Kramer said:

Ah, so Ajai Shukla is being called to Glasgow on a paid visit by BAE to cover a British warship’s induction into the RN and for a tour of its ship-building facilities because Indian readers are interested in it ? Yeah right..Even if one of the CVF was not going to be offered, there HAS to be a good reason why an Indian defence journo would be invited for such a tour.
Anyway, time will tell what the true story behind this is.

In other words, he is pointing out that there is a good reason why BAe went to the trouble & that over time, the “why” will also become clear.

Which I think is very logical, given how Indian procurement details tend to be cleared out over time. FYI – the amount of information that comes out of Indian defense via trade events, press meets and even journals is staggering, and allows anyone reasonably interested to work out whats going on. BAE btw intends to develop India as one of its key “home markets”.

That you had to make a snide jab above, either shows that you didnt get what Kramer said or what I was agreeing with, or that you were being disagreeable without having anything of substance to add, viz your position. So which is it?

Here we go again . . . .

As you’ve been told, BAe can’t offer a ship it doesn’t own. Also, BAe does not know yet what the decision on CVF will be. Even the cabinet won’t know until next month. Obviously, no offer can be made by anyone, whether BAe or government, before then.

The BAe press office seeks out journalists who it thinks are influential in target markets. India is a target market, with or without CVF*. The cost of a single journalists visit is a small expense.

*Consultancy on IAC2 or other warships, selling designs . . .

I suggest you review the story of the imaginary Kitty Hawk offer again, & stop adding 2 & 2 & getting 397.

Frankly, no offence intended, you have a lot to look into about the arms market and arms trade, and even how high level procurement is conducted, if one goes by the linear thinking you demonstrated in the above post & the reference to Kitty Hawk. You think because the decision on the CVF has not been publically released and wont be made public till next month…that the UK Govt & BAE wont look into all possible alternatives on the way to a decision? That UK Govt & BAE wont talk about all this?

India purchased a carrier after a senior Indian Navy admiral was informed by his British counterpart that the RN was retiring/had one available & would India need it? Similarly, when an Indian officer was visiting the UK, a certain fighter was offered, off the bat, and the designer called in (he was himself not personally keen on the transfer as he was a bit wary of India’s then perceived socialist Govt.) but it was procured, and to great success.

A mid ranking IAF official on a visit to Moscow, was told at a party, that since the IAF was looking for a DPSA, would a Tu-22 variant suffice? The offer was repeated later in a more formal manner, later. India dropped it since it didnt meet the DPSA requirement.

Sergei Gorshkov, the man after whom that controversial carrier being procured by India is named, made “unofficial offers” several times, around assistance & weaponry & platforms to India. Which were then brought to the notice of the Govt. of India, and some were indeed pursued and acquired.

The point to the above examples, off the record, offers are made all the time by Govt officials, and senior armed services personnel across the world, to their counterparts.

The 5G fighter program which India is currently signing with Sukhoi. An Indian delegation is “informally” offered participation by Pogosyan at a dinner.

The point to the above? Clued in OEM leadership, with political approval, makes heavy offers, not just PR officers and low level functionaries.

And journalists, get to know about it, or when personal memoirs are released. All the above events mentioned above were either recounted by people involved or by a journo breaking the story.

There are dime a dozen cases I can quote where no formal offer is made, or even contemplated, until some networking has gone on to find a prospective customer, or strike up an “official but deniable” third party channel. It avoids all stakeholders from formal commitments and allows them to map out procurement strategy well in advance before a formal decision is made.

The point is that even while the “official line” is something, such as that of the Kitty Hawk, clued in journalists are often told about off the record offers, which are used to gauge prospective interest & determine the final contours of ongoing strategy. There is often a backdrop to the wry wisecrack that “nothings official until it has been denied.”

Simply put, theres no requirement that it was BAE systems press office which may made an off the record inference towards India acquiring a CVF. That “interest” could have come from somebody else even the UK Govt. or associated agencies, private or public (e.g. trade groups) and been communicated, as is often the case, to any Indian officer or senior functionary from the MOD and followed up by BAE releasing a tour offer to Indian. Is there any guarantee that a formal offer would follow? Not really, but such exploratory discussions are all too common.

I’d conclude with a final bit about how clued in OEMs and vendors are about emerging requirements in countries of interest, such as India which are buying stuff to modernize.

