Steel cutting did take place last year, maybe some final touches to the design?

Why bother with fighters when missiles can do a better job of it, if the IAF really wants to get into the nuke action, something I wish we never see, the air force version Prithbi should be enough for Pakistan, as for China, I doubt that we have the range to cause major damage, only long range missiles will be effective.

And Arthur can go to the LCA progress thread and look at airtoair’s post for further details on wind tunnel tests nd sanction date of LCA project by Govt.

This is what I mean, there are two LCA threads and we all know why. 🙁

Let us be a bit realistic here, by 2015 what will be the main surface and subsurface combatants of the PLAAF and their potential formations. What is the PLAAf trying to become in 10 to 15 yrs?

But by then India would have a decent aerospace industry ready to chum out the next gen UAVs, the point is, its better to pay in Rupees than in USD, it is hard for India to afford to replace the MiG-21s today however coupled with economics growth and indegenousization, replacements will be faster in the future. This is why the thread title is stupid, of course the LCA makes sense and of course the LCA can be upgraded to face any 4+gen fighters, only the 5th gen fighters will have clear advantages in stealth and so on.
IN other news 253 flights have been completed, so says the ADA site.

Well programms can be worth to the industry, but only of limited use to the end customer. So in the end one can always debate if it was worth it.

Although I personally believe that an Indian built jet-powered Regional airliner would have been a better project.

Especially if I compare Indians aerospace industry to Brazil

You will have to come up with reasons here, end customer is the IAF
Are you saying that the LCA will serve no use vs the J-10 and FC-1 and F-16As?
:confused: One wonders sometimes, first the nose now age 1 argument comes back 🙁

doubt that our friends can be specific, the starters of the thread have dissapeared anyway, its a pity, It would have been better if they had stuck to the Kaveri, there surely,it is taking a long time to develop and we have yet to have the LCA fly with it, although the LCA does not depend on it just like the Gripen does not depend on a Swedish engine!
More importantly though one could argue that due to bad management by the DRDO in the begining, today the IAF is having to look for 125 Mirage 2000s to replace the MiG-23s and older MiG-21 varients, now the LCA is not ment to replace these but it could have and it won’t, 125 Mirages is a lot of money for a developing country, even one of the fastest growing one, I guess this could also be a reason as to why the LCA programme makes sense, to save hard earned rupees.