21AnkushRead the cited source. Its Aviation Week & Space Technology, and hence very reputed. You can always ask someone who have that issue.
the deal for the Mirage upgrade has NOT been finalised, and there has been NO sale of ASRAAMS to India to date. Even a respected journal like AW&ST regularly goofs up and when I did read about IAF and ASRAAMS, it was related to a RFP to arm its Jaguars since the MAGIC-II’s shelf life was nearly over.
21AnkushMay be true with Russian weapons. But even the Hawk is much less costly when built in India. So was the Jaguar. 🙂
how do you know ? do you have any figures to back up your claim?
21AnkushIndia is developing the BARAK II SAM with israel. I cannot see why we will not co-develop future AAMs to equip our F 16s and other aircrafs.
So the Radar of the NG will be ready in a year, while the MRCA evaluation is undergoing this year ! The F 16 IN already has a radar the APG 80 and it will be the real thing that will participate in the tests.
why have a JV with Israel when India is already conducting test shots of the Astra BVR missile? IAF may want to integrate it with the MRCA if its successful, and for that it’ll require the source codes for the radar..I’m quite sure that the US will not part with it.
21AnkushRafale may get it by the time it enters service for IAF (if selected), but at what cost ? And also the Americans have a huge lead in AESA at the moment and the Europeans have a lot of catching up to do. Meteor can probably be used witht he Falcon and SH as well, It is already okayed for the Gripen. India will probably be cleared for AIM 120D sale as well, if we push hard enough ie. There is no indication that the F 16 IN will be the same as the Block 60s, that is we may get the APG 79 instead of the APG 80 with it.
There are also other differences, the Rafale still needs the Mirage to designate its A2G targets for PGMs and the Typhoon is poor as an A2G platform at the moment, and as pointed out eslewhere, with F 35 being available as a striker for most of its memeber nations, A2G integration on the typhoon will be pitifuly slow at best.
yes the US is way ahead of others when it comes to AESA, but everyone is not starting at the same level that the US did, since they were the pioneers in that field..others (like Selex of UK) have learnt and already have AESA radars of different types in production. the US Coast Guard is looking at getting Selex AESAs on its C-130s instead of any American variant. so obviously its not like their AESA is primitive compard to any American AESA.
then again, considering that the US refused to share radar source codes with UAE, after developing the APG-80 with their money, I highly doubt they’d transfer or share any major technology related to the AESA set with India.
On the other hand, Thales and Dassault, Saab, MiG, have all claimed that they will transfer all relevant technology for the AESA with India. its upto the IAF to decide how important that is for it.
21AnkushIndia is already in the process of acquiring ASRAAM for its Mirage upgrade and Litening is already in service.
the deal hasn’t even been finalised, so what makes you think that India is already in the process of acquiring ASRAAMs ? I haven’t seen a single report on thta, except for a link you gave to Wikipedia, which itself is based on hearsay about a “possible” order.
What is the French Air Forces commitment to Rafale, Under 290 planes for the Army and Navy total according to the Rafale thread. And that compared to thousands of Falcons in service world wide, and even when the U.S retires the Falcon, the numbers remaining in service with other nations will far exceed the Rafale.
it is the same commitment that the French showed to the Mirage-2000..there are upgrades available to it, upto the -9 standard, which is as good as the Block 50/52 Falcons.
In all the excitement you may have forgotten that India is being offered the Gripen IN which is tailor made for India, according to the SAAB website. It is not the normal NG that we are getting. So put that down into ‘not in production for vendor nations category’
meaning that the weapons fitted will be Israeli and India can put whatever avionics it has developed indigenously on the Gripen NG. that doesn’t mean that Sweden is not going to procure any NGs (although a tiny number as per current predictions), which may differ avionics wise or weapons wise, but not in any other significant way.
