Akash (Sky) Air Force mess, in New Delhi

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057212

Forces sharpen satellite vision
DNA Correspondent
Saturday, October 07, 2006 01:50 IST

Email Article Print Article
Most Emailed Articles RSS Feed
Most Viewed Articles Search This Site

NEW DELHI: The aerospace command being considered by the Indian military will consist of several components, including dedicated military satellites for the three services, and data flow from the existing Indian Remote Sensing Satellites.

The secrecy-shrouded Defence Image Processing and Analysis Centre located in Delhi cantonment, which currently analyses all satellite data for the military, will become the depository for all incoming data.

By the time the aerospace command comes into being, a sizeable number of Indian weapon systems would be using satellite navigation to home in on enemy targets, sources said.

At the recent IAF exercise codenamed Gagan Shakti in western India, satellites were used to an unprecedented degree in dogfight exercises. The IAF employed satellites to detect intruding fighters before engaging them.

Does this mean the IAF has a realtime satellite surveillance capability to track fast moving fighters??

The Mirage 2000-9 is nothing but a UAE specific designation for a further modernised 2000-V. Thales/ Dassault explain it away as saying that the Dash-9 is more strike oriented. Some literature also calls the Dash-9 as Dash 5 Mk II.
Anyways, you are correct, if you see Thales/ Dassaults offer to India- it seems moreorless equal to whatever they currently have for the Dash-5, ie the 9 standard, though India I wager will not spend its coin on expensive Black Shaheens etc.

The program was cancelled due to American refusal to release the engine along with every other piece of American technology the Lavi depended on.

Besides if it were unaffordable for Israel who had unlimited US aid then how in hell is the Lavi design affordable for China?

The issue was that the US basically decided that it made no sense for it to continue funding the Lavi for Israel, and that Israel was better off purchasing F-16s. Israel could not afford to pay for the Lavi out of its shekel budget and scrubbed the program, leading to massive layoffs throughout Israel. The Americans did not refuse to provide technology, they just pulled the plug on the funding and Israel could not go it alone.

I remember this from earlier ..GS has a brief writeup on similar lines.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/lavi.htm

But concurrent to the Lavi’s technological successes was a wide-ranging public debate questioning Israel’s economic ability to support the cost of the program. Lavi was canceled in 1987 as a result of growing American concerns about the cost of the project, as well as from concerns that Lavi fighters would threaten the export market of the US F-16 and F-18. After extensive government deliberations, the decision was made by the Israeli Cabinet in to cancel the Lavi program. This led to a serious crisis at IAI which necessitated a major reorganization of the Company’s structure and business strategy. Under American pressure, on 30 August 1987 the Israeli cabinet voted to cancel the Lavi project, but asked the United States for $450 million to pay for canceled contracts. The State Department agreed to raise the earmark for procurement in Israel from $300 million to $400 million to pay Lavi cancellation costs.

Untrue. If the US had blasted Israel for the Lavi, we would all know about it and Israel would not be denying it today.

Passing an aircraft that US had denied to Israel itself to China would have resulted in every anti-Semite in the US coming out and screaming for withdrawal of American aid to Israel. This didn’t happen and Israel is still denying it today.

The US- Israel ties are very complex, and both sides try to avoid washing their dirty linen in public, despite grave differences. Take the Pollard case for example. It was a massive issue, but didnt become a tie, breaker. Few other countries would have got away with that sort of espionage.

There is also no shame in admitting that the Lavi is a failed project and what flies in the Chinese air force today cannot be the same aircraft that doesn’t fly in the Israeli air force. It is no shame to admit that the Lavi, based as it is on American technology and parts, could not be made into a production plane in Israel and it certainly would have even less of chance of being made in China which has no access to US parts and technology.

One, the Lavi was most certainly not a failure- in terms of design, and it was most certainly capable of being made into an aircraft in Israel. And two, Israel could have supplanted the American parts with its own and Chinese made replacements.

The Mirage-2000H (Hindustan) /TH Trainer Hindustan) IS India specific. The radio altimeter and some other avionics on board the 10 attrition replacement M2ks were not similar to the 42 M2K-H/THs that the IAF had bought in the 80’s. and that meant that the IAF waited till Dassault replaced them with the same standard as the first M2K-H batch.

My 2 centimes as well.. :p

The TH/H’s have RDM series radars (though the last 10 THs delivered recently had RDM-7 radars which were supposed to track 8-10/ engage 2-4?) but they dont have the fancy doodads on the Series 5/ 9 planes…ie RDY2’s, Micas, MDPU from Rafale, new internal SPJ etc etc..

So the IAF is currently looking at a MLU to Dash 5 standards and is negotiating the same with Thales…

The 12 Qatari Mirages are early Dash-5’s having RDY2 Mk1 not the RDY2 Mk2 as on the UAEAF Mirage 2000’s, so even they will need rework, which is why Dassault is to acquire them and then resell it to India (which I think Dassault will make some more money out of) :rolleyes: ..

But overall, if the IAF does get another twenty Mirages from France & goes through its MLU…by 2012- it will have:

Some 72 Mirage 2000- V’s..…not a bad deal at all.

