There is low cost alternative An-178. that fit this budget.
http://www.ukrainebusiness.com.ua/news/4653.html

While good to see Antonov finally realize the benefits of a larger cargo box vs. An-148, that just isn’t relevant to this RFP… It’s a competitor to the MTA India and Russia are developing, and against KC-390 and C-130… not An-140/Il-112/C-295/C-27J. $20-25million isn’t low cost compared to $9million An-140. The article’s mention of participating in Chinese airshow seems appropriate though, that seems like a good sales prospect, of course, selling the production rights as well. IF they can get the program into production, I’m sure it would be competitive price-wise, the An-148 heritage probably helps… Similar to Embraer’s plan for C-390 before specs were increased. …But not for this thread 🙂

Is Saab/Sweden trying to offer Gripen NG to all the countries that are reducing their F-35 buy, like Italy?
It seems reasonable that even if ac ountry wishes to continue with F-35, a heavily reduced buy is the only realistic option with increased costs and reduced budgets, so COMPLEMENTING the F-35 with a fleet of Gripen NG is economic and matches actual usage more than an all medium-high-end fleet, especially when replacing platforms like AMX in Italy’s case. If a shared-maintenance (and training?) regime is offered (possibly on a per-flight-hour fixed cost basis), investment in maintenance infrastructure is kept to a minimum.

Since this isn’t using a tri-mode seeker, I would guess because problems with tri-mode seekers are irrelevant to it?
Overall budget issues are another matter of whether it is funded, but I don’t see a TECHNICAL issue with it.
And the US DoD budget is still huge no matter what, so advancing a new product innovative in some areas while using the best off-the-shelf in other areas, is not unbelievable.

I think djcross’s comparison to MICA is spot on, if MICA is already a 250 lb. class weapon, it isn’t really all that far of a reach to achieve this, and achieve AMRAAM ranges or more. I believe that gel fuel isn’t containing oxidizer like solid fuel (except ramjets like Meteor) so it’s efficiency goes up for that reason amongst others.

But if opponents have Meteor or similar class weapons, that would seem to be the performance level you want for BVR, and I’m not sure if this is really up to the task (Meteor being 400lb class and without oxidizer). Perhaps the US may not want to buy an MBDA product and prefer to develop their own equivalent, but I’m not sure if this weapon as described would be ideal… Not to say that gel fuels and hit-to-kill couldn’t be implemented on a larger Meteor class weapon. If the US isn’t worried about opponents with advanced capabilities, then there is no need to change their current armament. …There is also the possibility of an even smaller version for WVR, even signifigantly extending the range of that to approach MICA.

As Airbus have found out, the 160 seat airline market is dead! Just look at the A319 sales figures.
Now granted, the A319 order slow-down might be down to operators realising that the operating costs of the A319 are very similar to that of the A320, so you might as well get the larger A320 – but if there was really such a demand for 160 seat aircraft I’m sure the airlines would have raised the issue with the manufacturers by now.

Sure, A319 is a dog, but 737-700 did perfectly fine. Overall, I think there is a tendency to move towards the higher capacity end of the scale, but 737-700 shows this niche is/was valued: more than 1400 sales. Of course, the MAX 7 hasn’t really seen any sales yet, but I wouldn’t say that really means much, the design could still be tweaked, and the worthiness of a shrink of a platform that goes up to near 200 pa doesn’t say much about Bombardier’s CS300 stretch. The MAX 8 is doing fine, and of course many users will be using it in a 2 class config of 160x pa.

Yeah, besides the 6.5 sustained G requirement that isn’t actually a sustained G requirement, that Alenia and BAE should certainly be able to attain (if they aren’t already), let’s look at SlowMan’s big bold letters (quoting BAE):
“If you score us on how much sustained g you can pull, we’ll lose every time,” he said.
As it happens, there is no weighting of bids which excel in a certain area such as sustained g, it comes down to of the bids which meet KPP, who has lowest life-cycle costs. It doesn’t matter if one plane has more sustained g than another, as long as the KPP is met. The concept of ‘losing’ to another aircraft on who has more sustained g is relevant to fan-boys, but not this tender. So it’s not surprising that BAE doesn’t seem worried, does it? If they felt that supesonic was a real requirement, or that the ‘winner’ of supersonic capability or maximum sustained g would be selected as the tender winner, they probably would just not be bothered to bid here.

If the USAF has plans to implement secret standards, they will have their pants sued off them.
If supersonic was really something that was so important to them, implementing a point-system weighted to give a benefit to supersonic aircraft would be the reasonable way to do that, and the USAF is familiar with running tenders in that manner (KC-X). That they haven’t done so suggests that supersonic has no priority over KPP-compliant bids which are lowest cost.

If supersonic flight is a real requirement, then it needs to be in the KPP.
If USAF wants to insist on a ‘requirement’ not in the KPP, that means they will be deviating from tender regulations, which would mean the entire tender WILL be thrown out and need to be redone, and/or vendors who spent their own time and money offering a product to meet KPP could sue.

Yes, I meant the An-140, I think the original article’s mention of An-148 was a mistake…
..And it may have meant to reference the nascent Il-112 and not the -114, the Il-114’s low wing seems inappropriate for a military transport… not to mention not being in production, which doesn’t match the stated time-scale of buying some planes off of existing production lines, and ramping up local production to reach 60%. The Il-112 probably would have allowed for more Indian involvement in design and production development, but if the tender isn’t based around that, then other options are probably more realistic… Had India approached this more like MTA they could probably have had created a similar JV around Il-112.