By “electro-optical pods” are you referring to the ball mounted below the nose?

yup.

KC-46 first flight slips further

US Navy pilots tout Growlers

Paint removal helps Israeli Apaches shed weight

There are various Marks of Dhruv. Mk1, Mk2, Mk3 and Dhruv WSI.
IIRC (Black Archer may know more), Mk3 & Dhruv WSI have EO pods.

Teer, I wasn’t aware of the Dhruv Mk3 having the EO pods..thought those were only on the Rudra gunship variant. Perhaps I wasn’t paying close attention. 🙂

Japan’s new rules don’t allow exports of everything to anyone & everyone. Only NATO members & countries in a similar alliance (i.e. Australia & New Zealand, maybe Singapore) are pretty much unrestricted. Thus, Australia is now at much the same level as the USA as far as Japanese arms exports are concerned, & “even the Aussies’ is therefore inappropriate. I’m afraid they’re ahead of you in the queue. You’d have to change your foreign & military policies considerably to get their status.

The “even the Aussies” wasn’t meant as a snub. As for being ahead in the queue, there is no queue so far. It’s only Australia that is interested in them so far. India hasn’t evinced any interest in the Soryu and if it requires changes to the foreign and military policies to get their “status” then I’m afraid it just won’t fit the bill.

Can someone clarify the state of India’s submarine acquisition programs in light of this recent ToI article?

This seems ass-backward. Surely the aforementioned 7-year delay would increase the case for purchasing at least some units directly from abroad. :confused:

but it won’t satisfy a govt. which wants the maximum amount of defence work to be done within the country. And to pacify them, the IN must have figured out that it could offer up the 2 subs that were to be built at the foreign yard, to the Indian yards.

In the meantime, there have been rumours of a possible hurried purchase of 2 Amurs from Russia directly. That may give them some breathing space. If the GoI agrees to that proposal, they may want all the P-75I boats to be built at Indian yards as a trade-off.

Which brings me to the P-75I program- why isn’t the Soryu a part of the tender? Even the Aussies now seem to be intent on replacing the Collins class subs with the Soryu..

Australia leaning towards buying Soryu class subs

As can be seen from the images below, clearly the Gripen team weren’t able to meet the empty weight goals that were set early in the program..5 years later, they’re nearly 1000 kgs over the initial estimate. Of course, the marketing team back then didn’t call it a target empty weight– rather they just called it the empty weight. The payload for the Gripen E, now with full internal fuel is now 5100 kgs, i.e. 16500-(8000 + 3400). Still respectable, but a full 909 lbs less than what the claim was in 2009.

Swerve, it doesn’t seem to be scope creep. They’re not claiming any new features for the Gripen E that weren’t being claimed in 2009. What it is, is simply reconciling with reality after having set wildly ambitious targets.

So if I were a customer who signed on based on those specs, I’d have every right to be upset- after all my chosen fighter would be now carrying a 1000 kgs less payload than I was assured when I bought it.

But no one did sign on to the Gripen NG program back then- they waited for the Gripen Demo to fly, and for the NG program to attain some level of maturity. And rightly so, since there really are differences between paper specs and reality.

Mind you, I’m not knocking on the Gripen E. I still feel it’s a mighty impressive fighter jet with a host of things going for it and I personally believe that for Brazil, it is the best option.