Originally posted by Magician
😀

A must read for every Pakistani and PLA.
Monkey swings or considered policy?
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

In every newspaper all kind of columinist are there.The person who wrote this article is the member of party whose leader is in exile in Saudi Arabia and he is complaining about removing some islamic minded people in establishment just to get more money from Saudis because by writing in favor of such people they are rewarded by Saudia.
Magician you should think about Indian airforce whose 2 fighter and 1 helicopter was shot down by lacally made MANPADS and anti aircraft guns. Atleast PAF fighters can fly unlike Indian which either fall from the sky or perpetually grounded. PAF will decide some time next year about fighter aircraft.

Originally posted by parkashk
Sukhoi develops trouble, India stops payment

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Sunday December 14 2003 00:00 IST

NEW DELHI: Worried over the high rate of engine failure of its frontline SU-30MKI, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has refused to accept the latest batch of multi-role Sukhoi fighters from Russia.

It’s learnt that though a batch of the Sukhois has been dispatched to the Lohegan Air Force Station in Pune, the IAF has decided not to accept them until the Russian manufacturers Rosvoorouzhenie accept its demands to rectify the several glitches in the aircraft.

The IAF has also suggested to the Ministry of Defence that further payments to the Russians be stopped until the demands are met. When this was conveyed to the Russians, they immediately dispatched a team to meet Indian officials. A Russian team met top MoD officials as well as the IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy in South Block on Thursday evening.

As of today, the IAF has an operational fleet of 28 aircraft of both Sukhoi variants, the upgraded Su-30 MKI and its air defence fighter variant Su-30 K. Powered by the AL-31FP engine, it is rated among the best fighter aircraft in service today.

The Su-30 MKI deal, worth a little over Rs 10,000 crore, envisages the delivery of 120 aircraft from Russia while another 140 will be manufactured under license in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

Sources said that the SU-30MKIs began to experience a high rate of engine failure after induction. Each engine has a life that is measured in hours, around 300 hours spent flying, taking off and landing between overhauls. To maintain them, the engines are subjected to periodic overhauling, calculated as Time Between Overhauls (TBO). A majority of the SU-30MKI’s engines were withdrawn even before their TBO.

After much deliberations, Air Headquarters declined to comment despite being sent a detailed questionnaire by the this website’s newspaper.

South Block says that the crux of the problem lies in the interpretation of the SU-30MKI contract. According to South Block, the Russian interpretation was that the plane engine would last for the stipulated number of hours “under normal flying conditions”.

However, as the Indian side has been putting the plane under stress conducting manoeuvres _ vertical flying and the cobra manoeuvre _ the engine has not been able to last for the stipulated number of hours under the contract. South Block officials say that some sort of compromise will have to be reached between the two sides as further research and development on the engine will cost more money to already cash strapped Russians aircraft manufacturers.

Although negotiations are currently on, South Block sources said that the MoD was forced to take such a step because the Russians refused to comply with IAF requests, citing the contract signed earlier.

In fact, the Navy had adopted a similar approach when a Sthil missile system on board the stealth frigate `INS Talwar’ failed to perform. Naval Headquarters had recalled its crew from Moscow after the Russians ignored the demands to rectify the faults.

The decision not to accept the SU-30MKIs, sources said, could well delay the IAF’s overall induction plan. With several MiG squadrons being “number-plated” _ air force jargon for retiring an aircraft from service _ the IAF has been desperate to find a suitable replacement.

My assumptions were correct India cannot field operational airforce of 60 sqruardons even by year 2100 AD

http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/political_science/MIIIE/catalogMissilesC.htm
DF-31 – ICBM with MIRV for $40 M each
MIRV – 3-8 warheads (disputed); range of 8000 km; can use as SLBM. Said to contain technology bought or stolen from US during 1990’s. CEP- 300 meters. Tested four times by Feb. 2001.

[Cost estimated as comparable to Minuteman acquisition cost posted by Brookings, not the cost of the more expensive PeaceKeeper.]

