It increasingly appears that rather than a development partner India is ultimately just a financier and customer for the PAK-FA with little significant design or development input. Far from a Eurofighter-style collaborative effort.:(

If not for the TOT offered here I’d have viewed the American offer of the F-35 to India just as favorably as this. At this rate I can’t really see how HAL will ever gain the capability to independently develop an indigenous front-line fighter.:(

If you’d paid attention, @ the Farnborough Air Show 2010, Pogosyan declared “the Indian version [of the PAK-FA] will differ [from the Russian] in software only”, however the Indian side obviously pushed for a greater workshare (given that they were de facto bank-rolling the project), and that stance changed to:

Pogosyan denies that New Delhi is simply providing funding for Russian designers to produce a modified aircraft for the Indian air force’s requirements.

He says India is bringing its own engineering input to the joint variant, although he declines to detail New Delhi’s contribution beyond saying it covers aspects of airframe design, software development and other systems.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/paris-russias-pak-fa-fighter-shows-promise-357476/

As thing stand, the 2-seater will be a true JV, with HAL having full access to design, development and IPRs (hence Sukhoi training their engineers), though the engine may have ToT limitations. The 2-seater (~48) will also be manufactured in India from the ‘ground-up’ like the latest indigenous MKIs. AfaIk, the IAF’s single seaters (~166) will be produced in Russia. So do try to keep up, Witcha.

Also, you might think the Indians are setting up a GaN HEMT production line in St. Petersburg to manufacture a active array for the FGFA’s radar…….the rest of us think it’s a JV for cellular infrastructure and broadband WiMAX base stations…and stop asking absurd questions about G-suits and PAK-FA’s flight performance.

Congratulations to Austin, whose disinformation on the FGFA has now gone viral!!YAAAAY!!

http://lenta.ru/news/2011/11/23/fgfa/

Why no hi-res of ’53’? What’s the big secret?

T-50-3 take off & landing (T-50-1, in-flight :D):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dETxLpoC4W8

There were two major mistakes the Bush presidency made in ‘The War on Terror’. Firstly was the (understandable) knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan without a clear political goal to not only destroy AQ, but to dismantle their support structure in Pakistan- which in turn would mean putting huge political, financial and even military pressure on the pakistani govt. to deny the Taliban a safe haven and complicity from the ISI- only then could a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign be initiated in A-Stan. This last point has still not been achieved 10 years on with the USA’s so-called ‘frenemy’.

Iraq, imho, was an opportunistic adventure to rid the region of a despotic tyrant once and for all, install a friendly regime that would favour Western infrastructure and petrochemical contractors and an effort to hedge against over-reliance on Saudi Arabian oil. Also, the long term goal was to foster a modern, democratic , secular nation state that would be a strategic bulwark against Iran, friendly to Israel and a prototype for the future course of the Islamic world. Much of these misguided neo-con ideals stemmed from the hubris of being the World’s sole ‘superpower’. Once again it remains to be seen how many (if any) of these goals will be met.
The Iraq experience certainly dictated the terms and nature of Franco-British intervention in Libya.

…and no Quad, even the India friendly Bush wouldn’t have secured a US contender for the MMRCA downselect- quit babbling the “natural manure” will ya.

@ Nicolas10, so it’s centreline fuel tank or L3 pod (but not both);

@ Twinblade, yeah the current location seems to be a bit of a hasty & clumsy solution, any word on CFTs for the IAF?

I wonder how the two contenders’ Low-Level ride compares.

Maybe I got my wires crossed, sorry. I just find it unusual (and unlikely) that MBDA would offer to integrate Taurus on the Su-30MKI but not on the prospective IAF Typhoon.

European consortium MBDA has offered their 300 km-range Taurus stand-off missile system to the Indian Air Force (IAF) for its fighter jets such as the Su-30MKI.

“We have received a Request for Information (RFI) from the IAF for a stand-off long range missile from the IAF and we have offered the Taurus missiles as we feel that it meets all the desired requirements,”

http://www.india-defence.com/reports-5115

I wonder if they’ll integrate BrahMos 2 on the EF (it’s supposed to be considerably smaller than the BrahMos 1), 600km range @ M6- v. nice indeedy!!….but I guess the Super-30 will be its primary platform.

@Wingex, firstly, you need to understand this is not an airborne radar with the functionality of say a downscaled NG L-band AESA aboard ‘Wedgetail’, nor is it the anti-stealth ‘silver bullet’ like what Carlo Kopp says it is. You need to look how the system will be employed aboard the Su-35S in the near future. Most likely it will complement the formidable ‘Irbis’ X-band radar. When the pilot/software suspects a VLO target @ BVR it will conduct a short, focused search of the area with the L-Band active array, if confirmed the ‘Irbis’ will then direct a track beam @ the target to compensate for the L-Band’s low resolution.

The ‘Irbis’ is immensely powerful (~20kW peak power) and the L-band affords the Su-35S pilot long range detection and the ability to engage a stealth fighter @ a significant BVR- which is in itself crucial for the survivability of the ‘reduced RCS’ (though non-stealth) Su-35S.

For the PAK-FA the integration of the L-Band array will be much more sophisticated & automated, operating in conjunction with the X-Band (later Ka-Band conformal) AESAs, EO-DAS and ECM/ESM/EW suite, so as to leave the smallest possible electronic ‘footprint’ in order not to compromise the PAK-FA’s stealth.

When ’51’ was presented to PM Putin for the first time @ Zhukovsky last year, Pogosyan spoke candidly of PAK-FA’s design philosophy and how important stealth was for it’s operational effectiveness including engagements “at the greatest possible distance”.
These are just my speculations, but I’d like to take the middle ground between ‘just for IFF’ (as the current, open source literature admits to) and the ‘all singing, all dancing stealth terminator’ like some with an agenda would have you believe.

Here’s what P.Butowski wrote in AI, 10/11:

The complete N036 radio-location systems comprise five radars —
the front X-band (centimetre) radar. two small NO36B X-band side radars and two L-band (decametre) N036L radars mounted in the wing leading edges, and used only for target identification and IFF.

The N036 radar is a main part of the Sh121 MIRES (Mnogofunktsyonalnaya Integrirowannaya Radio Elektronnaya Sistema — multi- function integrated radio-electronic system); its second component, developed by KNIRTI at Kaluga, is the L402 integrated ECM system, but this was not displayed at MAKS. NIIP’s Head, Yuri Belyi, said the three front radars are already assembled, including two for stand tests and one to be fitted in T-50-3 later this year. Two more radars are being assembled at NIIP and the GRPZ facility at Ryazan is preparing for series production.

Work on the N036 radar is divided into stages. According to Belyi, stage-one work is concentrated on the forward X-band radar and its integration with the ECM and other systems. During the second stage the L-band, followed by the N036B side X-band radars, will be produced. It’s possible that Indian companies will be tasked with making the X-band side radars under the common FGFA programme while a pod- mounted Ka-band (millimetre) radar is included in future plans.

Polyot, based in Nizhny Novgorod, presented the S111-N coded communication system for data exchange with other aircraft plus ground and airborne command posts. According to official information, the S111-N has “much better functional, operational and economical properties than the TKS-2M system” used on the Su-27.

PiBu’s constant referral to the L-band as a ‘radar’ complex adds to the confusion. So I guess IF the L-Band arrays are used for “target identification (detection?)” in the conventional sense, then I assume they’d be employed to cue the EO-DAS system, as L-Band could not provide the necessary accuracy for a missile firing solution.

The main NO36 has 1,522 T/R modules, btw.