VnomadThat Parrikar went placarded is a sign that the balance is leaning toward the Fr side IMOHO.
I wouldn’t be so sure. From what I can gather Dassault’s move to bypass the formal channels and approach the PM’s office directly to push for the Rafale wasn’t well received in the MoD. The subsequent negotiations on cost, offsets, etc were pretty prickly as well.
So while I wouldn’t count the Rafale out, its not smooth sailing for the French either. A lot depends on the Navy – if they conclude that stealth is a necessary investment with compatibility with PacRim forces a further plus, the MoD is unlikely to oppose it. The comms interoperability & geospatial data-sharing agreements currently being negotiated between India and the US will also need to be concluded.
VnomadThe U.S. never offered the F-35 to India. Lockheed had asked to brief Indian officials on the F-35. India officially has expressed no interest (at least the MoD), and the U.S. Congress has given no consent on anything other than a briefing. Ash Carter stated that there was no specific reason that the U.S. wouldn’t offer the F-35, but that the decision was India’s. Whatever Admiral Arun Prakash stated, MoD has rejected previous suggestions. The Indian Navy previously requested information on the F-35 in 2011.
How interested the IN is, we’ll know soon enough I think; last date for submissions in 17th May. Adm Prakash’s comments are just an indicator on the likely prevailing thought within the IN (although this was long before the Rafale was ordered so that would also be a factor now). The Congress does need to approve every arms deal but with the Pentagon backing it (and the contract likely to slip away to the French otherwise) that shouldn’t be a major hurdle.
VnomadThe US Government have repeatedly blocked Lockheed Martin from offering the F-35 to the Indian Air Force, it was never offered in any of the multiple RFI´s that the IAF sent. There´s a reason why LM is offering a ten ton plus Viper in this recent “single engine made in India saga” and not Dave A, the reason being it was blocked from doing so by the State Dpt/Pentagon (choose).
The IAF has never sent RFI for the F-35 and LM has never been blocked by the Pentagon or State Dept (where did you get that info from)? If anything, the Pentagon made it explicitly clear that they were open to including India in the JSF consortium (I’ve posted the quote by Ashton Carter).
They offered the F-16 because the line is going defunct, nobody else has any serious interest in the aircraft post 2020, and they see the opportunity to milk it for another decade (instead of writing off the infrastructure) if they can get India to buy in. Although with Parrikar exiting the MoD, its highly doubtful the MII single engine program will fructify.
Thanks, i wasnt aware of that.
Apparently the landing gear is underdesigned and the airframe cannot cope with the stresses involved in deck recovery.
Why?
The SH offers no significant capability advantage over the Rafale M while also lacking the commonality element; aside from unified maintenance/support, the Rafale is already being customized with Indian IFF, comms, weaponry etc.
The F-35 has very sizeable technical edge over its peers and as the newest type on the market its future-proof. The SH, notwithstanding some major backroom political deal, is unlikely to prevail against that.
Also, for the record the IN has in the past, expressed its preference for the F-35 over the SH.
KOLKATA: The Navy is interested in the F-35 fighter aircraft than the F-18, as our aircraft carrier [the first indigenous carrier being built at the Kochi shipyard] will not have the steam-catapult with which the F-18 takes off,” according to Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Arun Prakash said here on Monday.
“We are keen on the F-35 as they are operated with the ski-jump facility and are more compatible,” he said.
He, however, does not know whether the issue had been taken up by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee with the U.S. officials.
Did LM ever answered that particular RFI?
It did. Also made a presentation to the MoD with clearance from the Pentagon though it hadn’t come before the State Dept yet (who have no reason to block it).
US offers F35 to India as India-US Defence Cooperation grows
Lockheed Martin’s Vice President for Business Development Orville Prins told India Strategic that a presentation about the aircraft was made to the Indian Navy recently after it expressed interest in the newer generation of aircraft for its future carrier-based aircraft requirements.
The Indian Navy is buying 45 Mig 29Ks for the Gorshkov, or INS Vikramaditya, which it will get from Russia in 2012 and its first indigenous aircraft carrier. But for its second indigenous carrier, and possibly more in the future, the Navy is looking for a newer generation of aircraft as the carrier itself is likely to be bigger.
Although the best of the weapon systems in the US are developed by private companies, the funding for their research and development is provided by the Government which exercises full control on the resultant products and their sale to any foreign country. ToT is a serious issue and in most cases, technology, particularly source codes, is not shared even with Washington’s best allies in the West or East.
