And to reiterate the last point – heres a brief, not even a comprehensive overview of the work purely on aircraft (not including missiles etc)

Transports – 14 Seater Saras, 60 seater under discussion, 100 seater planned and funding sought, MRTA with Russia (India to work on wings, fuselage and flight controls)

Choppers – Light utility helo (197), Medium helo (200+ planned), Light combat helo (65), new derivatives of the ALH

Trainers – Intermediate trainer (HJT-36, 200 units plus required), customize and license build light trainer (turboprop, 100-200 units)

Fighters – Upgrades (Jaguar, MiG-27, Mirage 2000, Su-30 MKI:2014 onwards), LCA MK2, MCA, and FGFA

UAVs: Rustom MALE, Nishant Mk2 (~ Searcher 2), Rotary UAV (Unmanned Aloutte with IAI), micro UAVs etc

All these require manpower, program management, funding.

Now the difference is that India does not have MiG, Tupolev, Sukhoi, Ilyushin all working/competing for these projects.

There is just HAL, its partners such as NAL, DRDO and private suppliers.

Hence, HAL wont be too sad over ~25% workshare. Its what is practically possible.

They’ll also look towards tapping the private companies including software vendors who currently take up programs for EADS, Boeing etc.

Teer,

wonderful stuff!

Is it realistic to expect Russia/Indian to produce their JSF equivalent aircraft or will they just end up producing a beefed up Flanker together?

The aim is clearly a JSF level aircraft or beyond, whether it will be that…now thats a hard call.

My take is the aircraft may not necessarily match the JSF in every respect (eg for example the quality of its long range A2G FLIR system just to name one) but it will be a worthy opponent in terms of raw performance. Also, some “different” solutions may be adopted to boost performance – I actually saw some references to disposable RF decoys (as in emitters) -quite an interesting idea and separate from the usual towed decoy stuff.

As foxmulder said where is India’s military exports?

India is not really into the arms export business. All deals have to receive an official clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs, which is more often than not, not given. Its a by product of India’s non alignment policy plus a mistaken belief that the pacifist image cultivated by the Indian freedom struggle will be affected. As of 2009, several manufacturers were still protesting over the stringent (and unnecessary) oversight.

Things are probably going to change though, once the private sector gets involved and lobbys for a change in rules.

Furthermore, India’s arms industry is primarily directed to meets its massive internal needs. Exports are an icing on the cake, but by far not the cake itself. Eg OFB’s small arms production is barely able to keep pace with internal requirements with the number of new battalion raisings announced.

It is easy to belittle, but is india on the cutting edge like US or is following the establised path? You make it sound like India is learning from Russia and West and China is just copycating them, to me it sounds similiar. Infants copy their elders to learn, but we dont say they are copycating their elders.

Fact remains India has access to almost all the world’s OEMs for JVs and purchase. The US & EU continue to have an arms embargo on the PRC in contrast. And yes, India is following the “established path” whatever that means, just see the development in avionics & sensors over the past decade. A single recent design went for a production run of 1500 units.

Then again it comes down to politics, buy from all the world powers in a vain attempt to isolate one of your neighbours.

That neighbour is doing far too good a job on its own in terms of isolating itself (e.g. check the recent travel advisory to the US for that nations travellers) for India to even bother.

India buys what offers it max bang for the buck from whomsoever it can. If they give some strategic benefit, even better but thats by no means the sole consideration.

I think that has no foundation. MK1 is failed and seen as experiment. It was to replace the Bisons.

Sad to break your heart Munir, but the LCA MK1 is already seen as superior to the Bisons.
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2009/11/order-for-2nd-tejas-squadron-being.html

MK2 is a paperplane. You cannot compare that with flying planes.

Its more real than the mythical all singing and dancing JF-17 with French avionics etc. As it stands only a couple of squadrons of JF-17s with Chinese kit, and a Russian engine.
I mean, can the PAF even afford the Mica. I mean, Pakistan does not even make any avionics systems of its own design to keep costs reasonable and combine imports & local gear. The ROSE Mirages dont even appear to have any decent self protection gear besides basic chaff & flares.

As for showing me Indian pilots flying LCA it would be like me Swedish pilots flying Gripen. Have you ever heard a pilot dissing the fighter plane they are flying for their countries defense? It´s pointless. Just like those:”- Uhhm, here´s an report from exercise X vs Y. Our french Rafale pilots killed 153 F-22s, 12 Aircraftcarriers, 5 nuclearsubmarines and the Death Star!!!. Man the Rafale ROCKS!!!!” . Totally pointless… BTW, isn´t there a Indian reporter who has flown all the planes in the MRCA race and his favorite is the Gripen? For me it does´nt make any difference, I´m just bit jealous of the *******. 🙂

The very good refers to a handling quality between 4 and 5. Five is excellent. The ASTE has a 1 to 5 ranking of handing qualities which the TP – test pilots rank the plane on. Both average and individual scores are used to finetune performance/ address issues. This is done across the flight envelope.

