Its good to know of a new program starting in a new place, but like Deino mentioned, the step up from a trainer to a fighter is huge, to say the least.

also, since the Turkish Aerospace Industries have not made any fighter as yet, to now work on a 4th or 5th generation fighter would be very ambitious and if I might say, well near impossible on their own. first of all, since Turkey is a F-35 customer, their AF will not want something that is a big step down from the F-35, so that means a fighter on par with or even better than the F-35 would be required because it could only possibly be operational in the late 2020s or even later than that, looking at long drawn fighter development projects the world over..

but then again, from the country’s point of view, nothing stirs the industrial and engineering base of the country like a prestigious fighter project. it spans such a wide gamut of technologies that it is bound to invigorate research and development into hitherto under-developed fields, which will only help Turkey’s economy and industrial base. another positive spin-off is that once you start developing your own fighter, it automatically means that supplier countries like the US (especially), which would previously bar export of their best non-degraded fighters, start to think twice..Japan tried that route with its scaled down 5th generation demonstrator project.

and more on the Mirage-2000 upgrade

Rajat Pandit , TNN 14 July 2009, 03:28am IST

NEW DELHI: Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left for Paris on Monday to further consolidate the ‘strategic partnership’ with France, the two
countries are now all set to ink the around Rs 10,000 crore deal (approximately $2 billion) to upgrade the Mirage-2000 fighter jets in IAF’s combat fleet. This will be the second mega defence deal to be signed with France in recent times after the ongoing mammoth Rs 18,798 crore project to construct six Scorpene submarines at Mazagon Docks in Mumbai.

With defence secretary Vijay Singh being part of the PM’s entourage to Paris, sources said the announcement about the upgrade of the French-origin Mirages is very much on the cards during the trip. The ‘differences’ over the upgrade project had been ‘resolved’ after almost two years of hard-nosed negotiations, which were bogged down for some time because French companies Dassault Aviation (aircraft manufacturer) and Thales (weapons systems integrator) wanted close to Rs 14,000 crore for the programme.

‘‘The two sides have now arrived at a reasonable price around Rs 10,000 crore. The first four to six Mirages will be upgraded in France, with the rest 50 or so being upgraded in India by Hindustan Aeronautics under transfer of technology,’’ said a source.

Under the upgrade, the entire airframe will be stripped down to be re-wired and re-equipped with new avionics, mission computers, glass cockpits, helmet-mounted displays, electronic warfare suites and of course weapon systems to extend and enhance the operational life of the multi-role fighters by around 20 years.

India had first inducted 40 Mirages in the mid-1980s, with over 20 more being bought in later years. IAF has had a ‘good’ experience with the fighters, which successfully carried out ‘targeted bombings’ during the 1999 Kargil conflict. Some years ago, IAF had even pitched for the advanced Mirage-2000-Vs for its gigantic $10-billion project for 126 new medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA).

The defence ministry, however, told IAF to go in for ‘a global tender’ for the MMRCA project, and France too closed its Mirage production line. Now, the French Rafale is competing with American F/A-18 ‘Super Hornet’ (Boeing) and F-16 ‘Falcon’ (Lockheed Martin), Russian MiG-35 (United Aircraft Corporation), Swedish Gripen (Saab) and Eurofighter Typhoon (consortium of British, German, Spanish and Italian companies) in the hotly-contested MMRCA race.

hardly new for India..the Klub missiles also did not perform as expected during trials..had these been Indian indigenous missiles, the Air Force or Army or the sensationalist media would’ve trash talked them into oblivion and they’d never even get inducted. just compare the number of tests and user trials that indigenous missiles undergo as compared to foreign ones. with the Israeli Crystal Maze missile, it failed once, second time it didn’t hit the target as close as required, and the third time it worked well. and yet it was inducted without so much as a word being uttered.

for the MRCA competition, with AMRAAMs, MICA, Meteors on offer with other platforms for the MRCA, it would appear that within the IAF, the discontent with Russian supplies would make sure that the MiG-35 doesn’t get selected. oh and by the way, the R-77 is not that cheap either..2 crore rupees for each R-77 translates to nearly $ 4,00,000 per missile.

Actually the F35 fleet is likely to be smaller. At the moment only 66 can safely be assumed to be bought because 66 tail numbers have been reserved. It might be that we do get more than that, but with the state of MOD finance, we won’t be getting all 150 planned.

However, they replace the Harriers. The Typhoons mainly replace the Tornado F3 and Jaguar etc. The fate of the replacement for the Tornado GR’s hasn’t been decided yet. They still have quite a bit of life in them.

indeed, those GR.4s will be able to serve till 2025 or thereabouts from what I read..but when they retire, that will be a large number of fighters to replace, and looking at Jackonicko’s post, maybe those 64 odd reserves will be used to replace them then. what else would they do with such a large number of reserves ? But then again, some of the older Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 fighters may find buyers, bringing down the number of reserves.

:rolleyes:

It would appear that India is doing a good job of spending the £1 billion in ‘aid’ that the UK provides every year.

That money would buy a lot of kit for our troops currently fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

oh ? conveniently forget all the looting the UK carried out in the 1800s and 1900s, not to talk of all the Indian soldiers who died fighting a WWI and WWII that India itself had nothing to do with..:rolleyes:

it may very well be in a hot day high up in the mountains when you are also carrying their luggage and a bunch of goats.

what might the goats be for ?

This has a very special smell to it, much like the many made up stories from indian “journalists”. Is this Prasun K. Sengupta known for this kind of stories?

The original story is from Israel so I think it probably has some value to it, even if I think it is probably not the whole truth.

since when did people start swallowing the regurgitated crap that Sengputa serves as “indepth” articles ? his articles on the Indian ATV (Advanced Technology Vessel), MiG-29K, T-90, etc. were so detailed, and so obviously made up fiction, that it left very little credibility for its author..he has been caught plagiarising articles (Bill Sweetman’s stuff) in his articles on the Su-30MKI and the MiG-29K, has been caught fibbing about a DRDO radar being reverse engineered from a Polish radar (when in fact they were both developed as part of a JV) and despite being caught red-handed doing so and confronted with facts, he continues with these articles that are just fiction for the most part..I treat his articles as such- just pure masala entertainment with very little or no basis in truth or facts. I’d suggest you treat it the same.

Are only 40 Jags to be upgraded to DARIN 2? If so is this the 40 NAVWASS equipped airframes supplied directly by BAe? No plans for upgrading any of the DARIN 1 aircraft to DARIN 2 standard?

why do a DARIN-II standard upgrade for these DARIN-I Jags when a DARIN-III upgrade is in the works ? My guess is that the DARIN-I Jags will get directly upgraded to DARIN-III standards.