Lockheed Martin apparently made the presentation to India after authorization by the US Department of Defense (DOD), but Prins pointed out that the F 35 could be sold only after clearance from the US State Department, for which bilateral negotiations between New Delhi and Washington would need to be held once India expressed interest.
VnomadIs it really?
I did not see any announcements that LM has responded to the RFI…
Don’t forget that politics is important, more so than technical specifications.
It made a presentation to the Indian Navy after clearance from the US DoD.
Where is the political barrier to a sale to India? Keep in mind, the IN already operates P-8s as its primary ASW aircraft and is ordering Sikorsky S-70s for shipborne ops & looking at MQ-9C drones for maritime patrol. Also the US is providing design assistance for the aircraft carrier in development, will be delivering EMALS & AAG for it as well as E-2Ds for early warning.
That does not sound like F-35 to me… Also, although the F-35A seems to becoming affordable, the question for India will be whether F-35C (not to mention the B!) will become affordable.
Costs for all variants are dropping though the F-35A is obviously the cheapest. ToT & local MRO options are at least equivalent to that offered with the SH.
Perhaps this is why most news reports suggest that the two front runners are SH and Rafale, with Sea Gripen having a small chance of winning. I think the only thing that could strengthen the chances of Gripen M would be if Gripen won the single-engine contract for the IAF; there will be a lot of commonality and India would not have to build a dedicated assembly line for 57 jets for the Indian Navy, as would be the case if their Navy goes for the SH.
The Sea Gripen is a paper project at the moment. The Brazilians have withdrawn their interest and in any case even the Gripen E is scheduled to FOC only by 2026. Saabs pitch is further complicated by the existing MoD blacklist on Finmeccanica/Leonardo (Selex).
Vnomad24 T-50s for Iraq cost them $1.1 billion. Unlikely to be cheaper for Bulgaria.
Maybe get 18 of them. That should cost $825 mil at the same rate. Perfect fit for the Bulgarian budget. Will also be able to function as AJTs.
VnomadIt will still have no chance. This program will be decided between the BTX and the T-50.
Boeing should take this one comfortably. Practically speaking, the choice of a trainer makes very marginal difference to the capability of the graduating pilots. Meanwhile, LM’s Ft. Worth facility is just flowing over with business while Boeing has started laying off people at St. Louis (with the end approaching for the F-15 & SH production).
Boeing’s entry will meet the USAF’s criteria while allowing skilled manpower to be retained in Missouri. No brainer really (though they’d officially justify it on techno-financial grounds).
VnomadI would be nothing short of amazed if Lockheed was given the green light by the US Government to offer “Dave C” into this. This seems a cat fight between the Rafale M, the Mig-29K and the Super Hornet.
What objection would the USG have? They were amenable to it in the past – “There is nothing on our side, no principle which bars that on our side, Indian participation in the Joint Strike Fighter.” – Ashton Carter.
And this was in 2011, bilateral relations have progressed quite a bit since then. The Pentagon (particularly the PACOM) will certainly be championing such a deal.
The MiG-29K is not in the running. From the news that’s trickling out, both official and unofficial, the IN is facing some very serious issues with the aircraft. The Super Hornet will be hard pressed to compete with the Rafale M given the commonality factor. The only question is whether the elevators on the two carriers can accommodate the Rafale’s non-folding wings.
The F-35 is the only US aircraft that has a viable shot at the contract.
One question, can the INS Vikrant deal with something like the SH (or the F-35C) at full load?
In the absence of catapults neither can operate at full load. LM has run studies on the F-35C though I don’t know what the end result was.
WRT to the last RFI issued by the IN in 2010 –
Indian Navy Fighter RFI: Lockheed To Respond With Both F-35B & C
Lockheed-Martin plans to respond to the Indian Navy’s recent RFI for a new generation carrier-based figher with two parallel dockets on the STOVL F-35B and the carrier variant F-35C. While it was initially thought that the F-35B would be the variant offered (since it appeared a logical replacement for India’s Sea Harrier jump jets), Lockeed-Martin Biz Development (India) VP Orville Prins told me and a few other journalists today that Lockheed-Martin is conducting simulation and analysis studies to support the team’s supposition that the F-35C — built for a steam catapult launch off aircraft carriers — is also capable of short take-offs from ski-jumps. The simulation and analysis will take into account various stress and strain parameters. The RFI to Lockheed-Martin simply requested information on the F-35 as a potential future carrier-based asset for the Indian Navy, and did not specify a variant. While LM has provided the Navy with programme-level briefings it will shortly begin a round of technical briefings on both the F-35 variants it plans to offer.
