Spitfire9Britain should ditch this plane now.
It really is a great looking plane and I can see where it would fit just about.
We potentially had 25 on order at how ever much we were likely to pay for them. Lets order another 8 C-17’s taking our fleet to 15 and bring in new C-130’s for the rest.
I’m not sure Britain should ditch this plane at all. There is a long term niche for such an aircraft (sorted), isn’t there? If it were made to “work”, it could remain in production for a long time, couldn’t it?
Airbus threw away several $billion with their CATIA software mismatch on the A380. They did not say they would have to cancel the program; they did not throw their hands up in horror and tell their customers they would have to pay more; on the contrary, they agreed their customers could pay less due to the inconvenience caused. I don’t see that anything is different here except that Airbus think that because their customers are governments, their customers do not merit the same treatment.
Sue the b*stards, I say, if they try to back out of their contract. Nobody held a gun to their head to get them to sign it. They signed it because they doubtless thought they would make lots of lovely money out of it.
Spitfire9What do you want from a $ 25 million fighter? :rolleyes:
That’s the point or to put it another way round, what fighter can you get for $25 million? Defence ministries do not have bottomless budgets to buy, fly and maintain materiel. In another thread here I see that Rumania may be considering acquiring “free” used F-16’s because it needs to find a fighter that it can afford. I suspect that the through life cost of “free” used F-16’s will be a lot higher than the through life cost of Tejas MkII’s where you have to get your wallet out to buy new ones in the first place.
And what about those other countries with old MiG-21’s, F-16’s and Mirages that will need replacement in the coming years? Some of them will certainly be interested in a low cost fighter such as Tejas.
I am sure many air forces would love a few squadrons of F-22’s but air forces can’t buy anything because they don’t have any money. Defence ministries don’t have any money either. Governments have money but if they don’t want to fund the defence ministry’s desire to acquire expensive fighters for the air force, the defence ministry isn’t going to have the funds to buy them.
Spitfire9An aircraft with no engne selected or integrated, weight issues (Jan diet!?) and not in operational service with its home air force, with no idea of approx export price, yet t may become next F-16!?
:confused:
Not in 2010. I’m suggesting that the spec of the Tejas MkII be finalised ASAP so that it can be offered on the market reasonably soon (not traditional Indian “reasonably soon”). Start offering 2015/2016 delivery in 2011/2012, along those lines.
You got a good point there Spitfire, and I totaly agree.
But the trick is to keep the per unit cost down if you want to win export orders to countries that dont want/cant buy “traditional” 4-4,5 gen fighters from the West or from Russia (i.e mostly 3:d world countries).
And since the Indians seem to be hell bent on getting all imaginable bells and whistles on the LCA/Tejas I doubt they’ll be able to keep the price tag down.
That’s why I suggest the GOI should look upon the Tejas as a strategic industrial development and impose a marketable version on the IAF. It does not need to be what the IAF want. It needs to be what a larger market wants. What’s more important – establishing an industry on the world stage or adding a fighter with limited capability (inferior to PAK-FA, Rafale, Typhoon etc) to the IAF’s inventory?
Spitfire9if Eurojet is chosen and fitted it may prove to be totally unsuited to Indian conditions. It was designed for European warfare.
What is special about Indian conditions – dust? temperature? If US, French, British and Russian engines in the IAF inventory can handle the conditions in India, why should the Eurojet engine encounter problems?
Spitfire9What are the odds of a Sea Gripen being developed? That would fit brazilian needs perfectly in my opinion.
No idea but there is report today that India is interested in information about it:
http://defense-studies.blogspot.com/2009/12/saab-offers-sea-gripen.html
Spitfire9LCA is significantly under budget, although it is late by 3-4 years.
That is very good to hear. It bodes well for the MkII. Any idea what sort of development cost is envisaged for the MkII? I guess it would be much the same whether a GE or EJ engine is chosen.
Spitfire9More rumors… 🙂
If this is really shifted to 2011 then I guess anything can happen…
Bad news for Rafale if this is the case, and equally good news for Gripen and SH that may get a second chance.
If it is true that Brazil will delay a decision until 2011, I wonder if SAAB will now make India its preferred choice for Gripen development and production. The MMRCA decision would be taken before the Brazilian decision, wouldn’t it? In addition, the Indian market for a Sea Gripen would be much larger than the Brazilian market.
Q: How many carrier aircraft will India be needing in the next 20 years?
