TR1, what are you thoughts on the recent rumour that no Russian fighters will be coming for AI-11? They’ve been bringing MiG-29s or Su-30s for several Aero India’s before, and now with the MRCA competition shortlist possible in a few months time, this is a HUGE statement about what MiG Corp thinks about its chances..Have you read anything in the Russian press about AI-2011 and the MiG-35, Su-35 or OVT coming there?

did you read my post before responding to it?

Sorry ! my bad, I mixed up the IN and IAF part of your reply.

You are right, but I’m not sure that I would agree with the word ‘regulated’. That would seem to imply that the old-time journalist was deciding what portion of the information he possessed was going to appear on the pages. I don’t think that was the case.

If you by ‘better connected’ you mean better aware of what was going on – such as the imminent test-flight of the J-20, I agree with you.

The first reports that the maiden flight was imminent came during the holiday season. In the real world, there was no way that Aviation Week, Flight International, or Jane’s Defence Weekly was going to have the time to realise that the report was likely to be true, get management approval for and plan an expensive overseas trip, get the necessary visa, fly to China, and be on the airfield boundary line in time for that first flight. (Can you imagine Bill Sweetman filling out a business-visa application form at the Chinese embassy in Washington and stating that the reason for his trip was to spy on China’s latest fighter?)

What the J-20 shows us is the growing emergence of a new form of aviation and defence journalism provided by amateur enthusiasts rather than traditional journalists.

But as you said…

That’s right, and that reputation is based on posting quality, not on number of postings.

I have already said this is an earlier posting on this forum.

But turning back to the J-20, while the events of the last week have shown the weakness of traditional journalism, the day that the J-20 team decide to sit down and brief (for example) an Aviation Week reporter, we will get a completely new insight into the programme that the amateur is not able to give.

Today’s amateur journalist has access to a wide range of data thanks to the internet, including technical papers and even press conference recordings and transcripts. He or she also has something important that the professional journalist does not – the time to explore a subject of issue in depth. (In this respect, defence analysts have an easier time, but still face the problem that the fee for the job only buys a given amount of one’s professional time.)

But what the amateur does not have is the ability to question company specialists, or the understanding of the real world that comes as a result of visits to factories, laboratories, and military bases and exercises. Nor are they able to attend conferences and symposia where defence matters are discussed, often at a deeper level than in more open sources.

But the information from such activities will be eventually join the pool of public knowledge available to the amateur, and so the cross-fertilisation process will continue. As the first flights of the T-50 and J-20 demonstrate, information is becoming available in ways we would not have imagined when the last generation of warplanes first flew. The importance on on-line forums can only increase, but the problem of signal-to-noise ratio will dwarf that traditionally faced by the intelligence world.

Another more important factor is that the complexity of defence technology has risen dramatically. In the 1980s, Jane’s published ‘Fighting Ships’ and ‘All the World’s Aircraft’, and tried to sweep the rest of modern weaponry into a single volume titled ‘Weapon Systems’ edited by a friend of mine. Quarter of a century on, the concept would be ludicrous. A year or so ago I was an a lecture where a Jane’s editor showed a photo of the collected copies of all that year’s Jane’s reference books. It was a shelf-bending sight.

The implications of this for defence journalism are worrying. Aerospace and defence magazines still employ a similar number of staff as they had quarter of a century ago, so those reporters must individually cover a much wider range of subjects, technologies and systems than those of an earlier generation. There are limits to what one individual can do and how many subjects that he or she can fully master.

When I read postings that say something like “The Flight report on whatever-the-subject was cr*p”, I always wonder how well that poster would cope with having to turn out a decent text at short notice on anti-submarine warfare, followed by another on the latest space satellite technology. All in a week’s work for the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Aerospace and Defence Press. I couldn’t do it, and I suspect that most of their critics couldn’t.

great post Mercurius !

wow, i simply love the lines of the Jaguar IM, what an awesome bird! Do they carry exocet as primary weapon? Or also russian AShM?

Nope, they had Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles till lately. Now they’ll get Harpoons from the US.

Some great shots of the Dhruv on this link

Interview with ADE Director, PS Krishnan. Some very interesting points are made by him, but India’s journalists either cannot understand this timeline or else deliberately choose to be ignorant.

In all the 1,500 flights we have had so far, we never had one single failure. Those included Tejas in its stages as tech demonstrators, prototype vehicles and limited series production (LSP).

It took the Tejas 1,500 test flights and 23 years of development to get to this point. Isn’t that too long?

You have to see that it started as a thought process in 1983 and there was no funding at that point. For the next ten years, we firmed up the requirements and then went into project definition phase. We went to France and Germany and took their expertise in fixing up the aerodynamic configuration. Post that we were ready with a firm proposal and the funding finally started from the second half of 1992. It did take time, but we had to go through the proper processes.

Then there were the sanctions after Pokhran II. How did that affect the development of Tejas?

Let me be clear — we perhaps got delayed by two years. On the day the sanctions came into force, our team was in the US offices of our partners there (Lockheed Martin and BAE Inc.). The team was working on integration of software with the hardware of the LCA. Suddenly we were asked to leave the offices, and we were not even allowed to take back the designs we were working on the systems there, and those were almost ready to be tested. We had to again develop it from memory, because we weren’t allowed to copy our own stuff, which delayed the whole thing.

You are saying that you had to spend some time recovering what you had already worked on and then build on it?

Exactly. But the sanctions also spurred us on to do better, and to make the entire fighter aircraft on our own. So in the next few years, we did not just recover what we had lost back then, but also went some steps ahead and achieved the expertise that we had tied up with the US companies for. So now we had what they had but need not rely on them anymore. So ultimately that did delay us, but also made us stronger.

There are certain things like wake penetration, and others that the IAF chief said need to be ironed out and the deadline is June. Will you be in a position to meet the deadline?

Of course, we already have done most of it. There are some control loss trials, which are essential before it can be operationalised. Those flights will be completed before June. No modifications are required as I see it, but then we will have a clearer picture post the tests and then whatever changes are needed will be implemented.

Interview with PS Krishnan

If they want to built and design their own engines in the future, I think one could say that it might make sense.

Just FYI, they have already designed, built and even flight tested their own turbofan, the Kaveri. Its the critical metallurgical technologies like SCB that they don’t have and are looking to acquire. With Snecma’s help, the Kaveri will hopefully overcome its weight and thrust issues and production critical issues should be resolved by the time the AMCA prototype rolls out. So, its not the designing and building that is the difficult part for India right now- its the perfecting of the last 10% of what constitutes a reliable, working turbofan that meets 100% of its thrust, uptime and reliability requirements.