1980s technology in 2012?

such as?

India to train Indonesian Sukhoi pilots and HAL will likely get a maintenance contract to support their Sukhoi fleet
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In a move that will significantly shore up bilateral military ties, India has agreed to train and support the Indonesian Air Force in operating its fleet of Russian Sukhoi fighter jets. It will shortly send a high-level team to work out the details of a support package.

While India had a similar agreement with Malaysia that also operates the fighter jets, the decision to cooperate in training, technical help and spares support with Indonesia has been taken during the ongoing visit of Defence Minister A K Antony to Jakarta.

The Indonesian Air Force currently operates both the Su 27 and Su 30 fighters and will eventually have 16 of them in service, if more orders are not placed.

In the past, Jakarta has had a pact with China to train its pilots and provide technical support for the fighter fleet.

Given that India also operates the fighters and will have one of the largest fleets in service once all the 272 jets enter service, Jakarta has been interested in seeking New Delhi’s assistance for technical support and training.

In his interaction with top Indonesian officials in which the issue came up, Antony has said that a “high-level Indian Air Force team would be sent to finalise details of training and spares support package”. The team, Antony conveyed, will be sent across “once the Indonesian Air Force firms up its requirements”.

While the details will be worked out, the package is likely to involve a maintenance contract for the aircraft to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), which is producing and maintaining the Indian fleet of the fighters. In 2007, India had embarked on a similar deal with Malaysia to train its pilots and weapon operators on their Su 30 MKMs.

Besides the Air Force cooperation, India and Indonesia deliberated on several issues of mutual interest and decided to “significantly enhance their defence cooperation”, a defence ministry spokesperson said. “The two sides exchanged views on issues relating to regional and global security, bilateral exercises involving Services, training, co-production of defence equipment and ammunitions and visits at high levels,” Defence Ministry spokesperson Sitanshu Kar said.

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Last week at Stans, 11 October, the first PC 7 Mk II for the India Air Force (P 101, sn 690, temporarily registered as HB-HCA) was airborne. See some pictures on flickr.com, “PC 7 MK II”. Kind regards, Stephan

thank you.

HAL, UAC and MTAL sign design contract for the Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA). Finally things are moving after years of stalling.

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Contract inked with UAC-TA of Russia and joint venture partner MTAL

The $600-million Indo-Russian military transport aircraft project, the Multirole Transport Aircraft (MTA), moved a significant step forward, with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and its two partners signing the initial design phase contract in New Delhi on Friday.

The agreement comes ahead of the state visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin, beginning on October 31.

The Bangalore-based HAL inked the contract with the United Aircraft Corporation-Transport Aircraft (UAC-TA) of Russia, and their 50:50 joint venture partner, Multirole Transport Aircraft Ltd (MTAL). The three signed the earlier general contract in May this year.

The MTA, when developed, will have ready market for 205 aircraft — 45 for the Indian Air Force, 100 for the Russian Air Force, and 60 more for exporting to friendly countries.

The 15-20-tonne aircraft is meant to transport troops and cargo, paradrop or air drop supplies, including ‘low-altitude parachute extraction system’.

It will be developed by HAL, UAC and the Russian Defence export arm, Rosoboronexport, through MTAL.

“HAL and UAC-TA will start the initial design work immediately in Moscow. A HAL design team, consisting of 30 designers, will be positioned at UAC-TA,” an HAL release said, citing HAL’s Chairman R.K. Tyagi, who was present at the signing event.

The 10-month initial design phase will be followed by a Detailed Design Phase contract (DDP), when the design of the plane will be finalised.

Initiated in November 2007, the MTA project is meant to make the country self-reliant in the design, development and production of transport aircraft of this dimension, and the experience required to manage a large number of global suppliers, he said.

The latest contract was signed by T. Suvarnaraju, HAL’s Director (Design and Development), and S. Velmozhkin, General Director, UAC-TA.

HAL said its Aircraft R&D Centre in Bangalore would be the design & development entity. Its Transport Aircraft Division in Kanpur will manufacture the prototypes and planes with support from the rest of the divisions. Dedicated facilities are being set up in Kanpur, it said.

the TAD in Kanpur is the facility that built the Do-228 and HS-748s for the IAF and all other customers. So it makes sense that the same facility will build the MTA as well.

Gripen Demo @ Axalp 2012:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbp6JlBpDjs

Other Gripen Demo @ Emmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkcuymvgx-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd6Q33zunRY

very elegant looking aircraft without a doubt.

More like the 57 became 71.
Its quite good, uprated engines, glass cockpit, weather radar, chaff, flares, extra armor around critical areas, NVG compatible with Gen3NVGs, has a waypoint nav system with autopilot, airconditioning.
Overall, brings the familiar ruggedness of the Mi-17 series which IAF is used to, with some useful new technology insertions.
With ALH and Mi-17V5, the IAF Heli fleet is definitely on a good upgrade.
We should get some IFR capable, really long range heavies as well, such as the Ch-53s, those would help for long range Special Op missions.

Interesting to see how secretive the IAF is about the Super-30 MKI upgrade, they are not releasing any info at all. Though, we do have info gathered from assorted organization reports, development programs.

yes I too later thought that they may be simply increasing the buy from 57 to 71..

Saw that program on NDTV where the Mi-17V5 was shown with all the goodies and the pilots had good things to say about it. the NVG operations were a first for me- I’d never seen it shown in any video for the IAF before. For the price, its a good piece of equipment.

The Qatari Mirages should have come down in price since India rejected them. They’ve got quite a few more hours on ’em now. I doubt they’ll be cheap (well looked after, not too many hours, & offered with a good stock of spares & weapons), but I think it should be possible to get them for a fair price.

I think the problem when India & Qatar negotiated was that the Indian attitude was “They’re secondhand so they should be cheap”, & the Qataris were put off by what they saw as an unrealistically low price offered by India for prime aircraft with low hours.

From what I heard, the Indian offer also assumed that as-new stored spares & weapons would also be sold at a substantial discount, & the Qataris expected to get almost new prices for them.

In hindsight, that was a missed opportunity for the IAF. The price that would’ve been paid for those 11 Mirage-2000-5s and their munitions and spares, would be approximately the same that the IAF is now paying to upgrade their Mirage-2000H/THs to the Mirage-2000-5 Mk2 level.

Had the MoD offered a more realistic price and negotiated further, the IAF could’ve possibly raised a 4th Mirage squadron or padded up the numbers for the No.9 Wolfpack squadron. I suspect the price of the brand new Su-30MKI being close to what Qatar expected for used Mirage-2000-5s is what drove the MoD to offer a much lower price.

One of the problems may be how different countries calculate depreciation of an asset. This is not an uncommon problem and even in the civil aviation field, this can sometimes be a problematic issue.