So when ADA says all test pilots have HQ (Handling Quality) is very good – that means a big deal, and is not subjective but objective.

There was in fact a paper presented four years back where the HQ was between 3 to 4. Clearly, improvements were made as could be expected and hence the TP faith in the aircraft.

And note test crew are on deputation from the IAF, IN and are NOT ADA or HAL (developer/ manufacturer). They will be scathing about anything that is not upto par, their career depends on it.

FYI – as first hand data point corraborating what they submitted as parliamentary evidence, I had opportunity to observe the TP interaction viz the LCA early last year. They were overwhelmingly positive about the aircraft. I have had several occasions to see different crew speak about the plane – the maturity of the aircraft as it stands is clear. In 2001-2, there was a lot of caution about the plane and how it would develop. Now they are pretty happy with it.

I thought that was funny to. From now on, I will try to keep away from these India-hello-kitty-i-am living -in – a dream- world. threads…. I is just a matter of two cultures colliding I suppose. One who is brainwashed and the the rest of the world…..

A little less condescension and a more civilized attitude would help you, if you claim to be representing your culture. Right now, you aren’t doing any yourself or your culture any favours, by behaving in an obnoxious fashion by using pejorative terms of the kind you have used.

Selex Galileo isn’t an EADS company. It’s a subsidiary of Finmeccanica. Selex, EADS defence electronics, & Indra (of Spain) are partners in the Euroradar consortium which produces CAPTOR, but compete elsewhere.

CAESAR is a technology demonstrator. An operational radar will not necessarily look the same.

I’m intrigued by that picture, as it doesn’t resemble any European AESA radars I’ve seen pictures of.

Mea culpa. Thanks Swerve.

I was flipping between the Finmeccanica and EADS websites and changed ownership.

Duh.

But I do recall fading memory perhaps that EADS does have experience in radars. They had a fairly successful naval radar and some other systems.

But what you said brings up an intriguing point and clearly shows how the prime competitors in the MRCA are using technology offers as differentiators.

With Captor being a Selex product, the EADS guys would have had to take clearance both from Selex and NETMA (if I am right) to push this for the LCA.

Very interesting stuff.

About Mako, yes, I saw some recent literature/images this year.

But all images were CGI and there was no actual aircraft shown in any promo vid…so..I really cant say its a very active project with any actual prototypes or the like.

And no one is denying that India could get better. But does that really matter when one takes into consideration the whole Pak/Ind situation?

Depends – actually, as you are the one guy who avoided all the entire jingoistic chest thumping, let me state this, the IAF is not really that worried about Pakistan. It is more concerned about China, which quite frankly is the new game in town in terms of inductions and capabilities. They know what Pakistan has, will have. They are not happy, but they can manage. I mean its the opponent they have tracked for a long time, and have a fair idea of whats happening.

Whatever the PakAF is getting, India got a long time back or has ordered more in substantial numbers. Till date, I have not seen anything viz the PakAF having any sort of silver bullet (a la the real/mythical/whatever AShBM for example gets reported out of China/US press versus the US Carrier fleet).

To just give a few examples..

7 AN/TPS-77 radars – well sure, and the IAF has a fair stock of Kh-31’s, Harpys, and has now ordered HAROP. Forget SEAD, for even DEAD, the IAF has specific capabilities coming online for accurate real time geolocation.

BVR? Well who got it first and has been exercising in BVR non stop w/the worlds premier AFs and with extensive inhouse tactics and training already refined and developed? A host of different SPJ technologies and systems are already in development and even deployed, so much so that they make smaller aircraft fairly hard to track for decent FCRs.

The PAF is using LGBs in anger today- the IAF did that a decade back in 1999 itself and built up capabilities thereafter.

I mean, I wont even go into what the IAF has already ordered, it dwarfs Pakistan. But what should be clear is the IAF is looking more and more towards the PRC, not Pak as the primary force which is of concern.

Pakistans one deterrent are its nukes, and those too are going to be affected by the ABM project, its AF is not really a deterrent. I really dont get what some posters here keep stating “minimum credible deterrent”, vis a vis the IAF, that equation simply doesnt exist. In all these days, despite all the media pushing and scaremongering for more resources, I have never even seen a ranking IAF officer worried about being deterred by the PAF. China’s growing capabilities are another matter, but the IAF woke up to the PRC quite some time back and new inductions et al are aimed to address that as well.