I have not seen recent pics but here is one which I saw a while back. It is not a great pic but I have been told that taking these kind of pics in Indian shipyards is a big NO-NO.

Thanks, yeah that’s what I’ve heard too.

I wonder why it’s so big of a deal, it’s not like the world doesn’t know the ships are being built given the IN’s relative openness.
Even the PLAN allows photographers to basically document all the major shipyards and the ships progress every few months.

Anyway, I hope for the IN’s sake the kolkatas don’t face anymore large delays. They need these ships desperately now, especially with Vicky on her way.

Probably I should have left it out. My mistake, please ignore it.

Okay cheers

If there are concerns about diplomatic sleights stemming from development of the Indian carrier programme they are not being very loudly communicated or supported anywhere!. In reality there is no reason they should either. Chinese carrier development, so far, is looking south and east at the SCS and Pacific and reinforcing a doctrinally defensive, access denial, posture and not an expeditionary one. Simply put the Chinese do not appear to be equipping navally to be able to overtly force their way west of Malacca. For the forseeable future Indian and Chinese naval interests do not conflict so the route to the face-threatening brinkmanship you mention looks quite vague?.

I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. (Apologies for the OT topic, but I think my explanation is also relevant to the topic of the direction of Indian carrier ambitions)

The entire idea of a blue water PLAN is to project power far from its shores. Yes, the vessels can still be used in a defensive manner, namely against the US, but the chances of a conflict with the US at the moment appear extremely low. If they really wanted to continue maintaining a “defensive” posture, they would not be investing in aircraft carriers, large amphibious assault ships, or destroyers as large as they have. All of those large surface combatants and power projection ships are immensely vulnerable against a capable opponent like the US. Instead they would invest all the money for aircraft carriers and the like on AShBM, more SSKs, smaller surface combatants like frigates, possibly regional bombers. Now, the fact that PLAN are investing both in a blue water navy and in components of a comprehensive A2AD strategy means they desire to both be able to fight in its own backyard, as well as be able to project power far abroad. The good thing about a blue water fleet is it can do both. A green water fleet cannot.

So the question follows:
What interests are there in blue water that the PRC needs to guard? Well China’s shipping lanes are immensely vulnerable, they rely mostly on foreign naval goodwill. They have massive investments and foreign nationals dotted all over africa. There is a need to have your own ability to guard your shipping lanes, and perhaps in the far future, intervene minimally to either restore stability, or cover a civilian evacuation from hostile local forces whatever they may be.

In that sense, it is far more likely for the PLAN to operate in the Indian Ocean than for IN to operate in the SCS in future, and frankly there is a more tangible security need as well.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with the PLAN’s blue water capable force, and I’m not sure how familiar you are with their recent ship building programmes.

I apologize for the upcoming block of text, but it’s just a crosspost of a fairly exhaustive list I made a little while ago that predicts PLAN ships up to 2015, including their displacements, their current in service ships as of 2013, and likely in service ships at the close of 2015.

Aircraft carrier (blue water capable):
Liaoning, 65,000 tons: 1 in service, we can expect it to easily have IOC by 2015

LPDs (blue water capable):
071 class, ~25,000 tons: 3 in service

“Large” LSTs (blue water capable depending on circumstance):
072A/III/II class, 4,800 tons: 24
072 class, 4,200 tons: 3

“Large”/blue water capable DDGs:
052C class, ~7,000 tons: 4 in service(+2 more, currently in sea trials)
052D class, ~7,500 tons: (1 sea trial, 2 launched, 1 soon to be launched)
052B class, ~6,500 tons: 2 in service
Sovremenny class, ~8,000 tons: 4
051C class, ~7,000 tons: 2
051B class, 6,100 tons: 1
052 class, 4,800 tons: 2

“B team”/coastal DDGs (not blue water):
051 class, 3,700 tons: 7-8 in service (due to be retired, probably replaced with 054As and 052Ds in their flotillas in coming years)

Blue water capable FFGs:
054A class, 4000+ tons: 15 in service (+5 in various stages of sea trials, fitting out, or launch. Not a stretch to think that 20 will be in service by 2015)
054 class, ~4000 tons: 2 in service

