Equipment installed on Russian jets supplied to China won’t be illegally replicated

So it’ll be legally replicated then? 😀

I get your point that the market for new F-16 looks to have been satisfied so it is likely no export orders would be received for Indian-built aircraft. Gripen E, however, looks promising in terms of some export demand. Choosing to make Gripen in India would give the opportunity to set up an alternative supplier to HAL with the big advantage of that supplier not being state-controlled. GOI may not be interested in exporting fast jets but the management of a company seeing potential profit from such an activity should be. Why would you not want to make more money out of the product you manufacture by extending your client base, given the chance to do so?

Exports are still likely IF the F-16 can be kept viable and affordable into the next decade. You forget how Saab wants to keep the Gripen C/D in production just so that it can meet that demand which exists from nations that will not be able to get F-35s for various reasons and for those smaller 3rd tier nations that simply cannot afford to buy F-35s, forget Rafale or Typhoon.

There are some nations that are deferring big ticket purchases by going in for second hand F-16s today. But those stop-gap solutions will last 15 years or so and then eventually will require replacement. Fact is, fighter acquisition costs too high with the high end 4th gen European solutions and the alternate US solution, the F-35 has technology sharing issues that may restrict its sales. And if you basically need a squadron or two to just be able to maintain a deterrant, these may be too complex and costly to operate and maintain. That market will see the J-10B, JF-17 and Gripen C/D as possible alternatives, but if a F-16 variant is available, it will be an attractive solution.

They have never attempted to export even Su-30MKI which they have already (more-or-less) mastered, why the sudden rush to export Gripens? :confused:

There is a big difference here- the Su-30MKI project entailed local assembly for the IAF’s needs and there was no export even considered and hence not be permitted in the contract. With the current govt.’s ‘Make In India’ dispensation, they want to set up a private aerospace sector and in order to be able to justify the investment, exports become necessary and permission to do so, to mutually acceptable states, will be inked into the contract.

Kind of like why Saab and Dassault and all other private aerospace firms chase exports while Public Sector Enterprises like HAL are more than happy with the one captive customer they have. Because private firms want profits, whereas govt. firms are not so fixated on that.

Problem with HAL is that as they do everything from rough materails, they did not build an ecossystem of smaller more specialized around them.

The problem is not just thanks to HAL- it has to do more with the way the whole system worked. Which supplier was going to make the investment required into making specialized parts when the investment on local products was so measly and so much effort was required for certification and QC? How could anyone justify that unless there were more follow on local programs where the investment in infrastructure for these private suppliers could be recouped.

To some degree that is being redressed now, with HAL farming out work packages on the Tejas for its wings, fins and fuselage assemblies to private companies like L&T, TASL and another one whose name I can’t remember now.

Airshow China- Despite J-20 debut, new fighters keep low profile

No, there nothing surprising or magic. The MII propose by Dassault is in fact Dassault will build the Rafale in India, not HAL. The experience and tooling is the Dassault one. That was not possible to achieve with HAL, they refused the tooling and the quality control… what a joke. Anyway the joint venture with Reliance will allow that, and actually was made for this specific purpose.

Oh that’s what Dassault claims that they want to do, but it is difficult to believe if you know anything about aerospace in India.

Its BS, all this talk about HAL not being able to meet quality control or whatever. Their facilities look like straight from the socialist era from outside, but inside, they have all the tooling and importantly, all the experience. After all they build and maintain a vast portion of what the IAF has flown since 6 decades. And if they can build Su-30MKIs from scratch, then they could manage to scale up and build Rafales as well.

With Reliance Aerospace (which hasn’t assembled a glider to date), what we’ll get is CKDs and SKDs from Merignac that they’ll simply assemble in India. Modern facilities can be setup, but you’ll have inexperienced people working inside, except those poached from HAL. Without poaching every possible HAL employee, there just isn’t the trained manpower available for this JV. If I were Dassault, I would very wary of offering guarantees that a Rafale would roll out of THAT JV’s facility in a specific timeframe. Not unless Dassault basically moved engineers from Merignac and deputed them to the Nagpur plant for 5-6 years.

As I recall, in the end it is the MOD that reported a factor of 2.5 more man hours required with HAL setup. MMRCA setup and layout was its downfall, as it prevented any JV or even long term business plan, beyond the deal itself with the main contractor, to allow ROI on pricey equipment. This resulted in severe incongruities in meeting the level of guarantees and quality needed for Dassault to endorse liability. From that perspective the JV with reliance for wings manufacture appeared more appropriate, permitting ROI on both investment and offsets. One need to remember that Dassault was and still is genuinely looking for alternate supply chain outside of Europe as volume wise, Dassault cannot compete over Airbus and Boeing growing demands to attract contractors. This to say that with the latitude to develop business opportunities with proper tools one will always be able to scale up private sector actors to meet the demand. It may actually be easier than converting an organization already disposing of sets of assets in the domain and which will obviously be reluctant to invest further in new tools even if said asset are not totally adequate without any long term prospect.

Anyway, I must admit to not totally follow on the economical logic, even with the new deal. Taking the example of the HMD , why select an Isreal made HMD for integration, with little perspective for sales beyond India and no TOT potential. This as opposed to further developing on the TOP SIGHT-I as part of the offset with Samtel thales avionics, which is already engaged with M2000 upgrade ?. This would have been beneficial to M2000, Rafale, MIG 29 and opened up the prospect for sales to other users, including ADLA.

I’m not saying that Dassault should have gone with HAL. That deal is done and dusted and it is no longer relevant, but the fact that Dassault chose a non-engineering firm with zero experience in aerospace or defence manufacturing, when there are other firms like the Tatas, Larsen & Toubro and Mahindra & Mahindra and others who have invested in the infrastructure setup and have done the hard miles and have proved themselves. Reliance has a sleazy reputation, but it has plenty of resources. But the lurking suspicion will remain that they went with Reliance based on their reputation of being able to get things done, with little concern for ethics.

Anyway, Rafale for the Make In India program seems highly unlikely, with cost being the biggest concern. With a stated goal to be able to export fighters from the Indian assembly line, that would fly in the face of what Dassault would want – to be able to build Rafales at their plant in Merignac. Unless they’d be looking to get wings built in India and the fuselage and engine in France or whatever, but that will not be considered enough.

Regarding the HMDS, I would hope some French poster could confirm news on Elbit Targo for the Rafale instead of the Thales/Samtel TopSight-I. The reason I’m asking is that even the MiG-29UPG is now confirmed as being integrated with the TopSight-I, in addition to the Mirage-2000.

in indias case, its a moot point, since they already bought 100 or so f414 engines from US,
if anything, those engines can finally be put to use if they produce gripen E

Didn’t order the F-414s- they chose it in a competition between the EJ-200 and F-414, but the actual contract was not signed as yet. But since a Naval LCA Mk2 is likely to be built, they will eventually have to order the F-414