I fully agree with matt and Samsara that the fears of Tejas being sidelined or given a few “token” orders are indeed valid. If Gripen is selected, then the “death knoll” for Tejas would be even more certain. However, even some jet other than Gripen can also “jeopardize” the Tejas’ induction in large numbers.

See, what Army did to Arjun, IAF can do on the Tejas. They’ll say something like, “Uh…look, we need new generation fighters. Tejas is more like a 4th gen MiG-21. We need more Eurofighter kinda jets.” {This would actually validate my conjecture, that the light-medium-heavy theory is rubbish (designed to justify MRCA imports), and all air-forces ultimately come to the conclusion that they should maintain only deep-strikers and multirole jets.}

When pointed out about their so called light-medium-heavy paradigm, IAF’ll say, “Hey look we ordered 40 Tejas Mk.1 and some 100 Mk.2. Isn’t that sufficient ?”.

Then we all will ask, “But….but wasn’t Tejas meant to replace 300 MiG-21s ? (forget replacing MiG-23s and MiG-27s as we don’t expect that much from you). And besides, don’t you have an optimum requirement for 45 squadrons ? Forget increasing to 45 squads, given that all MiG-27s and many MiG-21s are up for retirement in the coming decade, you’ll spend the next decade in just replenishing your fleet. Add to that, your MiG-23s are already retired now. So, don’t you think you need something like 400 Tejas units in all ? In addition to the 126 MRCAs ? Do you know that PLAAF’s J-7 fleet alone roughly equals IAF’s entire fleet ? Shri. Naik himself said PLAAF is 3 times larger than IAF.”

Then IAF may say, “Yes, all that is fine, but according to the Standing Committee Report 2013-14, new doctrines have to be adopted. We need new generation fighters. I told you Tejas is a glorified MiG-21, and we don’t need more than just 140 of those. We need (drooling) Typhoon Mk.3, we need PAK-FA MKI, and the new UCAVs that we saw at the exhibition that day…”

“Arey baba, you plan to fly MiG-21 bis till 2025. And Tejas Mk.2 is also a 4++ gen fighter in the class of Gripens and Rafales. And We are developing the MCA. And also UCAVs in a “collaboration” with Israel…What about all that ?”

“No, you don’t understand. Tejas is a light MiG-21 replacement…”

“Sigh…”

How often do you have these imaginary conversations with yourself? 🙂

Seriously, I’m not trying to be offensive, just seeing the funnier side of things, it was a great laugh reading all that 😀

http://www.news4jax.com/video/23325005/index.html

Bush killed the program in the late spring of 2001, before 9/11.

I don’t doubt the programme ever existed, what I do doubt is whether you can win a conventional war using just ICBMs. How many Minutemans would it take to achieve the same level of air campaign in GFI and GFII?

What about the issues of mistaking a conventional ICBM launch for a nuclear strike, or vice versa, disguising a nuclear ICBM launch as a conventional strike?

No wonder the idea was dropped.

Is this a picture of the WS-13 with thrust vectoring? And what’s the WS-14?

No, its already here. The Russians were playing dumb when they were proposed, saying they might mistake them for a launch against their assets. As a compromise, yet to be ratified by the Senate, we trade one conventional-ICBM launch for one nuclear weapon per the last treaty.

But isn’t it a bit of a waste to use ICBMs for conventional use? What can be done with ICBMs that can’t done by aircraft, particularly considering US dominance in their current theatres? It’s a bit overkill to use against a few Afghans in mountains isn’t it?