$1B can bring 30 missles.

Originally posted by Distiller
Flight International wrote fly-away for Blk60 is 50 to 55mio USD.

That AW&ST article put price of 80 aircraft for 6.4Billion +2B for weopons. Incase of European aircraft “Euro vs Dollar” exchange rate is also important. Almost 50% devaluation of dollar in 2 years.

HAWKEYE 2000

Major upgrade programmes are continuing to the end of the service life in 2015. The first of the next generation standard, the Hawkeye 2000, was delivered in October 2001, with 21 on order for the USN, one aircraft destined for the French Navy under a foreign military sales (FMS) agreement and two for Taiwan. USN aircraft will achieve Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in 2004. Northrop Grumman is also to upgrade a number of USN aircraft to Hawkeye 2000 configuration. Egypt is to upgrade its five E-2C Hawkeye to Hawkeye 2000 standard and will receive one additional upgraded E-2C. The first upgraded aircraft was delivered in March 2003. The Japanese Air Self Defense Force is also upgrading its 13 Hawkeye aircraft. The United Arab Emirates has requested five refurbished aircraft, upgraded to Hawkeye 2000 standard.

Hawkeye 2000 features a Raytheon mission computer upgrade (MCU), Lockheed Martin Advanced Control Indicator Set (ACIS), co-operative engagement capability (CEC), satellite communications, new navigation and flight control systems. The MCU is based on open architecture COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) technology, with increased memory and faster processing. The CEC consists of processor, data distribution system and antenna and will enable Hawkeye 2000 to perform real-time battle management, fusing and distributing information from sources such as satellite and shipborne radar.

ADVANCED HAWKEYE

The next-generation, RMP/Advanced Hawkeye, will have, as well a new radar, theatre missile defence capabilities, multisensor integration and a tactical cockpit. Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems are developing a new solid-state, electronically steered UHF radar under the E-2C Radar Modernization Program (RMP). Northrop Grumman will supply the transmitter, Raytheon the receiver and L-3 Communications Randtron the UHF antenna.

HawkEye is the most important element of Carrier battlegroup and Naval airpower is the key component of all future conflicts. There should be no doubt in its technical capabilities.
When the Navy deploys the latest version of the E-2C Hawkeye, it will also finally field the first airborne node of its new communications architecture and greatly expand the reach of its network-centric warfare vision.

The fielding of the new hardware is only a small, first step. Service officials acknowledge it will likely take awhile before they know how to fully exploit the capability they are about to receive.

The Hawkeye 2000 upgrade is designed to overhaul the carrier-based surveillance aircraft’s aging battle management equipment. But probably most critical is the introduction of a key command and control element, the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), which will allow the service to expand the battlespace it can monitor and fight in. CEC is a C-band, wideband network the Navy conceived to share radar information among its platforms and to create a common air picture.

The addition of the E-2C into the CEC construct should greatly expand the range of the network, which was limited to ship-to-ship line-of-sight communication. Since the CEC’s primary reason for being is ship self-defense, having an airborne radar that can look out great distances “is very desirable,” said Tony Gecan, CEC systems engineer for Raytheon, the prime contractor for the equipment. Additionally, the elevated radar provides a different look at the target than ship radars, allowing it to locate and track approaching missiles or aircraft with reduced radar cross sections.

The CEC network also is supposed to ensure air-defense operators know with confidence where the target is they need to destroy. In the past, air defenders could face ambiguity when trying to engage an enemy because of problems in reconciling tracks from different radars. “The picture with CEC looks a lot better. You’ve got one track for one guy,” says Lt. Cdr. Rob Polvino, project officer for the Navy’s VX-20 test squadron.

Despite the significant technical progress that has been made to get Hawkeye 2000 ready for fleet use, the Navy still has to confront what could be some of the hardest issues: developing the proper concept of operations to fully exploit the CEC component. E-2C operators are looking forward to the capability, but Polvino notes that “how we implement this is something we will have to worry about.”

