year

The first of the six flight trials of India’ longest range ballistic missile, Agni-V, in its final quick-reaction configuration, providing a canister-launch capability, will be held in early 2013.

While in Thursday’s successful maiden flight, the three-stage missile blasted off from a rail mobile launcher at Wheeler Island, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has already made a lot of progress to meet the Army’s requirement to provide a canister-based launch from a road mobile vehicle.

With the mission validating the design of Agni-V, the next step is to provide the canister-launch capability, Avinash Chander Chief Controller, R&D, (Missiles and Strategic Systems), DRDO, told The Hindu. Pointing out that canister-launch capability was already demonstrated for 700 km range Shourya missile and BrahMos cruise missile, he said “those technologies will get up-scaled.”

Sukhoi snag hits flight operations in Pune

PUNE: Flight operations from the city’s Lohegaon airport were suspended for four hours on Thursday after a Sukhoi-30 Mk-I fighter jet of the Indian Air Force made an emergency landing on the runway at 9.05 am. At least a thousand passengers were left stranded at the airport.

An official IAF release attributed the emergency landing to a problem in the nose undercarriage of the Su-30 aircraft, which was on a routine flying exercise. No casualty was reported. “The runway was cleared for flight operations at 1 pm,” stated the brief release issued by Flight Lieutenant T Ramesh Kumar, PRO, Air Force Station (AFS), Pune.

DIAT to provide eyes and ears for country’s first armed war bird

In an exclusive interview, DIAT Vice-Chancellor Prahlada said, “Scientists at DIAT are working on development of radars for the UCAV programme currently under way at ADA. The expected timeline for development of a prototype is about a year-and-a- half from now. The radar will provide C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capability to the aircraft. Research is on on development of lightweight radars to reduce weight of the aircraft, save maximum energy and provide realtime feedback to the control centre,” said Prahlada.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/navy-could-retire-ins-viraat/939601/0

Navy could retire INS Viraat

It has been in service for over 50 years and now INS Viraat, the lone aircraft carrier operated by the Indian Navy, could be on its last legs with the Navy undertaking a detailed survey to determine when to decommission the warship.

Anyhow, seems like the speculations about the range being more than what is being disclosed are right.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/243544/agni-v-can-launch-mini.html

The DRDO chief, however, refused to disclose Agni V’s actual range. “It is more than 5,000 km. I cannot give you the exact range. That’s classified,” he said. Asked whether Agni V could be described as an inter-continental ballistic missile, Saraswat said he would prefer to describe it as a long-range ballistic missile.

http://tarmak007.blogspot.in/2012/04/frrb-clears-np-1-for-first-flight-one.html

Bangalore: The naval variant (NP-1) of India’s Light Combat Aircraft is ready. Having missed many deadlines like its air force avatar – Tejas, sources now confirm to Express that the Flight Readiness Review Board (FRRB) has cleared NP-1 for first flight. Rolled out on July 6, 2010 amidst cinematic settings and blessed by defence minister A K Antony, the NP-1 ran into a spate of technological challenges. As this piece goes live, the total systems onboard NP-1 have completed fault-free tests on Iron Bird – ahead of the possible maiden flight.

Denied flight certification twice, third time lucky ?

No but they say that the Gripen or F 16 was good enough for the purpose and instead IAF spent this much more on the Rafale. Just such an allegation will be disastrous for the MRCA.

If the IAF were smart enough to set the benchmarks, then no.

Interesting theory.
However that doesn’t say much. The IAF was the lobby pushing for the Rafale? And?
There were many other lobbies: Finance (lowest price), diplomacy (more good friends in the world), politic (take the best for PR purpose), …

So even if the IAF pushed for the Rafale from the start, something I can also suspect actually, the IAF was just one lobby between many others and played with its leverage, i-e: hightlight technical capabilities, A to G and AESA need…
… and pitch the Eurofighter against the Rafale for the final 😀

That’s the substance of this theory.

I wouldn’t call it lobbying. Its a case of tweaking the playing field so that only their favourites make through. Its necessary to do this because some day in the future some accountant will come up and say “hey, the f-16 does everything these two do and costs a third less !!”, so it becomes necessary to shoot down anything you don’t want.