danrh, the IAF is quite secretive about its ASM inventory and is very selective about showing them.

Actually I was going to bring that up since yours truely did post the very first pic of an IAF Armat (with the Jags) on this very forum. 😀

What about the Sea Eagle? Would anyone have known that the Il-38s carry them?

Are the import of EL/L-8222s or Litenings mentioned? Griffin LGB kits? KAB-500/1500s?

What is actually formally documented is but a small fraction of higher profile equipment.

The SPIRI database purports to be of “major conventional weapons”. I belive this is the reason why items such as the EL/L-8222s, Litening II pods and Griffin kits are not mentioned. I did some cross checking and there is no mention of these things under the Israeli section and since I know Australia has purchased the ECM and targeting pods as well I checked there and also no mention. However its seems there are plenty of listings of AShMs so apparently they fall within the purview of the monitoring group. I note that the Russian section even details the sales of the Kh-31 missiles to the PRC yet no mention of the same to India. The Sea Eagles are not mentioned since they predate the 1995 start date of the database. Of course the SPIRI database is not the only source of information that details deliveries, inductions etc to the IAF. Other sources such as BR, Janes etc regularly break news of deliveries, induction services, displays etcs yet all that we hear for Kh-31 is that a) the delievery platforms are in service and that some missiles were apparently ordered in 1999.

Maybe the IAF is, as Harry says, just particularly paranoid about anybody knowing it has AShMs. Not quite sure why the great secrecy on this particular class of weapon when we regularly see parades of Brahmos, BMs, SAMs, displays by new planes, port visits by new ships, have requisite disclosure of the purchase of torpedos (if the there is any weapon that could be kept secret it would have to be submarine torpedos) even such relatively mundane items as new small arms or armoured recovery vehicles.

Anyway this really isn’t important and I apologise for having taking so much of everybody’s time. If anyone check the links I posted earlier to our db encyclopedia they will have noted that the missiles are still listed on the MKI just with a later in service date so anyone who would prefer to utilise them still do so.

cheers

Daniel

So I’ll assume from the lack of response that there are in fact no sources to back up claims that Kh-31 missiles are actually in service with the IAF. Okay then we can take them off the current MKI version in the Harpoon database. Thank you.

Daniel