Another challenge for developers is that the Navy has accelerated deployment of the USS Nimitz and its battlegroup, which includes two cruisers–the USS Chosin and USS Princeton–that are CEC-equipped. The Nimitz has the ability to monitor CEC data as well.

The acceleration presses the CEC-equipped Hawkeye into service earlier than initially planned, which has caused engineers headaches. When program managers developed their schedule for the airborne CEC, it was targeted at the Nimitz deployment. However, with that date moved up, they now find themselves short of time and unable to complete the full software development and verification of some code. While all the critical CEC elements should be available, some maintenance software won’t be, a program official said.

SINCE THERE WASN’T enough time to complete testing, the Navy has decided to use the E-2C’s CEC equipment only as an airborne relay to allow CEC-equipped ships to pass information beyond line-of-sight. The cooperative engagement processor isn’t slated to be turned on, which means none of the tracks the E-2Cs sees will be fed into the network. However, one official noted that since all the critical elements to fully employ the system will be available, crew on deployment could try to use them to their full extent. Even if the system only acts as a relay, the range over which CEC-equipped ships can exchange data should grow from 20-30 mi. to a couple of hundred miles.

All four Hawkeyes will be CEC-equipped. The Navy gained a measure of confidence in the system when it completed a major test of the equipment last month, says Capt. Phil Pritulsky, who heads the Navy’s Hawkeye 2000 effort. During fleet preparation, the Navy was able to demonstrate CEC communication between two airborne nodes, something not required in the baseline configuration.

The coming weeks will still be critical, though, for the Navy to figure out exactly how well CEC’s integration into the E-2C has been engineered. The next major test prior to deployment is scheduled for November. Testers are slated to scrutinize the software and hardware installation of the CEC equipment, with an eye to its reliability and maintainability, according to a project engineer. The assessment, expected to be conducted by flying from a land-based facility rather than an aircraft carrier, will involve one of the two test aircraft now at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., or one of the aircraft belonging to VAW-117, the squadron deploying on the Nimitz.

Once VAW-117 returns from its Nimitz cruise, the entire system will undergo further, more rigorous testing. This operational evaluation will involve not just the aircraft, but assess more extensively its functioning with ships. The location of this drill and which aircraft will participate is uncertain because the Navy’s carrier battlegroup deployment plans are in flux due to operational demands.

Much of the test process is still under discussion, in part because of changes in deployment schedules, but also because the Navy wants to avoid having to repeat expensive tests just because it is adding a new element to the network. “One of the things we are wrestling with now is how much regression testing we do,” said Cdr. Larry Dirusso, an E-2C requirements officer. Redoing a large amount of CEC testing to ensure that the addition of the airborne component doesn’t interfere with ship-based systems could be financially crippling, Navy officials worry.

WHILE TESTING of the airborne CEC hardware and software will continue for months, many of the other Hawkeye 2000 components have already had their trial by fire. VAW-117 aircraft had some of the equipment installed when it flew in support of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The USS Carl Vinson-deployed E-2Cs featured the mission computer upgrade and advanced control indicator set that are two of the main building blocks for Hawkeye 2000 (AW&ST Nov. 26, 2001, p. 40). The new computer is much lighter than the L-304 it replaced, which freed up the weight to accommodate the CEC hardware. “We were pretty satisfied with the performance,” Pritulsky said, noting that the equipment displayed high reliability.

The Navy brought one of its development Hawkeye 2000s to the Farnborough air show this summer. During a demonstration flight, crewmembers showed Aviation Week & Space Technology some of the advances the new displays and computer provide.

One of the enhancements is the ability to plan missions before takeoff and use a data storage device to transfer the setting to the aircraft’s three individual workstations in the back of the E-2C. In the past, those settings had to be typed in laboriously on the aircraft, according to Polvino. Additionally, the display has become much more user-friendly with drop-down menus that are more intuitive than the old arrangement, he added.