Seriously if you are looking at the Eurofighter and RAF threads in this forum and forums elsewhere a large number of Brits would rather have more Litenings than Typhoons. We had one poster wanting to pull out of the EF commitment. The Typhoon is an air superiority fighter, and India is needing a Strike aircraft more than anything, we already have the air superiority aspect covered with the MKI and the future PAK FA.
the Typhoon is darned expensive, surely the most expensive of the MRCA candidates and if the IAF deems its A2G capabilities to be not of the level it desires, they will not buy it. No need to go into a diatribe about Europeans here wanting F-35s in the Typhoon’s place. it supports a large skilled European workforce, and is a strategic industry and only a fool would support a pull-out of such a program. at least that program allows Europe to not be steamrolled by the US into letting its military fighter development industry go into the sunset.
besides, there are lots of American posters here who don’t particularly like the Falcon or the SH, for whatever reasons..
21AnkushMore Potential for growth will also mean more expenses in the future. India has a long history of upgrading aircraft on its own. So if the F 16 upgrades are not going to come from Lockheed in 20 years am sure we can do it ourselves. 😀
With a wee bit of Israeli Help 🙂The difference is like a 25-30 year old worker at his prime (f 16) and a 12 year old (rafale) who we have to pay for school and college for his future and evolution !
no, the difference is like that between a 50 year old worker (F-16), who has already had several surgeries done to allow him to carry more, whom his own country will not employ, as there are younger, more capable guys around (F-22 and F-35), so he has to feed himself only by seeking employment in other countries, based on his price and the political pressure his country will apply. There is only so much more that surgery will achieve on his frame.
compared to that are younger contemporaries that haven’t yet had reworked airframes, strengthened and re-engined to allow more to be carried, and are all employed and will remain in the employment of their national air forces (except for the MiG-35, which is somewhat similar to the F-16), thus making upgrades more affordable and frequent in the long run.
In the end it all depends on what the IAF wants and how much the Govt. will be willing to pay. India won’t necessarily plonk for the cheapest fighter, as could be seen from the AJT deal, where the MiG-AT and L-159 were available at much cheaper price than the Hawk, yet the Hawk was chosen.
21AnkushIf so then the Rafale will be Dollars 100-110 a piece, charging us for the new AESA radar etc.
the US developed the APG-80 AESA on the Block 60 SPECIALLY for the UAE..there was no domestic requirement for an AESA radar on the F-16 and no other export order either. so UAE paid for the development of that. on the other hand, Thales has been building the RBE-2 AESA for a long time now and its paid for by France..if there isn’t an export order for the Rafale, it doesn’t mean that there will be no Rafale F.3 with AESA RBE-2. so, they won’t push the development cost on export customers alone..you think Switzerland (which also is being offered the Rafale F.3 variant) will be asked to pay for the development of the RBE-2 AESA ? if not, then why will India be?
21AnkushOf course Indian built examples would be much cheaper………..Which, will require a high Indian Content.:D
there is no guarantee for that..HAL built Su-30MKIs were (at least initially, not sure about right now) a little costlier than imported Irkut built Su-30MKIs..
21AnkushIt’s funny that India should feel disturbed by SAAB selling AWACS to Pakistan to the point of automatically rejecting the Gripen but at the same time blatantly ignoring LM sale of F-16 Block 52s to Pakistan and cheerfully welcoming F-16IN.. :confused: Something in that logic seems to fail.
Flex, its his own logic. the fact is that except for Russia, every single other contender has in the recent past sold something major to the Pakistanis. US with Block 50s and all the rest at discounted rates, Germany (and hence EADS) are to sell U-214s, Sweden has sold Ereieyes, France was offering the Merlin and is in talks to sell avionics packages for the JF-17. even Russia is in a round-about way selling the RD-33s. besides, as per most reports, the Gripen NG is still in the running and if its eliminated, it should be mostly because Sweden is a political lightweight amongst US, Russia, France and UK, and frankly, politics will play a big role in this competition..
21AnkushSorry, but most of benefit of the F-16 line disappeared with the block 60
-> Very few have been build
-> Very expensive (VERY close to the Rafale price)
I hoping and praying that the F-16IN proves to be as expensive as the Block 60ones they sold to UAE, but I’m not sure if they included the development cost in that price as well..those Block 60 Desert Falcons were priced around $ 80 million apiece !
21AnkushTrue.
But India refuse to buy it even if incredible proposition from Dassault (full transfert of the production line etc etc).