“B team”/coastal FFGs (not blue water):
053H2/H3 class, 2,300-2,500 tons: ~14?
053 class, 2,000 tons: ~14? (being phased out)

Corvettes (modern, but not blue water):
056 class, 1,400 tons: 8 (+ who knows how many more. Let’s say another 20 by 2015? Fair? Yes/no? They’re building about 10 of these puppies a year)

Modern missile boats (modern, but not blue water):
022 class, 220 tons: ~80

AORs (naturally blue water capable):

903/A class, 23,000 tons: 4
Fuqing class, 21,000 tons: 2
953 class, 37,000 tons: 1

Not included are minesweepers, older missile boats.

—

Will greater PLAN presence in the Indian ocean lead to tensions? Possibly. Fortunately the PLAN won’t seek to project a presence over India when they are there in the same way that the USN does over China when it operates in East china Sea, and the PLAN’s goals there are fairly benign. The only dispute China has with India is landlocked, and I’m sure neither India or China wants to expand that into the naval sphere. However I’m sure India can appreciate China’s needs to be able to defend its own SLOCs. PLAN will just have to make sure not to step on India’s toes.

However domestic Indian media (to an outsider) seems to be portraying China as the devil incarnate in recent years.

Blitzo please forgive this but I think you make my point so much better than I do here. You describe a second-rate capability….which is perfectly in keeping with a second-rate escort force and is ‘no shame’. My view actually differs a bit (not least as I think that the Delhi’s and 1135 mod variants are pretty solid all-round hulls!) in that I think the IN had it within their power to step up to the first rank of naval powers but, if you forgive the pun, they ‘missed the boat’. Rather than being ‘no shame’ Vikramaditya represents opportunity lost…or at least delayed…which is lamentable.

Cheers.

I agree with you that India could have possibly found a better and more capable ship than Vikramditya when they were on the hunt for a new carrier. Possibly a european STOVL or even CATOBAR design (French?). But India was rightly wary about relying on suppliers with possible political strings, so at the time, going with the Russians was probably the best deal (Mig-29K commonality with IAF Mig-29s would be a bonus). What I think is indisputable, is that India was always planning for a medium weight carrier, and they ended up getting it with the Vikram. They lack a fixed wing AEWC, which is probably the biggest limitation, but they can still fly their fighters off that ski jump with full or near full take off weight, and the sheer increase in capability Mig-29K offers beyond legacy sea harriers is worth its weight in gold.
That is to say, their first couple of carriers (both Vikram and IAC-1) were always planned to be “light-middle” weight. That probably reflects the ambitions of the IN to an extent (they don’t need to do USN style CVBG operations, nor do they face an enemy where such a capability is required), but also it reflects just how much money they have to allocate to various assets.

I’m more worried about the IN’s lack of credible escorts. Their recent frigate classes like Shivalik and Talwar are not to be dismissed, but their air defense capability is quite lacking, they still rely on short-medium range Shtils as their longest range SAM. If that’s not bad enough, they aren’t even fired from VLS, but rather from arm launchers. Point defenses are formidable with the Barak-1, and their offensive anti surface punch is also very good with klub or brahmos. But the biggest threat will be in the air.

The situation looks even more dire for the destroyer fleet. Sure, Delhi and Rajput classes are good, capable ships, but their air defense capability is no better than their frigates, and they won’t even have a modern PAR+VLS equipped AAW capability until the Kolkata, which has yet to enter service despite being laid down in 2003 and launched in 2006! Even then, the Kolkata’s main SAM, the Barak 8, only has a slant range of 70km, which is relatively uncompetitive with other modern SAMs that other navies field.

