well in my defence, Yana does appear in their TV ad and one which is played inflight on the lcd screens. now that salman is in jail , maybe katrina can also be a KF girl no ? 😀

the shortage of civilian pilots is such most of the private airlines have a lot of foreign pilots in the ranks – I flew with two russian pilots recently on A320 of kingfisher airlines.

**hundreds** more of B737/A320 class a/c are on firm order and will join service within 5 yrs. lack of pilots and lack of apron parking space are big problems. in last years Paris airshow alone, around 130 jets were ordered by indian operators.

no other significant country except china is experiencing the kind of aviation growth India is going through.

residents of a tinhorn nearby country with few if any prospects for upward mobility have every reason to feel jealous 🙂 integrate with india and share the boom, if not sit outside the fence and keep quiet 🙂

the terminal stage of the Klub ASM flies at Mach3.2 a few meters above the sea level. the physics of speed is not an issue. the 120km is lo-lo-lo range, a Hi-lo-lo profile will end up giving it a range between 120 to 300km depending on % of lo flight.

Russia walks out of plane project with Ukraine
Vinay Shukla, Moscow, Apr 7: Russia today said it was walking out of a joint programme with Ukraine to develop a military transport aircraft in favour of a similar project with India.

Russia has refused to further participate with Ukraine in the ‘An-70’ aircraft Programme, Air chief Gen Vladimir Mikhailov announced.

“As declared by Vice-premier and Defence Minister of the Russian Federation, An-70 transport aircraft in the course of its development has turned out to be of heavier class, but in this category we already have a better transport plane, Ilyushin IL-76.

“There is no sense in continuing this programme. We are already developing our medium aircraft jointly with India, that’s why we will not further continue An-70 programme,” he was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency.

In June 2001, India’s Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and Russia’s IRKUT corporation, Rosoboronexport Corporation and Ilyushin Aviation Complex signed an agreement for the joint development, production and sales of twin-turbofan Tactical Transport Aircraft (TTA) with up to 18.5 metric tonne capability.

Sources in IRKUT Corp said the feasibility study is mostly completed and leading aircraft design bureau Yakovlev has also joined the programme.

The two countries are expected to sign an inter- governmental agreement in May to operationalise the joint project as the main road block of intellectual property right has been removed with the signing of a pact during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Moscow visit in December last.

the E10 joint E3+JSTARS project has been cancelled iirc and studies are ongoing to see what will take place of E3 and E8. perhaps a scaled up MESA mounted on 777-200LR :diablo:

> bond4u see here
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/full_story.php?content_id=72658
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1051116&C=america

iirc they were trying to get APG79 export approved by some pentagon committee last december. dunno what happened after that. the MRCA rfp will flush the issue’s status out.

Erieye has blind spots to its front and rear. the MESA radar of wedgetail has emitters in the front and sides of the “rod” to give 360′

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/737aewc/images/737AEWC_10.jpg

State-of-the-Art Array
The electronically scanned array features three apertures sharing ‘L’ band frequency transmit/receive modules to attain 360 degrees of coverage. The exclusive ‘top hat’ provides a practical solution for fore and aft coverage while maintaining the low-drag profile of the dorsally mounted array. This allows the system to be installed on the midsize 737-700 platform without significant impact on aircraft performance.

Ultra-light Antenna
The MESA antenna consists of an advanced composite structure that supports side-emitting electronic manifold arrays and the ‘top hat’ end-firing array. Its ultra-light foam sandwich construction enables state-of-the-art performance at a fraction of current system weights, thereby allowing additional time on station for the aircraft.

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MESA is a compact and sophisticated soln to the problem, Phalcon more conventional using triangular array inside fixed radome.

from discussions on tanknet , volume and space are the key to protection level. if one could build a tank with twice the current dimensions but not much more weight, all current projectiles could be easily defeated.

a bunker has the luxury of space the mobile tank doesnt enjoy. entrances can be bombed, but multiple and hidden entraces are feasible. there are ways to shield bunkers from blast effects in their tunnels through intelligent design.

fwiw, tender is coming out within next 2 weeks.(so says the media here)

if it comes out we will get details from janes or defencenews quite rapidly.