Any upgrade of the Mirage would be quite expensive, closer and closer to the Rafale range.
the reasons were political..no Indian Govt. could allow such a huge purchase to be made as a single source vendor contract without allegations of kickbacks and ever since the Bofors scandal, Congress govt.s at least have been really allergic to any such arms scandal..
and when the other vendors were looked at, it became apparent that what they would offer would make the Mirage-2000 a little plain looking. so, Dassault decided to close the Mirage-2000 lines and offer the Rafale instead.
21AnkushThe first MRCA is expected to enter service in 2013-14 and the final by 2020. These are sparingly used readily available advanced Mirage 2000s which can be inducted right away. Its the sensible choice than upgrading the likes of MiG 29s if you ask me. These can serve for sometime to come and will allow us to retire the non Bison MiG 21s faster.
Btw it seems that only 30 odd of the UAE Mirages are the new 2000-9s. The others are older ones upgraded to the 2000-9 still older airframes.
upgrading MiG-29s to the standard that the IAF is doing, is a great idea, especially considering that 55 odd MiG-29s are being upgraded at a unit cost that is just about $15 million per unit. the reputation of the MiG-29 as an air superiority fighter was pretty good in the IAF, and it regularly trumped Mirages in DACT in the IAF. and till the MKIs entered service, they were the premier Air Superiority fighters in the IAF.
the fundamental MiG-29 is a great fighter in WVR, and its basic flaws were poor man-machine interface, poor range, poor avionics and the rather old RD-33 engines. all these are being taken care of with the new upgrade, and add to that multi-role ability..the BVR capability, with R-77 and Zhuk-ME, gives it about the same level of sophistication as Block 50 F-16s, at a price that is about 1/3rd that of even second hand Qatari Mirage-2000s..plus, they will have an increase in their Total Technical Life..
frankly, while the Indian Ministry of Defence goofed up on the price they offered, the Qataris were looking at an unrealistically high price for their Mirages, and the result is that they’re still unsold. second hand F-16s have been sold at much lower prices, although I do agree that they’ve been at max MLU’ed F-16s, nothing better.
21AnkushThe Gripen Demo supercruises!
“The flight was conducted over the Baltic Sea, my altitude was 28, 000 feet and the speed achieved was above Mach 1.2. Without using afterburner I maintained the same speed until I ran out of test area and had to head back to the Saab Test Flight Centre in Linköping.”
just hope it´s not to late for gripen in IAF…
what chances of it supercruising over the hot and humid Indian subcontinent ? very low I’d say..this supercruise in the cold environs of Sweden can hardly be applied to IAF operational philosophy. besides, it must’ve flown clean, and would hardly be able to supercruise with any meaningful payload.
21AnkushMirage 2000 was and is a fantastically dependable aircraft, but has a rather limited payload, range, and radar range.
I doubt the pilot can do his job after 12 hours in the cockpit of A-10, its probably a 50-50 he’ll do some friendly fire when he fall asleep on the fire button.
F-14D -my favorite interceptor got unemployed when Tu-22M got grounded 1989. Like djcross said, it was a hanger queen
not true. the Mirage-2000-5’s RDY-2 slotted array radar was one of the best mechanically scanned radars and is now possibly only bettered by the Captor and the APG-68(V)5. the RDY-3 improves upon the RDY-2 and besides, if Dassault ever really wanted, they could come up with a heavily modernised Mirage-2000 as well..the AESA RBE-2 is already flying on a Mirage-2000 test bed, and its Mirage-2000-9 variant did have some Rafale avionics on board, so its possible, but it would compete with the Rafale, and possibly hamper its sales, so it won’t happen.
nevertheless, I always hoped that Dassault would’ve built a Super-Mirage-2000 that would be updated with new structural composites, AESA and an updated M-53 Snecma engine with added thrust to compete with the latest block F-16s..that would be one sweet bird !! :diablo:
21AnkushAlong with a good deal to upgrade their existing fleet… that would be a pretty good force right there.
Nic
that deal to upgrade the existing 52 Mirage-2000 H/THs to the -5 standard should be signed sometime this year itself. the IAF ACM is on record as having stated that its nearing signature. and while its tempting to think of these superb Mirage-2000-9s, I doubt that the IAF would spend money on them, with the MRCA deal being on the forefront..
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