Roylarson,Abhimanyu,

Please answer two question..

a) Who has a better quality of employees. A govt PSU where merit is not the reason for employment and where the best don’t apply as salaries are lower or the private sector where recruitment is done by merit and where the best do apply.

some of the PSU’s have entrance exams that are tougher than those of Private companies. Don’t exaggerate how good the private sector in India is. If the PSU employees were that bad, why is that private sector companies love to poach their experienced and well qualified employees with the lure of better pay ?

Royalarson..you brought in airlines.Which is the best airline in India.Govt run piece of **** Air India or the pvt ones?

this is silly and shows how little you know of the commercial airline sector in India. Did you know that more than three quarters of Jet Airways, Sahara (before it merged with Jet) and Deccan Airlines Captains were ex-Indian Airlines and Air India who left for more pay ? Even East West Airlines (when it existed) only survived by offering twice the salary that AI and IA offered, because they had NIL training infrastructure set up to train young pilots to the levels of co-pilots, forget the level of Captains. Now of course Jet Airways has its own infrastructure to train pilots but initially they found that the cadre from IA and AI were world-class and were far cheaper to get than wet-leasing aircraft from western countries.

If your claim that PSU employees are lousy and only get in because of quotas is true (which is a sweeping generalization to be very polite) then why on earth were all these private airlines queueing up to poach these experienced pilots ? Why was it that Deccan Airlines took Wng Cmdr Rajiv Kothiyal (ex-IAF and hence also a govt. employee) as their Chief Pilot ? I know of plenty of other cases but can’t reveal names.

Suffice to say that just sweeping statements are downright wrong.

any pictures from this High Mark 2010 exercise ?

There will be no second chance in this already belated game.

Gripen virtually lost the compitetion by not sending the desired aircraft for the trails.

Remember when eurocopter heli contract got rejected for sending a civilian version of the same to the trails.There were some morons sitting in the bureacracy and ministry that ping things like this.

don’t think that the same analogy can be applied here. The Eurocopter deal was cancelled after it was revealed that the officer responsible for evaluation had a brother who worked for Eurocopter in India. That was considered to be conflict of interest. Secondly, Bell raised an objection on that note, but even the helicopter they sent was not the exact variant they were offering. the Fennec should have been sent instead of the civilian variant but in this case, the Fennec was ready, and operational. Eurocopter just didn’t send the right helo to be evaluated and it lacked some mission equipment that the military helo had.

In this case, the Gripen D can in general give a good idea of the handling, the cockpit, the support requirement, the turn-around times, the maintenance and other aspects. Saab has a valid reason for not sending the NG and I can’t see this as being a cause for them being removed from the competition.

F-16 was already out of the game.If LM boys are sending their A/C means just to burn some cash for a no show.

Mig-35 was out.India is not in a mood to buy it.And Russia does know about it,hence the option exercising for Mig-29 for IN.

Finally left in the fray were F-18,Rafael and Typhoon.

thats your own personal opinion. The facts on the ground may not match that. the F-16IN and MiG-35 are very much in and may be two of the only fighters along with the Gripen IN that may come close to the $11-12 billion that was originally claimed to have been budgeted for this competition. if all 3 qualify, they have surely got better commercial terms than the Typhoon and Rafale.

In the case of the Eurocanards, the fall of the Euro currency against the USD will be a huge factor if they can re-submit their commercial bids.

In my opinion, nothing is sealed, and none of the competitors are out as yet.

The best thing is to wait until more details emerge. I wonder if any of the types currently operated by the IAF meet the requirements imposed on the MMRCA contenders?

only the MiG-29 operates from Leh, but it is used in the Air-Superiority role and doesn’t carry a very large payload when it operates from there.

BTW, not yet in service, but the LCA went through the Leh test and did very well per reports that appeared in Vayu Aerospace and in newspaper reports as well..

“LCA TEJAS UNDERGOES SUCCESSFUL HIGH-ALTITUDE TRIALS AT LEH “
In the next line it goes as
“Reports from the trial location suggest that the current phase of flight trial was progressing with aircraft and systems performing well. Officials said the aircraft were soaked overnight in cold weather, with temperature around minus 20 degrees Celsius and successfully powered up next day for operation.”

interesting article on the MRCA commercial bids. This information on the validity period of the commercial bids submitted to the MoD was first stated by the German Dr. Matthias Schmidlin in this article

The parts on the currency fluctuation mostly affect the European OEMs. Gripen/Rafale and Typhoon all may be in a position to re-submit cheaper bids based on the drop in the Euro against the USD.