Spitfire9“Heaping praise” on Gripen’s comparitively short development time is also pointless, considering the vast experience SAAB has had in addition to “unfettered” access to foreign technology, like engines and FBW from USA, landing gear from BaE, AESA radar from EU, etc.
Correct me if I am wrong, but did Saab not produce the aircraft on time and under budget? I would heap praise on any organisation that delivered a sophisticated jet on time and on budget. It seems Saab did better than that.
Do you know of any recent American, Russian, European, Chinese, Indian or whatever fast jet projects that were not late and were not over budget?
Spitfire9I’m saying, Dassault have a built in margin. This margin assures that failure will not occur below 150%. What this margin is, is not known until the test is performed and the failure has occurred. Therefore I will not day Dassault built in a 185% on margin on purpose, it just happened to be 185% when they did the test.
I am not an aircraft engineer. However, I am aware that where a 50% margin is built in before structural damage occurs, that margin increases the weight of the structure. If the target is 150% and when tested the structure sustains damage at say 147% (a la Airbus A380 wing test), the designers have made a mistake. This was easily remedied on the A380 wing, the fix increasing the weight of the structure by <50Kg if I remember correctly. Had the wing failed at 165% or 180%, that would have been very bad design. Why? Because the behaviour of the structure was far from what was predicted – with inevitable weight penalties that would reduce payload/range.
Spitfire9I am no expert in this matter but it seems quite obvious to me that any aircraft can be tasked to have the characteristics of an inferior aircraft for the purposes of exercises. Without knowing what degradation was used for the aircraft involved, no valid conclusions can be drawn from the results of the exercise. As Fedaykin observes:
Indeed this is the nub of it, we just don’t have any context with these pictures.
No ROE, what were the defined capabilities,…
Its worth noting many an F15 has been shot down (not for real:D) by agressor F5’s a type vastly inferior in all respects. Does that mean the F15 is a lousy fighter…nope within the ROE of the training its to be expected.
Also note that all involved airforces don’t really like to switch on all the different magic systems like jammers EW equipment when playing against each other, usually as already stated they like to agree a generic (effectively make believe) performance profile prior to the exercise.
Spitfire9Well, if Rafale does so well in a2a against Typhoon and also have superb a2g capabilities, why does it seem that the FAB does not prefer it over SH and Gripen NG?
Could it be cost? Cost of the aircraft + weapons. If the FAB simply wanted the best fighter for the next 25+ years, Rafale would be selected from the 3 types on the shortlist, I think. But if that were the case, why exclude Typhoon from the shortlist?
Spitfire9“the centre” is the (central, as distinct from the states) government of India.
Lakh = 100 thousand.
Why USD? This is a British forum. :p
Thanks for telling me what “the Centre” is. I had not heard of that but I know the expression GOI – government of India (as opposed to government of ?).
I’m not American but I’m used to aircraft prices being quoted in $US, so that’s why I asked what the $US equivalent of 8,000 crore was.:)
Spitfire940 of them,
1 LCA Mk1(AF version) = Rs5000Cr/40 = Rs 125 Cr
1 Cr = 10 million
1250 million Indian rupees = 26.80625 million US$So, 1 LCA Mk1(AF version) = 26.8 million US$
Sounds like a bargain. What other Mig-21 replacement is available sub USD$30 million? And I suspect that Tejas is much, much, much better than Mig-21.
Spitfire9Nod to Rs 8,000cr for production of Tejas
B.R. SRIKANTH
BENGALURUIn a major leg-up for one of the country’s most crucial indigenous defence initiatives, the Centre has sanctioned a massive Rs 8,000 crores to begin production of the fighter jet Tejas for the IAF and Indian Navy.
http://epaper.asianage.com/Asian/AAge/2009/12/16/ArticleHtmls/16_12_2009_003_013.shtml
Could anyone tell me what “the Centre” is? And sorry, I can never remember my lakhs and crores. What is Rs 8,000 crores expressed in US$, please?
Spitfire9Govt shortlists 2 global firms to supply engine for Tejas
Last Updated: Dec 15, 2009NEW DELHI (BNS): The Defence Ministry has shortlisted two global firms to supply the engine for the Mark-II version of indigenous Light Combat Aircraft Tejas.
As far as I can remember, 2 global firms were shortlisted to supply an engine for the Tejas many months ago. So what is the news element of this statement?
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