Prins cannot ever resist a swipe at the Saab folks. Asked about the other potential contenders in the Indian Navy fighter competition, he scoffed, “The Sea Gripen? What are they talking about? That’s a paper plane.”
Vnomad^ That’s every chief of air staff of the RCAF in the last 20 years (i.e since 1997).
VnomadOpen Letter to the Prime Minister from Former Air Force Commanders
OTTAWA, Feb. 23, 2017 /CNW/ – This is the content of an open letter from Former Air Force Commanders to the Prime Minister.
Dear Prime Minister,
As former commanders of Canada’s air force, we respectfully but urgently ask that your government not proceed with the plan to purchase a fleet of Super Hornet aircraft as an interim measure pending the eventual replacement of our venerable CF-18 fighters. It is our firm belief that the interim strategy is ill-advised, costly and unnecessary. Most important, it would significantly impair the Royal Canadian Air Force for years to come and ultimately damage the nation’s defence posture. The situation is complex, but our call for dropping the Super Hornet buy is based on some compelling facts, which we offer for your consideration.
First, we have serious misgivings about the use of a “capability gap” as the basis for your interim plan. Your government’s newly created policy calling for the Royal Canadian Air Force to meet its NATO and NORAD treaty obligations concurrently does not reflect a real and sudden change in the strategic situation. In our experience, it has been decades since Canada had sufficient fighter aircraft to meet all our commitments simultaneously. Over the years the air force, by judiciously balancing strategic risks and available resources, has managed its operational contributions reasonably well. We certainly welcome any initiative that promises to close the longstanding capability gap, but purchasing eighteen Super Hornet aircraft would in fact exacerbate the gap in the near to mid-term by imposing a heavy burden on the RCAF’s existing resources without producing a meaningful increase in fighter availability.
Although the Super Hornet does have some commonality with our current CF-18s, it is a different airplane, requiring its own training system for pilots and technicians, as well as new flight simulators, logistic support and maintenance organizations specific to the Super Hornet. The air force would have to draw personnel from the existing CF-18 fighter fleet (usually its most experienced people) to help bring into service a new and more complex fleet of fighter aircraft. But that would not be enough. It would be necessary to recruit, train and qualify several hundred new technicians and dozens of pilots. Recent experience indicates that the RCAF would face difficulty in achieving this; it can take four to five years from recruitment to produce fully trained, operationally ready pilots and specialists for advanced fighter aircraft. We foresee that bringing in an interim fleet would create serious practical problems of this kind.
Quite apart from such technical issues, we are aware that buying, operating and supporting an interim fleet of Super Hornets would be an expensive proposition, with cost estimates ranging from $5-$7 billion. We therefore ask that your government seek a better way of keeping the RCAF operationally effective until its fleet of CF-18s is replaced with a modern fighter.
To this end, we respectfully recommend that three important initiatives be undertaken.
First, the RCAF should be given the necessary resources to conduct an aggressive recruiting and training process to eliminate existing personnel shortfalls and to provide for the interim period leading to CF-18 replacement.
Second, if your government feels compelled to acquire additional fighters for the interim, it should seriously examine the prospect of purchasing so-called legacy Hornets (i.e. basically the same as our current CF-18s) that are increasingly becoming available as Canada’s partner nations replace their older Hornet fleets with the F-35. For example, both the United States Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force will have surplus F-18s that are very close in configuration to our own. These would require very little modification to make them essentially identical to the CF-18, having the same operational effectiveness and excellent safety record as today’s fleet. The capability exists in the Canadian aerospace industry to do the necessary modifications. The acquisition cost would be a fraction of a Super Hornet buy. Of critical importance, all the training, logistics and infrastructure needed to support the additional CF18s are already in place, and the larger CF-18 fleet would fill the operational capability gap in the interim. All of this would be achieved without the cost, delay and disruption of burdening the RCAF with a second fleet of fighters.
Finally, and emphatically, we urge the government to proceed without further delay to implement the open and fair competition that you promised for replacement of our CF-18s. Completing this within the next few years is entirely feasible, and it would allow for a faster, more effective and much less costly transition to full operational service by the CF-18’s eventual replacement.