If it gets all 40 with the 12 Qatari Mirages…2nd hand airframes modernised to the above standard, life extended and sold…thats 104 Mirage 2000-V’s…

Lets wait and watch! 😀

Its not just one person, its the state of the field in general- these people know nothing of science or R&D but are defense journalists! And they write about an extremely technical field. JDW et al end up hiring such hacks because they were stringers for Times of India or Hindustan Times as defense correspondent for twenty years and have “contacts”. But all the contacts in the world cant save you from writing BS if your education is confined to social science & humanities & you just write whatever your source tells you without crosschecking.

France Makes Offer To Supply India With Fighters

By VIVEK RAGHUVANSHI, NEW DELHI

France has made a new offer to supply India with 20 Rafale multirole combat fighters — enough for one squadron — that are currently flying with the French Air Force.
A visiting team from the French Ministry of Defense (MoD) made the offer here Oct. 6 in separate briefings with the Indian Air Force’s commander, Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, and Indian Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt.
The new French offer is a result of India’s request to buy Mirage-2000H aircraft from the French Air Force inventory, a senior French diplomat here said. During their briefings, he said, the French MoD team said France cannot offer India any used Mirage-2000Hs immediately because the aircraftfirst must be decommissioned, a lengthy procedure.
“In order to fill up the depleting inventory of combat plates with the Indian Air Force, the Indian government should buy used Rafale aircraft as an interim measure, and thereafter France will be able to supply around 40 Mirage-2000H aircraft by 2012,” the diplomat said.
However, a senior Indian Defence Ministry official said the new French offer “has come to us all of a sudden, and we will take time to review the proposal. However, India is very keen to purchase used Mirage 2000H aircraft from France.”
The same ministry official said French officials confirmed that Paris has begun a dialogue with Qatar — at the behest of India’s Defence Ministry — to purchase 12 used Qatari Mirage 2000-5 aircraft, which in turn would be sold to India. But “the French government has not given us any time commitment for deliveries of the used planes,” he added.
That proposed deal, along with the possible supply of used French Air Force Mirage 2000-H aircraft, is part of an understanding reached during the Sept. 3-5 visit to Paris of Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Last year, India negotiated with Qatar to buy that country’s Mirage 2000-5 aircraft directly, but the negotiations collapsed when the governments couldn’t agree on a price.
The Indian Air Force also wants 52 of its Mirage 2000-H aircraft, which are five years overdue for midlife upgrades, to be upgraded to the Mirage 2000-9 standard.
“Once the procurement of the 12 Mirage 2000-5 and the 40 used Mirage 2000-H aircraft is finalized, then the Indian Air Force would ask Dassault International, the [original equipment manufacturer] of the Mirage aircraft, to upgrade” the Qatari aircraft and six Indian Mirage-2000-Hs to the -2000-9 standard, an Indian Air Force official said.
The upgraded planes would be equipped with Israeli avionics, electronic warfare systems and Russian armaments, he added. Thereafter, India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. would upgrade the remaining Mirage aircraft in Bangalore with technical help from Dassault, the Air Force official said.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2157420&C=asiapac

This was the original report about costs..

IAF to “go slow” on joint combat manouevres
NEW DELHI, APR 5 (PTI)

Three years after exercises with major world Air Forces, the Indian Air Force today announced “going slow” on joint combat manouevres citing “overexposure” and “monetary constraints” as reasons.

“Henceforth we plan to have combat exercises with foreign Air Forces once in a three year cycle”, Air Vice Marshal Sumit Mukherjee, Assistant Chief of Air Staff said here.

Coming fall, the IAF would be engaging in Air wargames for the first time with the Royal Air Force over Gwalior air base, he said.

Admitting that combat air exercises with US, French and Singapore air forces had been an “immense learning exercises for the IAF pilots”, Mukherjee said henceforth IAF would be planning to hold one exercise with a foreign player in India and another outside the country in a calender year.

With United States with which the Indian Air Force has held the largest number of joint exercises, he said that the recent meeting of the Joint steering group had decided to hold Fighter exercises, manouevres involving transport planes and war games with helicopter gunships and utility choppers alternatively each year.

“Though the joint manouevres have proved a boon for IAF and given our pilots immense exposure, high costs involved in hosting and going for such exercises outside are a dampener”, he said.

“We will always be open to new players”, Mukherjee said adding the first-ever air combat exercises with the Royal Air Force would involve IAF’s Mirages, Sukhoi’s, MiG-29 and upgraded MiG 21 Bisons taking on the RAF’s Tornado fighters. The British Air Force would also be fielding a P3D Awacs and two Vc 10 mid air tankers. The joint exercises would be held from October 2 to 13 when the IAF would be commencing the Platnium Jubilee celebrations of its formation.

On holding of the joint exercises at Gwalior air base, Mukherjee said that IAF had decided henceforth to alternate holding of fighter exercises with foreign air forces alternatively between Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh and Kalaikunda in West Bengal.

Air Vice Marshal Mukherjee, who is the Commodore Commandant of the IAF ace TAC-D, the force’s tactics and combat development establishment, said the IAF was very keen to participate in exercises in the US Air Force’s prestigious Red Flag Tactics Development Centre in the Nevada desert.

“We have sent the feelers. But dissimilarities in Air Combat instrumentation is proving a stumbling block. We hope to be invited very soon”, he said.

Mukherjee also said the IAF would be sending its Mirage 2000 and Jaguar deep penetration strike aircraft to Singapore in December for joint exercises.

…makes sense as well..if the budget comes out of the capex for the IAF use it for munitions, EW, regular flight hours..