India has not spend $ 5 Billion on their FGFA program!
Its in the $ 2-300 mill range so far.

Pls do not post such uncheked nonsens here..

Well, what he said was that India should not be contributing the $5.5 billion towards the PAK FA development. And while you’re right, in that this payment has not yet taken place, it is however under negotiation.

Currently the final design and research and development contracts are under negotiation between the two countries. “These talks are expected to be concluded next year,” Sukumar says. The final design contract now being negotiated is pegged at $11 billion, with India and Russia sharing $5.5 billion each towards the cost of design, infrastructure build-up, prototype development and flight-testing. (AW)

In which case, even the $295 million PDC appears to have been a mistake.

It certainly makes sense for India to withdraw entirely from the project, wait for the development to conclude and then make an informed choice after evaluating the alternatives, which should ideally include the F-35A.

Given the Turkish SAM debacle that’s probably a wise move. I can only imagine the grief when you tell the US that you’d like your F-35 and PAK-FA to be able to communicate.

The Indian Navy is operating the P-8I; 8 ordered another 4 likely. Its also been interested in the E-2D Hawkeye. Also vying for Indian Navy contracts are the MQ-4C Triton and MQ-8B Firescout.

Sure is..
But the Indian MoD and AIF has firmly rejected it.

No they haven’t. At least not in this role i.e. naval fighter. The Indian Navy issued RFI’s for the F-35B and F-35C in addition to those for the Sea Gripen, N-EF, Rafale M. And from most public statements, the Navy’s is leaning towards the F-35. It’ll be a while before anything fructifies, since the IAC-2 is still in the design stage, but the interest is certainly there.

With regard to the IAF, it was firmly rejected only in the MMRCA’s context, i.e. as an alternative the aircraft in the running. Given the amount of time that has passed, even those opinions would have become somewhat more flexible now.

So India should pay for half of the development costs but get 15% of the development workshare? Doesn’t make sense from an Indian pov. if the Russians believe that India cannot contribute, then the share of the development cost must equal the workshare.

Else, just pull out from funding any development and follow the Su-30MKI model where only India-specific development is funded by India and follow the ToT and local license assembly model. Divert the rest of the saved funds to the AMCA which can be developed with a Western partner as a “consultant” the way Turkey is doing with Saab.

Question is, if ToT is marginal and work-share non-existent, why simply give away a contract, potentially worth over $30 billion? At the very least, there needs to be an competitive evaluation versus the F-35, on performance, offsets and cost.

The cracks are described as “minor” by JPO and Lockheed officials and were discovered in late August. According to Lockheed and the JPO, the F-35B full-scale durability test article had accumulated more than 9,400h of equivalent flight usage—which equates to about 17 years of operations–when the cracks were discovered. Testing was halted on 29 September “to conduct root cause analysis on discovered bulkhead cracks,” the company and the JPO say.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cracks-discovered-on-f-35b-bulkheads-391647/

:confused:

How so? Should be the equivalent of over 30 years of operations, if not more.

Concerns Rise As Indian Fighter Negotiations Drag On

NEW DELHI — India’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) contract with Dassault Aviation is not likely to be signed before April 2014, despite the Indian air force’s (IAF) concerns about maintaining its tactical air deterrent capability.

According to a defense ministry official, with national elections expected sometime in April, it is highly unlikely the multi-billion-dollar contract to buy 126 Rafale fighters will be concluded during India’s current fiscal year, which ends March 31. The program is India’s biggest-ever defense acquisition.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_10_15_2013_p01-01-626905.xml

order in 2017 only possible when flight trials and all related data is completed before that. which is not possible. look at Rafale time line.

The MMRCA flight trials were carried to verify advertised performance and therefore bolster fair competition. The same doesn’t apply to a non-competitive contract for product that’s not in production, as in the case of the PAKFA. And FYI, flight testing is a matter of a few weeks plus perhaps a few more to take care of logistics.

They are part of larger LRIP 8. if there was no LRIP 8 or Japanese order much larger than LRIP 8 than Japanese would have to wait many years more.

Produce evidence supporting that. Your ‘evidence’ so far has only managed to demolish your own argument (well done!). 😀

They are expendable because they cannot become true 5G fighters. F-22 is not expendable as it involove enormous cost of R&D and maintaining it. There isnt much investment in JF-17. It does not even have domestic engine.

Prove that China will not persist with a ‘pseudo 5G fighter’.

Ok so what kind of technology transferred happened in SU-30 or Hawk Trainer. incase of Hawk Trainer licensing should have helped in building basic and intermediate trainer. Key advantage of Yak-130 is easy to fly. so no need of basic and intermediate trainers.

The Su-30, Hawk and YAK-130 have nothing to do with the discussion.