We offer these recommendations based on our collective experience of many years of serving Canada’s air force, with the sole purpose of bringing to your attention some important realities regarding the future of the RCAF and the nation’s defence. We look to you for wisdom in resolving the matters that we have placed before you.
Sincerely,
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Larry Ashley
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Yvan Blondin
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Lloyd Campbell
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Bill Carr,
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) André Deschamps
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Dave Huddleston
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Dave Kinsman
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Steve Lucas
General (Ret’d) Paul Manson
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Don McNaughton
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Ken Pennie
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Fred Sutherland
Lieutenant-General (Ret’d) Angus Watt
VnomadIncredible — are the Canadians really going to do this!?
Lets wait until the Canadian govt is presented with the cost figures for the Super Hornets. The political wrangling after that should be quite interesting.
VnomadThe RFI doesn’t mention a twin engine requirement. Quite deliberately. The Gripen M’s prospects are still bleak but the F-35, I suspect, is very much in the running.
VnomadHere’s how the Air Force is fixing the F-35’s moving target problem
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force’s F-35A, in its current iteration, can’t hit a moving target — at least without a human manually directing the bomb to its destination.
The service plans to change that over the next year by adding a new weapon, Raytheon’s Enhanced Paveway II (GBU-49), which it hopes to integrate into the F-35’s arsenal in time for full combat capability.
The GBU-49 wasn’t originally included in the Block 3F weapons loadout, which, along with new software, will make the joint strike fighter fully mission-capable. The service decided to incorporate it within the last six to nine months, said Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, director of the Air Force’s F-35 integration office.
“The ability to hit a moving target is a key capability that we need in current close-air support fight, and the GBU-49 is a great solution for the F-35 and, frankly, for all of our legacy platforms to hit these moving targets,” he said during a February interview.
According to the F-35 Joint Program Office, a Block 3F F-35 is supposed to be able “to search, detect, track, ID and engage multiple stationary and moving surface targets in clear and adverse weather.” At the time the services formed the F-35’s requirements, they believed they could use a cluster munition to meet the moving target objective, but those weapons were banned under an international treaty, said F-35 JPO head Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan.
“The U.S., by treaty, is not allowed to use those weapons anymore,” he told reporters in February. “So when that weapon left the inventory, we were left without a weapon that could hit moving targets.”
Instead of relying on weapons like the GBU-49 with a built-in ability to prosecute moving targets, many combat aircraft employ electro-optical targeting systems, or EOTS, with “lead-laser guidance” — which calculates how far a weapon should travel beyond the target’s current location in order to hit it. However, the F-35 EOTS was designed when that tech was still in its its infancy, so while the system can find a moving target, lock onto it and track it, an F-35 pilot still has to predict where a target will move and aim there, Pleus said.
The GBU-49, however, has lead-laser capability built into its front end, so it doesn’t need to rely on the EOTS system for that data, Pleus said. “All it requires is a laser spot on the moving target and the bomb itself will produce the lead necessary to hit the moving target.”
The JPO hopes to finish GBU-49 integration work by the end of calendar year 2017, Bogdan wrote in testimony submitted to Congress in February.
It already has a head start because the weapon’s flight characteristics, outer mold line and aircraft interfaces are very similar to the GBU-12 currently used by the F-35A, which also reduces integration cost. In answers to emailed questions from Defense News, the JPO noted that the GBU-49 integration and lab testing has already been completed and verified.
And because it can leverage GBU-12 flight test data, the program office is not required to conduct flight tests of the GBU-49 to validate its handling and separation characteristics — although the JPO stated it could conduct some F-35A flights with GBU-49 “on a not-to interfere basis with the completion of the development program.”
VnomadOf course but for now it’s limited to 2 short range GBU-12s and JDAMs.
I don’t know if the F-35 can get better GPS target coordinates than the F-22 thanks to its EOTS. Not sure…
The F-35 will have the JSOW & GBU-39 available with the Blk 3F software, which will be rolled out to the fleet in less than a year.
VnomadI think you will find that where weapons sales are concerned, Sweden suffers from a condition that is absent in USA, Russia, France, UK. Its weapons exports policy is ethical. As far as I know it refuses to supply weapons to Saudi Arabia due to human rights abuses etc.
SAAB Erieye
VnomadWhat do you mean a race of people?
My mistake. Should have called it religion, since not all Jews are Semites and not all Semites are Jews. My point remains unchanged.
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