Vendors may get to revisit commercial bids

NEW DELHI — As field trials for India’s 126-aircraft Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) draw to a close, vendors vying for the program could get the opportunity to revise their pricing.

The Saab Gripen is completing its final field trials in Leh, while the Eurofighter is due to start weapons and other equipment tests as part of the third phase of trials in the U.K. and Germany next month. Those trials are scheduled to be completed on April 29.

However, this would mean that India will have officially missed the April 28 decision deadline set for the competition. Effectively, this means that vendors can now reprice and revise their bids, since the request for proposals says commercial offers are valid for two years from the date of submission (which was March 28, 2008), and after that date bidding can be reopened for those vendors shortlisted after technical trials and evaluation.

The six bidders are Sukhoi’s MiG-35, Dassault’s Rafale, Eurofighter, Saab’s Gripen, Boeing’s F/A-18E/F and Lockheed Martin’s F-16.

Once all trials are completed, it will take two months of tabulation and then submission to the Defense Ministry, an air force spokesman told Aviation Week. One original equipment manufacturer (OEM) says it is likely the procedure would take place only in September.

Some vendors have expressed concern that the MMRCA project will be dependent on the political and economical situation, and may take more time for clearance, barring unforeseen circumstances like a security challenge.

“We do hope the process moves faster,” one OEM executive said. “However, we feel it might take time until India’s economy starts on a growth track of approximately 10 percent [gross domestic product], so that politicians can justify the expenditure to their political counterparts.”

While the Ministry has not yet commented on the possibility of repricing, vendors’ opinions on the prospect vary.

“We will redefine our bid, which will be cheaper than the one we submitted two years ago, as we were not as smart then as we are now,” one vendor said, declining to be identified. “We are more competitive and stronger now.”

Another commented, “Technical evaluation is an air force matter. We will try and ensure we hit all wickets. We haven’t made a decision on repricing.” “This, of course, presupposes that the repricing will be called for,” another vendor noted.

And another OEM added that currency fluctuation over the past two years will be another factor to consider.

is that the cockpit of a Mirage-III or V ?

http://blog.francetv.fr/capitaine-romain/index.php/2010/03/20/174190-ce-jeudi-deux-officiers-indiens-ont-vole-sur-rafale–

I hope my translation is better than the Google’s.

will a simulator ride be all that they do to demonstrate the Rafale’s weapons trials ? I don’t think that it will be all. The Adl’A will have to probably fly the B301 demonstrator, demonstrate the RBE-2 AESA modes and then do some MICA, AASM and maybe some GBU trials.

Sounds like a practical idea.
Get training from the US or other NATO countries, and I’m sure there is a healthy maintenance system in place.
Lots of places to send engines and other bits for overhaul. Plus spares are bound to be less expensive (and more available) than with less numerous newcomers.
Should be lots of spares available in a few years when everyone upgrades to F-35s or whatever.

Besides, I’d guess Romania has other uses for its money than buying fighters.
Less fun and less prestigious than buying new but money is tight.

The question is how many airframe hours will be left on those 24 second-hand F-16s. the USAF has been flogging its fleet heavily owing to the Iraqi and Afghan engagements and I wonder where they’ll find 24 airframes with decent number of hours left on them..AMARG may be raided. Air National Guards won’t be happy if they lose any of their F-16s, so my guess is they’ll be drawing them from the boneyard, reconditioning them and then selling them to the RoAF.

But with $800 million being spent on these 24 F-16s and their related infrastructure, training and initial support, I do hope for the Romanians that these last them a decade at the very least. Their maintenance will certainly not be too easy as they’re older and that will mean that the fleet will take a while to stand up and attain a decent availability rate.

Aren’t there any European MLU’ed F-16s on the second-hand market ? Chile snapped up a few from the Dutch at rock-bottom prices.

To those in the know, which would be better ? MLU F-16s from Belgium, Netherlands or USAF F-16s from their boneyard ? Not that it matters now, but some of the EU F-16 users have been shaving off their F-16 fleets quite a bit.