F-35 is clearly more affordable thats what i stated. PAK-FA is well beyond IAF budgets at this point of time.

Then the IAF should go for the F-35. I’m glad to see such an… accommodating view from you.

Going back to 2007 there was plenty of evidence of Russia buying lots of aircraft in future. India just tom tom too much of buying this and that without signing or putting time period on that.. for example from 2007 evidence was clearly emerging that Yak-130 production will move to Irkut and engines to Salut. This is indication of large scale stable orders. in 2007 indication were clear of moving IL-476 production in digital format. so this is another indication of large scale orders. in 2007 indications were clear that Boeing and VSMPO. large scale titanium deals and Boeing engineering research center. (Russia will not allow its technical force for such projects unless there is dual benefit for its own industry/products). i can go over alot of things including largest composite making factory. these are simple facts of investments that will lead to orders in later years. PAK-FA orders will be several times larger as time progress and 4.5G fighters goes out of production.

^^ Lots of allusions. Zero specifics. Produce evidence of the Russian order of 550-800 PAKFAs i.e. ‘several times larger’.

They are not irrelevant as these things are decreasing importance of F-35 so less money available for F-35 production.

10 other leading airforces? what criteria are they leading. Most of them cannot even make a 4G fighter by themseleves. let alone anything with TVC.
F-18E is also good enough for USN for next 40 years. so why didnot India select that one. F-35 cannot become core untill it is more numerous in numbers than F-18E. India is very far away from PAKFA industrial/technological package. Your simply not even participating in development or flight tests.

Now you’re claiming that the F-35 order will be reduced. In any case, the only fighter in production for the USAF, USN and USMC for the next 25 years will be the F-35.

Air forces, leading or otherwise, don’t manufacture aircraft, 4G or otherwise. That should be obvious to even someone like you.

The F-18E was passed over for the MMRCA after an open competition. The decision to acquire the PAKFA/FGFA like most contracts to Russia that preceded it, was made on a non-competitive basis without an intensive evaluation of other solutions. But if the industrial package is minimal and given the affordability issues that you’ve raised, the F-35 will require much closer scrutiny as a possible alternative.

The bottom line is that Rafale is now in single vendor situation for past 2 years and all flight trials have completed by IAF along with weopon testing even before that. only negotiation is TOT and price.
Now in case of PAK-FA. no weopon and flight trials done by IAF. There is not even negotiations for procurement. so how you can even claim delivery before 2022?

Two years is hardly a huge period. And flight testing is at most a question of six months.

You overlooked that is part of LRIP 8. You are overlooking the industrial supply chain formed in past 7 LRIPs. There is no such thing in case of PAK-FA. There is no chance of accommodation for IAF in LRIPs of PAK-FA for Ruaf.

There’s no weaseling out this one. You punctured your own argument with your link, which proved that the lead time for a 5 gen fighter was not significantly different from a 4.5 gen aircraft.

so you think you can create 5G fighter without considering the overall competence of aviation industry.

I asked for evidence of J-20 and J-31 being expendable programs, not pointless conjecture.

They are not sharing the privilege but more dependency on JSF industrial chain with super expensive upgrades and life long profits for LM.

As if the ‘privilege’ being ‘offered’ to India has no commercial implications. :rolleyes:

This 144 to 214 numbers floating around by India media. but even that affordability is in doubt.

Produce evidence about unaffordability. Not interested your doubts or opinions.

we can start another thread about next 20 years predictions. Just to give you clue of how forecasts are made by observations from satellites. It is not about increasing commodities production but hindering your competitors by using one against another.

now imagine whole Middleast decomposing into tribalism and Islamism in next 10 years. and the whole China/Korea/Japan dependency on CIS pipelines and railways. India will be extremely negative impacted both in financials inflows and resources.

Not interested in explaining how foolish that idea is.

Kindly produce concrete evidence of the Russian order for the PAKFA being ‘several times larger’ than the Indian one, without indulging in wild guesses.

simple fact is USAF/USN can not afford those expensive JSF if they continue procurement of F-16/F-18. but it does not mean sustainment, upgrades and operational costs are decreasing for F-15/F-16/F-18. They will keep them for next 30 years.

TVC, higher altitude/top speed and supercruise are must. otherwise just retire F-22 and buy more JSF. There is no point in sustaining/upgrading small numbers of F-22. for next 30 years.

Its a ‘simple fact’ that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. What is related to the topic at hand is the fact that the F-35 will be at the core of the future USAF and USN fleets.

TVC/supercruise is not a ‘must’ if the terms on which they’re being acquired are not favourable. The F-22s are not in production and will be retired when they’re scheduled to be retired. The IAF and IN can live with the F-35 if they have to.