Right now HAL has the monopoly and takes its own sweet time to build aircraft even when Spoon Feeded through CKD/SKD/LIC prod and what not …..A private prod line would bring in competition and give IAF choice

Do you have a source for this?

A new line could easily be Tejas or MKI manufactured by Pvt Sector in India.

It does not sound like a Tejas line when he says

The Chief of Air Staff said the second line of fighter jets will be in addition to light combat aircraft Tejas and 36 Rafale planes that India will procure from France.

Tejas in addition to Tejas?

To a query on the purchase of Rafale fighter jets, which has been stuck over price negotiations with France, Parrikar said that the government had “kept adequate money for Rafale deal”.

“I am a tough negotiator. Let me save money for the nation,” he said.

“It is better to cross the bridge when the time comes. A good buyer does not put his weakness in front. He keeps his cards close to his chest. Please do not ask me to reveal the card in national interest,” he said.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/adequate-funds-kept-for-rafale-deal-manohar-parrikar-116030400659_1.html

It seems they really are going through with the Rafale deal…!?

I am not so sure if Parrikar is such a brilliant negotiator — to let the other party know that you are going to buy their product and not from a competitor!

How does the Growler, and Electronic Attack as a whole, fit in with the F-35?

“Truthfully, there is no telling right now. There are too many unfulfilled promises with the F-35 to really know what it will be EVENTUALLY capable of. There are some exciting things talked about with F-35, but that program has had too many issues for me to hold my breath on anything. That said, history has proven even the most stealthy of aircraft needs EA support.”

“As far as the Marines hanging there hat completely on the F-35 as the end-all, be-all, well, good luck to them. Their Prowlers have been indispensable to all the services, particularly over the last 14 years, and that will become a DoD wide capability gap. As of right now, I do not believe the Navy will be able to assume the Marine Prowler’s support responsibilities, unless the full Growler expanded buy goes forward. I think Marine Air has hedged a lot of their future existence on two very questionable platforms, F-35 and V-22. I hope it works out for them.”

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/confessions-of-a-us-navy-ea-18g-growler-electronic-warf-1694954599

Interesting, seems there is still some skepticism to the F-35 in the USN…

From the linked article: ‘The defence minister said that $44.4mn are foreseen for the first installment for the multi-purpose aircraft…’

Unless the first installment is a fraction of an aircraft, that small budget would severely limit what types of fighters they can get at such a low budget.

What is the unit cost of SH, Rafale, Typhoon? Or a new F-16 block 52+ for that matter…

The point is that both are limited to ~29 degrees AoA while the F-35 is limited to 50. Who knows whether a Eurofighter or Rafale buffet at 40+ degrees AoA, they can’t operate there.

I though Typhoon was limited to 25 degrees? Not that it makes a big difference…

Anyway it seems the SH also has buffeting at high AOA:

In terms of high angle of attack (AOA) performance, Flynn says the F-35 is better than the Boeing F/A-18E/F, even though the Super Hornet is capable of reaching higher angles than the JSF’s limit of 50°. “We are better than any airplane out there,” says Flynn, a veteran Canadian Forces CF-18 Hornet pilot who has also flown thrust-vectored prototype variants of the F-16 and F/A-18 Hornet at NASA. “You can go to higher degrees of angle-of-attack in the F/A-18, the flight control system will not limit you, but that’s not necessarily controlled flight.” In the F/A-18, Flynn says that past 50° there is a lot of very violent buffeting.

“You maneuver the airplane much like an F-22 or a lot like I maneuvered the prototype F-16 20 years ago with thrust vectoring,” Flynn says. “You maneuver the airplane back and forth with amazing controllability at the highest degree of angle-of-attack, and that is not the case with the only other Western airplane that can go to high AOA, the F/A-18.” The one other exception is the Raptor, which Flynn does acknowledge as having better high AOA performance than the F-35 due to its thrust vectoring capability. The Typhoon, by comparison, has a 25° AOA limit. In the F-35, Lockheed made the decision to limit the AOA to 50°, but test pilots have flown the aircraft well past that.

The high AOA limit gives the F-35 “great” instantaneous turn performance. “We knew that 50°, from our years of research, is about as far as you need to go to take advantage of the aerodynamic performance” of the jet, Flynn says. “There is no reason to be there [at extreme AOA]; you’re not going to get much more capability at 75° than you would at 50°.” The limiter will allow an F-35 pilot to fly with “reckless abandon”, which Flynn says is not possible in a Hornet because an F/A-18 can depart from controlled flight.

Both Raptor pilots take strong exception to the phrase “reckless abandon” that Flynn uses. The same terminology was used in the F-22 Dash-1 manual until one particular incident where a Raptor pilot experienced an “inverted spiral”. Both say using the phrase is a serious mistake.

US Navy

The Super Hornet test pilot, who also has thousands of hours in the older A to D model Hornets, refutes Flynn’s statement as dated. He clarifies that early model F/A-18 Hornets could depart from controlled flight if maneuvered very aggressively at high AOA with a heavy external weapons load back during the 1980s. Subsequent updates to the flight control system, particularly the 10.7 software load, “has made all the older Hornets extremely robust and very maneuverable and with a great deal of departure resistance,” he says.

The Super Hornet has always been extremely capable at high angles of attack right from the outset. “We have no angle of attack limits in any symmetric configuration, and we can maneuver without any lateral stick or pedal input limitations at any angle of attack. The Super Hornet still has complete roll control at 50° AOA and has demonstrated this many times while flying at low altitude with a full combat load because there is no departure issue,” the Super Hornet pilot says.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/in-focus-lockheed-claims-f-35-kinematics-better-than-or-equal-to-typhoon-or-super-382078/

So the SH is amazing in high AOA as well, just like the F-35 (and F-22).

Anyway, I wonder how important this these days with main focus on sensors, sensor fusion, networking, stealth and EW.

(CNN)For the first time, Air Force F-35A Joint Strike Fighters have dropped bombs during training, the Air Force announced, marking a key milestone in the path toward combat readiness.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/air-force-f35-drops-first-weapons/index.html

I thought they had dropped bombs already? Or were those not real bombs they dropped in the past?

I came for the unreasonable hatred. Leaving much satisfied

Do you feel you are adding value to the forum by writing comments like this?