There are only 3 Shivaliks built out of 3 planned, and only 3 Kolkatas planned at all, and no one knows when the latter class will fully enter service.
The Project 15B and Project 17A DDG and FFG classes are barely on the drawing board if I’m up to date, with construction supposed to start the latter part of this decade — but unless Indian shipyards had drastically changed their production line, it may take anywhere up to a further decade for both new classes to even enter service. (Case in point, the Project 28 Kamorta corvette was laid down in 2006, launched in 2010, and only recently started sea trials)

The IN simply lacks the quality of ships to arrange an internationally competitive CVBG in the near future — competitive, compared with USN, European navies like RN, MN, or east asian navies like JMSDF, ROKN, and of course PLAN — and just as important, they lack the quantity of such ships as well. If you have 3 Kolkatas in service you will be lucky to have 2 such ships available to deploy at one time (given one ship will usually be in maintenance or at port), and you’ll be forced to either put two Kolkatas in a CVBG basket and leave the rest of your fleet short, or you’ll have to leave your CVBG with only one decent AAW destroyer. Same goes for the 3 ship strong Shivalik FFG class, but their AAW capability is far inferior.
The situation turns even worse when the IN gets the Vikrant (I’ll be interested to see how long they take to fit out the Vikrant. Building a hull is fairly easy. Integrating all the subcomponents and keeping subcontractors in line is far harder).

Fortunately, the IN doesn’t face many highly capable adversaries in its forseeable missions. I doubt IN will seek to deploy CVBGs to the Pacific on anything near a regular basis, certainly not to challenge the PLAN near PRC waters. The IAF will work in conjunction with IAF in a Pakistan contingency, and the PN and PAF are not that formidable in their own right. If JF-17s enter in large enough numbers armed with modern AShMs like the new CM-400KG that may prove a problem for a watered down IN CVBG, but IAF support can make up for it.

I wonder if the IN may have benefitted from delaying carrier procurement and instead investing in developing their surface combatant ship building industry first. That way they could have a greater number of escorts and well trained crews in the water by the time they start building a carrier, and the improvement in DDG and FFG construction expertise will be cross applicable to CV construction too. In any case, it’s interesting to see the divergent carrier and carrier escort programmes of both IN, and the other navy with high carrier ambitions, the PLAN.

What, in purely strategic terms, is Vikramditya capable of that Viraat wasnt Fed?. Its fighters are longer legged and can carry more granted….but can they penetrate defended airspace any better than the upgrade SHARs?. No – theres no support radar coverage overwatching. Sea Control….granted the Fulcrums can stage farther, but, the only sensor platform for surveillance will be the fighters own radar…and there wont be enough fighters in the airgroup to have half a dozen out on SURCAP, while maintaining local CAP pairs and with cabs spotted for ASuW strike and buddy tanking!.

Vikramaditya is a more powerful ship than Viraat. MiG-29K is a more powerful fighter than SHAR. Without the whole package of support types though both facts are largely irrelevant as the same limitations that restricted Viraat will restrict Vikramaditya.

The qualitative gain in the aircraft Vikram carries compared to Viraat will add up. The IN may not be able to strike a heavily defended airspace with Vikram, but it can do better CAP for a naval fleet than Viraat, carry more aircraft, strike lighter defended targets at greater range or even more distant, lighter defended naval targets, which Viraat can’t do (or does worse).

Frankly, given the IN’s current and forthcoming escort quantity and quality, the fact that their upcoming aircraft carriers are only small-medium weight and lacking fixed wing AEWC is not much of a sin. That is to say, their escort fleet isn’t that impressive in the first place so a less than world class aircraft carrier is forgivable.
If the USN had decided to buy 40k ton STOBAR carriers exclusively we’d all be scratching our heads. For the IN, whose most capable DDG in service is still the 1997 commissioned Delhi class, such a procurement is not scandal or a shame.

Yes blitzo, let’s try to take from exactly your last point of view: when the first news leaked about nEUROn and Taranis (projects a lil more complex then the Chinese HALE depicted in the footage), I just thought: OK let’s wait until these demostrators will fly, for the moment they are paper aircraft.
I did not have any flame on the forums about the effectiveness of these demonstrators.

I was challenging your original statement — that this UAV is not powered by an engine.

I never claimed this UAV is immediately going to enter service or whatever. If anything I agree that many Chinese UAV projects do not enter service or production.

That was exactly the status we are experiencing currently with the Chinese HALE. And skeptisism is a good attitude, exactly in the same manner when such above western concepts were originally presented or leaked.