Quite some time back, even while India was busy laying out its official MMRCA strategy, Dassault offered, without any public reasoning, 40 Rafales for India. A lot of tut tutting went on about how silly D was, when India would not shortchange the MMRCA process.. etc. A year or so later, India notes that its buying 40 extra Sukhois from Russia to prevent a force gap from emerging & at the same time, this year the quasi-official PTI notes that the Indian Strategic Forces Command has released a requirement for 40 fighter bombers for nuke delivery to the GOI. Incidentally, Dassault is supposed to be the only firm which openly touted the Rafale as having N-delivery capability via a proven French AF role, in its MMRCA submission per different Indian reports.

In other words, if any vendor or any Govt pitches stuff to India (off the record) its often because their sales guys/ officials have been clued in as to how the local Govt is pursuing alternatives or has laid out some long term strategy for procurement.

Pakistan and China , the former is well covered by MKI , China deep strike capability will only get effective once they get Nirbhai , but still the MKI covers some Chinese territory.

The point is an aircraft adds more of visible psychological impact to the entire N Deterrence , these are flexible assets and can be deployed or recalled in a more visible manner , can fire the initial warning shots if required before other major assets like Land and Sea based strategic assets come into picture.

Its a sign of the maturing of the Indian deterrent program. This move would only be done/proposed once the SFC had a lot of the basic groundwork in place for C3I, command hierarchy and doctrine.

With the Arihant class development , the existing land based missiles, and now this, India has a clear plan for a Triad.

AMCA will go the LCA & Arjun way. While India has allocated only US$ 1 billion for AMCA but India is ready to spend US$ 6 Billion for Russian planes. The technology for PAKFA will ultimately end up in China. So India is funding its arch nemesis.

The Indian negotiating stand for PAKFA since day one, has been explicit that it should not be exported to the PRC.

Note that there is no collaboration on engines, gearbox, fuel injection system, FBW, radar, IRST, ejection seats, actuators, landing gear, hydraulics etc which represent 90% of any fighter aircraft. India does not even have right to make its own simulators. India is being tied down to PAKFA with no right to go for independent engines or even a different radar. This is same way India has been taken to the cleaners in Brahmos, T-90 deals.

The question is why would India want to incorporate different engines or radar into the PAK-FA. What should be understood is that the airframe is designed around the engine performance, and the radar design is critical to the aircraft’s low visibility requirements. The $ 12 Billion amount and Presidential Decrees from the Russian side for cooperation, clearly imply, that India wants the “full up” version of the PAK-FA, with the final version avionics suite and engines. Both of these systems are going to be very heavily customised for the aircraft. The radar is likely to have LPI and the engines, will be pretty powerful, to enable good performance in BVR, besides which they will have, as is nowadays the Russian norm, TVC.

Comparable systems are unlikely to be available off the shelf, and will have to be developed anew. To what point?

In other words, it does not make any sense for India to ditch Russian engines or radar, both of which are being purpose designed for the PAK-FA and put other ones in, which bar the systems currently in development in the US (and are not available to India) are likely to be deficient in several parameters. Such band-aid work, would just reduce the functionality of the aircraft.

For retrofitting its own systems in development, radars and engines, it has umpteen aircraft already which can be upgraded, and many more in the future (LCA, Su-30MKI, MMRCA).

The production of the aircraft in India is also likely to come with substantial TOT which assists local sustainment, and the production will be done in the Su-30 MKI (Nasik, Korwa, Hyderabad and Koraput) complex, suitably upraded.

Furthermore, the Su-30 MKI deal offers India carte blanche in integrating its own systems and items. The IAF will likely want the same deal for the PAK-FA. Thats the reason for having own mission computer, for instance, which allows for incorporating own and third party systems.

One can add that Russians have never adhered to DPP, so no offsets of 30-50% will be given to India. India will just get a label of JV for committing something like US$ 10 + 50 + 50 = 110 Billion in future tax payers money to Russia

There were offsets involved in the Su-30 deal. Airframe components including canards are made by HAL & private partners, and shipped to Irkut for assembly, including those exported.

Take Brahmos JV, India gets to manufacture only the container of missile and fuel tanks. The seeker and engine comes from Russia. Only now engine might be made in India. This is also supposed to be 50:50 joint venture. In which India gives practically 100% of the money/orders while Russia gets to manufacture practically 100% of the missile components

In Brahmos, the missile apart, there is a huge C3I and launcher complex, which is entirely designed, manufactured and supported in India (each regiment has 5MAL plus two MCP, plus assorted other sustainment and support vehicles). The Russians get nothing of that.

In the missile itself, India provides part of the airframe, INS, OBC, seeker subsystems and some other items, and if the missile engine is also made in India, then its a pretty good deal for India overall.