The increased processing, memory and display capability the new hardware provides is allowing E-2C crews to put the radar and identification friend-foe data it is gathering into better context. For instance, crewmembers can overlay the radar image onto different maps, including those showing known airfields. “That’s a big situational awareness builder,” Polvino said. Moreover, the aircraft can deploy with maps for the entire world, while in the past, limited storage space meant data were available on only a relatively small region.

The upgraded computers are not only much more reliable, but in instances when they have to shut down because of a glitch, they can also be back in operation much faster. In the old configuration, a shutdown could take computers off-line for as long as 20 min. Rebooting the new mission computer took less than 2.5 min. when the crew performed a deliberate computer shutdown and restart.

Hawkeye 2000 also is to introduce enhanced electronic support measures that should allow E-2C crews to more precisely identify potential targets. However, the ALQ-217 won’t be ready for several more months. The gear would replace the ALR-73, which one industry official described as hard to maintain. The antennas for the new kit will occupy the same space as the ALR-73. The Navy eventually wants to upgrade the ALQ-217 to provide specific emitter identification, which essentially allows the device to fingerprint an emitter. Crews also will have to wait a while longer before receiving the Multimission Advanced Tactical Terminal that would provide access to real-time intelligence broadcasts.

Moreover, the service is wrestling with ballooning costs in its radar modernization program (RMP), the next step in the E-2C’s evolution. While Hawkeye 2000 focuses on improving the system’s battle management capabilities, RMP would replace the radar to allow the E-2C to significantly increase the number of targets the aircraft can detect, track and feed into the CEC network.

This element critical to the Navy’s growth of network-centric warfare now faces a $700-million-1-billion shortfall because of problems at both Northrop Grumman, the E-2C prime contractor, and the Navy itself. It has led to management changes at both the contractor and government, industry officials said. Navy officials say the increase results from added requirements that weren’t priced into the program when it was conceived several years ago, although they confess bad estimates also are to blame. Among the items added are a terrain-avoidance system and avionics to comply with modern air traffic management regulations.

The RMP program, which will involve building 75 new Hawkeyes, is slated to kick off as a formal development effort next year with fleet introduction planned for around 2011, says Capt. Bob Labelle, the E-2 program manager.

FLIGHT TESTING of one of the new radar candidates, the ADS-18, has already been undertaken using a C-130. A second radar candidate is a UHF Active Electronically Scanned Array (UESA). Although the technology is seen as less mature, it would likely remain a candidate for future upgrades. Although the UESA is designed to track many more targets, it would likely lose some performance in range. Lockheed Martin is leading the radar work intended to deliver a system with enhanced performance over land.

RMP would also deliver the first major upgrade of the cockpit. In Hawkeye 2000, pilots merely are receiving a power-augmented stabilization system to make it somewhat easier to control the aircraft. But under RMP, the cockpit will be reconfigured with displays that should improve situational awareness. Moreover, the operator in the right seat will be able to be connected to the mission equipment and could aid the three controllers in the back.

Currently, “the pilot has very limited involvement in the back-end mission,” noted a pilot of the VX-20 E-2C at Farnborough. With the new displays, the pilot and copilot could take on such responsibilities as coordinating refueling between tankers and strike packages or sequencing units to and from the aircraft carrier.

Increasing the active operator number by 25% may also allow E-2Cs to take on new missions such as controlling unmanned combat or surveillance aircraft, one official noted.

Another feature of RMP is to be multisource integration. It would fuse information from the electronic support measures equipment, satellite communications, radar, CEC and from other links “to reduce operator workload and attribute all information to one track,” a Northrop Grumman official said. Navy officials are exploring whether the refined data can be fed back into the CEC net.

According to this website F-18C flight performance is even better than F-15C let alone MIG-29. Price is the only thing in MIG favor.
http://www.eurofighter.com/Typhoon/SwingRole/