YourFatherIndian Navy Stunned By Latest Russian Demand For Gorschkov
(Source: Forecast International; issued February 20, 2009)
NEW DELHI — The Indian Navy has been stunned by a Russian demand for an additional $700 million payment for the completion of the reconstruction of the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. This brings the total demanded by the Russians to $2.9 billion, more than three times the originally-contracted price and a truly outrageous sum by any international standards.
In addition to this latest demand, the Russians have confirmed that the ship will not be completed until 2012, four years later than originally planned.
These latest demands come as a savage blow to the Indian delegation that was planning to negotiate over the original Russian demand for an additional $1.2 billion. The delegation was hoping to find some middle ground over this extra demand but the new imposition seems to end any such hopes. India has already paid $500 million as per terms of the initial contract.
The Russian delegation has said that regardless of the outcome of this round of negotiations, Sevmarsh wants an immediate payment of $190 million to continue work that’s underway.
To put these sums and times into context, India could purchase a new carrier from the U.K. or France for $2.9 billion and probably get it delivered as quickly as the Russians are proposing.
The sum demanded by the Russians in unconscionably high for a ship that is already twenty years old, had been laid up for a decade and has suffered damage from at least two serious on-board fires. The rapidly escalating cost of rebuilding this ship can also be seen as an admission of the ship’s bad condition after this long period of neglect.
A logical Indian response to this latest demand would be to tell the Russians that they can keep their hulk and either find a new supplier or accelerate the Indian indigenous aircraft carrier program.
While the progress on that program has been slow and the date of completion has now been pushed to 2014-15, directing $2.9 billion of additional funding into that effort could well serve to accelerate progress nicely. Alternatively, there are plenty of shipyards that could build a new carrier for the same sum.
What really matters now is whether the Indian Navy will be so scandalized by these latest demands that it will be politically possible for them to walk away from the Gorschkov.
Undoubtedly, doing so would be the sensible course of action. After all, there is an old naval adage that is very relevant: “Reconstruction Never Pays.”
-ends-
Just how far are the Indians willing to let themselves get screwed? I don’t know whether to laugh at or cry for the Indians..
YourFatherFunny how other countries that have open access to Western technology still can’t do anything on their own.
Funny how a country of 1.3 billion still has to copy other’s aircraft designs when a country of 9 million can design their own. Stop anything? No. After all China is buying when it can and stealing when it can’t.
YourFatherWell, I think we need much more information and details on the source! As the article hardly sounds like something that would come out of a mouth of a Lockheed Rep…………….IMO
The source is actually JDW, “JSF loses edge at short range, Lockheed Martin admits” by Julian Kerr on 11 Feb 2009.
YourFatherThe fact that LM is supposed to be involved in these studies as well makes you wonder if that is not just another marketing game.
Apparently they are contracted to do the simulation for the JSF Joint Program Office, as seen from here :-
According to Mazanowski, the JSF joint programme office required the modelling to assume an F-35 engine at the end of its life with 5 per cent fuel degradation and a 2 per cent reduction in thrust. The counterpart aircraft were given the benefit of the doubt wherever platform and systems performance were not clear – as, for example, in the assumption that all five would have active electronically scanned array radars operational within five years.
I don’t think the JPO is staffed with fools who will allow themselves to be fed fairy tale results, given the (one example shown above) requirement they have imposed on LM. And if they used these data to sell the aircraft overseas like Signatory said, then certainly the countries would have gone over the data to check for themselves.
YourFatherIt says a senior Russian scientist did so. (Indian Army Chiefs words).
That contradicts 2 reports, unless DRDO employs senior Russian scientists?
I presume the Indian Army want a spot on impact on the target whereas the Russian test crew think that a proximity fuse will do the trick.
With a 2km miss distance, you’d need a nuclear warhead to affect the target. 😀
YourFatherYes it was a miss as reported earlier , why would the army in any way accept a missile that does not work as per their expectations , and even it has suceeded that would not had been the last test
No, I was referring to the part where the DRDO tried to pull it off as a success until the General went to inspect the target for himself. The fact that DRDO tried to do that is, IMO, as appalling as the failure itself.
YourFatherAustin, it looks like the incident really happened.
Army Not to Induct BrahMos Without Further Trials
(Source: ddi Indian Government news; issued Feb. 9, 2009)
After its failure last month, Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has said his force would prefer further trials of BrahMos missile to be sure of the weapon’s success, rather than hurrying up induction.
“No,” he said when asked if the army would induct BrahMos’ new vertical-launch version once it was ready.
“We (the Army) are consumers here. We will like to go through further trials to prove its success. We will congratulate them whenever the missiles passes the test. It is wrong to waste public money,” General Kapoor said in an interview.
The 290-km range supersonic cruise missile, developed jointly by India and Russia under a joint venture, failed to hit its intended target during tests in the Pokhran ranges in Rajasthan desert last month.
Asked if the DRDO had complaints over the Army “leaking” information on the failed BrahMos test, Kapoor clarified that the army had reservations over DRDO’s initial claim that the missile trial was a success.
He said he was present during the missile testing in Rajasthan recently and watched the test-firing from about a kilometre away. The target was 53 kilometres away from the missile launch site, he said.
“Immediately after 83 seconds of the missile’s flight was over, it was communicated on the radio that it was a ‘hit’. But I refused to accept the congratulations from one of the senior Russian officials there till I had personally seen the target having been hit by the missile,” Kapoor said.