As said I don’t doubt that the Su-35 will be able to detect the F-35, but I’m sceptical about the ranges and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to recognise that the F-35 will enjoy the detection range advantage anyway and that’s the most important point here. If the F-35 detects the Su-35 at lets say 150 km, while the Su-35 detects it only at 90 km, the former has quite some time to either prepare or avoid an attack ad with the new AIM-120D the F-35 might still be in a position to start an attack before the Su-35 will be able to target it forcing it in the defensive. There is ofcourse much more about it than that only. Questions like will the ESM on the Su-35 detect the F-35’s radar emissions and will its jammer be able to jam it? Aircraft aren’t flying alone in an isolated space anyway and F-35s are all networked. That might mean that one aircraft stays behind providing the target information, while the other flies ahead silently and just launch its missiles with guidance provided by the sensor in the background. If VLO would have no meaning whatsoever then no one would work on new designs.

The best tactic for any 4G/4G+ platform to break the RF BVR kill chain is to jam/spoof the AAMs with decoys/deceptive ECM or jam the commlink guiding the missile for SARH style shots, with activation cued automatically by onboard MAWS. Until multi-spectral seekers become common, thats the best tactic IMHO and should be fairly successful against aircraft with limited onboard/internal AAMs.

@Teer,
well official sources I have seen, including the official Su-35 Brochure from KNAAPO indicate that the 400 km vs 3 sqm range figure is in fact detection range and I think it was hexpop who reported about that special long range search mode from Russian sources some time ago.
Is there any chance to see that brief chat you mentioned?

Btw PM inbound.

Hi Scorpion,

I think there is a lot of mix and match going on in terms of Brochures, PR material etc which adds to the confusion. I just lost my data files sometime back to a computer crash 🙁 so I am going by memory & what I had saved in my mail.

These is the relevant quote from an article on the Irbis-E. The context lies in what the detection actually means.

In this case in the regime of long-range detection in the zone of 100 sq. degrees, in the limits ± of 60° from the construction axle of aircraft, [RLSU] “Snow leopard- E” must detect aerial targets with EPR into 3 [m]2 and measure their distance: & – in the head-on courses – is not less than 350-400 km (with the height of purpose of more than 5000 m against the background sky- not less than 400 km); & – in the overtaking courses – is not less than 150 km (with the height of purpose not less than 10.000 m against the background of sky).

Basically, its saying RWS not less than 350-400 Km in 100 Sq Degrees. RWS ranges are usually pretty much the same as TWS which takes a bit longer to build up track files and VS ranges would be even longer (upto 20%). Given the Su-35 uses only ARH weaponry, this should be enough to cue weaponry. This looks to me like a long range cued track or snipe mode to engage low RCS targets with.

Now, the next thing is there is no reason why the Irbis management system could not divide a certain volume of space, into specific parts, and then use this LR mode to effectively scan each of them and move onto the next.

Pretty much the same as operating in using the divide airspace into horizontal bars or slicing, with a certain elevation associated with it. A typical time for MSA Radars would be around 12-14 seconds (going by memory) to scan 160-170 degrees in azimuth, 7-8 times over.

Thats typically how modern radars work anyhow, with ESA being able to rapidly reposition the beam and hence provide Multi Function capabilities, while they are also doing one key function.

All in all, even if this takes 3-4 times the time mentioned above, ie around a minute, I think its a fairly useful capability to have. One Su-35 scans, while the others use it for SA &/or sniping.

Well even if it is against a 0.01 sqm this range performance is achieved in very specific circumstances. It uses a long range search mode with limited field of view and slow scanning and achieves that range only head on at high altitude. RCS is of course no static value either and there might be tactics to increase the chances of detection, anyway the F-35 will detect the Su-35 much earlier and can adapt to the situation and that’s going to be decisive in most cases. There are certainly a lot of factors which have to be thrown into the equation. It’s certainly not impossible to defeat an F-35 or even the F-22, but the odds that it’s the other way round against threats like the Su-35 are much higher.

Just a few details – the oft quoted 90 km range (0.1 Mtr2) & even 350-400 km range against (3) targets refer to high grade TWS for acquisition by weaponry. That was noted in a brief chat with one of the radar designers and also, in a follow up NIIP interview. Given, BARS performance and the improvements in the Irbis-E, this does not seem impossible. Detection ranges may be upto 20% higher, or even more, given usual thumb rule. Of course, most articles in the press dont break out all this, and why would they.

The narrow FOV, in that case may not really matter that much. The scanning speed of the combination mech & ESA may also not be that low to achieve a long range scan and then target a low RCS target in one specific zone with long range weaponry. IMO, this mode was specifically developed for the use of BVR weaponry against low RCS targets.