The thing is this. You can buy twin engined. You CAN also maintain it. But, it comes down at how you distribute funding inside your armed forces. For example, if you buy something that requires 2 or 3 times the maintenance cost of a Gripen, you can divert the money there, but it will be money that you will cut from elsewhere (navy? army?).
At the end, is about administrating your funds. My opinion, which i have said before, is that IAF has too many aircraft types to have them doing overlapping missions and with overlapping abilities. You must see for the MMRCA WHAT is the sector that you miss something and thus need to fill a gap and buy for that role the most cost-effective solution. This is how an airforce with diverse aircraft types, can transform the financial loss into an advantage. For example, if you think you lack in A-A, buy more PAK-FA, no reason to buy for MMRCA something that will be better in A-A.
This, because you have an arms race against China, who is spending more than you. So, having more aircraft types, is costly. But can give operational gains, if they cover better different roles. If you buy many aircraft types that more or less do the same things at the same level of proficiency, IMHO you ‘re wasting your money. Maybe your airforce will be OK, but it’s money that you will cut from some navy or land system.
In 2 words, there are 2 ways to go: a) Point to uniformity of the fleet. Few aircraft types, that like it or not will have to do everything, b) Point to multipe aircraft types, which will cost more, but, if used wisely each to its strong point, will pay off in operational gains. But, if you just buy many types, overlapping, with the most expensive choices out there, you ‘re doing wrongly both a) and b) and the only result, is that in the long run the Chinese invest their money more efficiently.
Aspis, with all due respect, the Greek financial crisis seems to make you think that the same financial crunch is affecting India too or is about to hit soon.
That is not the case. India spends only around 2.5% of its GDP on defence and even out of that, a very big percentage of capital expenditure gets returned at the end of the year since the bureaucracy means that money meant to be spent doesn’t get spent. India can afford to both acquire and fly 126 twin seat fighters. It will be cheaper to acquire and fly 126 single seaters but really, money is NOT the biggest problem for India.
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