But after getting to the target spot it was clear that the missile had not hit the target and hence Kapoor called up his officers in Delhi to inform that the missile test had failed.
Some of the journalists present to witness the missile test went by the radio communication that it was a hit and hence the conflicting reports in the next day’s newspapers, Kapoor added.
“Since it was widely reported that the Army chief was witnessing the missile test, what would I have said about the trials when I return? So I called up my officers and asked them to clarify to the media that the missile had failed to hit the target,” he said.
The army already has a regiment armed with the BrahMos missile, which is an inclined-launch version different from the one that failed the recent test.
not sure about Glonass, but the accuracy for Beidou is expected to be less than 1m for the military version and 10 m for the open version. That’s comparable to 1m and 8m for Galileo. And the way they are getting launched now, it looks like Beidou will be completed before Galileo.
The entire PLA already uses Beidou.
As far as I can find the accuracy for Beidou is expected to be 5m in 2012, and 1m in 2020 for restricted users, and 10 m for public use. But the high accuracy applies only in the Asia-Pacific region, because of the use of GEO sats over the Pacific. Galileo is supposed to feature less than 1m resolution for restricted users and <4m resolution for public use, across the board.
http://www.geoinformatics.nl/layouts/cmediageoinformatics/secure/GEO/2007/GEO71/P12-13%20GEO71.pdf
YourFatherIn future that really might not matter given that there’d be multiple constellations like GLONASS and Galileo and even Beidou. Though I’d only consider Galileo as a serious competitor in terms of coverage and accuracy.
YourFatherThe entire system would not be disabled – but techniques are being developed to temporarily deny GPS access in selected geographic areas. A Google search for ‘navigation warfare’ should produce some relevant material.
Selective Availability
Selective Availability (SA) was an intentional degradation of public GPS signals implemented for national security reasons. At the direction of the President, SA was discontinued in May 2000 to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. The U.S. Government has no intent to use SA again.
In September 2007, the U.S. Government announced its decision to procure the future generation of GPS satellites, known as GPS III, without the SA feature. Doing this will make the policy decision of 2000 permanent and eliminate a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide for some time.
YourFatherBut isnt it the case that US DOD has the final say on it and if its national interest is at stake , it reserves the right to black a specfic zone ?
The US president has the final say, and I think it was Bush that pledged that the GPS signal would be guaranteed. The current GPS II constellation still can implement blackouts, but the GPS III won’t be able to anymore. The simple fact is too many civil applications rely on GPS for the US to disable at will.
YourFatherAh Janes with the famed Rahul Bedi
Why, is he India’s Pinkov (Andrei Chang)? 😮
My thinking is depending on time of flight the IMU would accumulate error , which is not a problem for US as they have HP GPS signal
Depending on when the GPS blinks and time of flight you can get a near ~10 m CEP to a catastrophic miss
Given that the explanation (or at least one version of it) is a GPS ‘blink’ and not a sustained loss, then with an inertial sensor the miss distance should not be substantial at all? After all the inertial errors accumulate after time or great distance travelled, which shouldn’t be so with just a GPS ‘blink’.
A GPS blink is reported as a possible cause by one media report , Dr Pillai stated that it was a software glitch
It is naive to depend on US GPS signal as it could be degraded or blocked for certain zone at times of war , for now IMU/RLG and SCAN should be the answer though it may be expensive.
But if HP signal are available via GLONASS we can move towards a cheaper INS/HP/SCAN solution
Selective availability functionality is to be totally removed in GPS III.
YourFatherThen we have the 1000yd miss that was reported as a hit?. A GPS ‘blink’ fixed by a coding change?. I’m sorry how do you modify a software programme to prevent the loss of an external reference signal?. The GPS receiver could have failed at an inopportune moment but for the receiver to be updating the flight data system all the way through the flight and just ‘drop out’ at that precise moment sounds far fetched. One would also question the lack of an onboard backup for situations where GPS may be degraded for any number of reasons?.
Is there no inertial system like on the JDAMs? As I recall an inertial system would prevent a GPS signal dropout from the missile getting a catastrophic miss, especially if the missile is already in its end-game.
The latest Jane’s report on this said that the miss distance was 2km. And DRDO actually refised to admit it was a miss until Gen Kapoor insisted on inspecting the target! 😀 Anyway, even if they solve this problem, they still have to solve the problem of cost. At USD7.3 million per shot, it’s insane. No wonder the Indian Army is balking at the price. Not even the USAF would pay that kind of price.
YourFatherI don’t recall Friedman’s book on US cruiser designs ever saying anything on unique characteristics of cruiser hulls. As I understand a cruiser is defined the way AegisFC describes, based on its role, capabilities etc which have themselves changed over time. I think one of the unique defining characteristics now is space for flag facilities? Anyway, this article should be a good summary of the evolution of the definition of cruiser.
YourFatherEverything is “Joint” (even if it isn’t) or “Advanced”, or the like.
The joke is, with the exception of JDAM among the Joint series, they ended up being quite Disjointed. 😀 Let’s see if the next Joint missile, JCM ends up like JASSM and JSOW.
YourFatherYourFather’s getting old.. not noticing things anymore… 😮 Give some slack. :p
But steam cats can’t follow the contour of a ski ramp, IINW, unlike an EMCAT.
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