When a few years later nEUROn and Taranis eventually flew, I did not had any hard on. I just thought that those projects became more mature, and could eventually lead to some solid A/C eventually deployead in service.

Trying to equalize the status of that particular UAV to the J-20 is not a solid argument: one type actually flew and has solid funding and strategic needs which back it up, about the other one we have just the short footage released.
With a clumsy truck tugging the thing.

So because the truck tugging it is old and blue, the UAV must be unpowered?

I wasn’t trying to equalize the status of this UAV with J-20, but rather using it as a comparison for how some individuals tend to find areas to pick at to reduce a new project’s credibility while such areas would normally not be nitpicked on a western or even russian project. Not that I’m specifically accusing you of this, but I’m still wondering why you believe this UAV doesn’t have an engine.

Pretending to say: China does not need the years of studies and testing the West (whatever the “West” could mean) uses for its new A/C concepts is pretentious.

… I have never said anything like that. I was only challenging why you think the aircraft is not equipped with an engine.
In fact, it is because all aerospace projects would follow relatively similar development stages, that I challenge why you think this aircraft doesn’t have an engine. What I want is for this aircraft to be seen in the same lens as you would a western one. If you get a photo of a western uav in primer (suggesting it’s a prototype, not a mock up) and equipped with an engine exhaust (suggesting it has an engine), but being pulled by a tug, would you also claim it lacks an engine?

Also, I have seen a lot of mature project never arriving the milestone of the first flight.

Again, agreed, that goes for many aerospace projects. I repeat, is there a reason why you believe this UAV doesn’t have an engine? If it’s only on the basis that it’s being tugged by a truck, then that’s a ridiculous reason.

Pretending to mock somebody who won’t buy the project on the ground of the evidence supplied until now, it’s laughable. Even more laughable if there are implications such as the ones you and other posted about my supposed “anti” attitude towards the Chinese aerospace industry.

Let’s do a thought experiment.
If the first picture we had of RQ-170 showed it being dragged by an aircraft tug, would you also be skeptical as to whether it had an engine? If yes, then I think you’re just being overly cautious for all aerospace projects, not particularly anti China (not that I was specifically accusing you of it).

And I don’t see how I’ve pretended to mock you.

Again, please come back whan you have evidence that that thing could fly. Then, as an aerospace enthusiast, I will not be disappointed at all. But for now I just have to point out some intersting things of the footage released – like the truck involved and no sign of live from any engine installed on the aircarft.

The footage is actually a slide show of photos FYI. Considering the photos were clearly taken as the UAV was being towed by a truck it would be peculiar if its engine was live, no?

The question should be: is there any reason to suggest this aircraft lacks an engine?
Answer: well the aircraft clearly has an engine exhaust. It’s not live, but that’s because it’s being towed. It doesn’t mean the engine can’t function, given the photos capture only a few seconds of the entire duration which the UAV would have been outside. For project management there is also no rationale for faking an engine aboard, and there is no physical evidence to suggest the prototype is lacking in what a typical prototype should have. So no, there’s no reason to suggest why the UAV lacks an engine.

Ultimately the null hypothesis should be “UAV has an engine”.
Until there’s evidence to the contrary that will be the position to hold.

It’s basically global hawk with a box wing. Nothing too crazy about that.

When this thing will taxis, and eventually fly without the help of a truck, I will concede the bird has a decent engine installed.

For the moment it needs the help of that azure thing for making the slightest movement. Unless you have further information

Until then, regards.

… Are you suggesting this plane is unpowered and is being pulled by a truck to feign a real project? :confused:

I’m all for healthy skepticism, but I think it is quite accepted practise for prototypes and planes in general to be tugged. If a we had similar pictures of a western aircraft such a suggestion would be ludicrous.nor is china Iran, who has a habit of touting their new military developments beyond what they are capable of. PLA is the opposite.

I appreciate the propeller of this new UAV, as shown in the first frames of the video:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]222723[/ATTACH]

I guess these are just details for some users of ths forum.

What propeller? :confused: