– See more at: http://www.journal-aviation.com/actualites/28361-le-futur-rafale-indien-exportable#sthash.hsjaX1jy.dpuf

Translation:

Excellent! That’s exactly what shld hve been done from start. With Local evolution on soft and avionic package.

I didn’t say no tracking.

I don’t think the age of the Hawk design matters. Whatever was done 40 years ago, I’m sure parts are now tracked using the same systems as everything else that BAE makes nowadays. And although it’s not really relevant to how parts are tracked, I expect that the current versions of the Hawk were designed on a CAD system.

We are OT (again) but it’s not the age that matters. It is the conflicting methodology b/w old project and new project (you mentionned CAD but remember that the old Hawk has probably paper blue prints). if the old hawks were maintained using new kits, you’d have that case of figure.

It wasn’t incompetent of HAL to raid the kits. The incompetence was (1) officials or ministers not approving the essential supplementary spares order in time, so HAL, under pressure from the IAF, raided kits to keep in-service Hawks flying, & (2) HAL (according to leaks) not keeping, or if they did keep ’em, passing ’em on to BAE, proper records of the parts it took from the kits, so BAE couldn’t tell which part was where. I think that’d drive ’em crazy.

I once worked on modifying a manufacturing & parts database for a maker of aircraft & missiles. One change was to make it capable of tracking every part for its life. If someone used a part without logging where it had been used, or fitted a part without logging its identity (or batch for very small parts), it’d be flagged by the system as a major incident. That was 30 years ago, & AFAIK they’ve tightened up since then.

yes all part are tracked during their entire life (Product Data Management). What you are describing at HAL with the Hawk cldn’t have been done without any top brass approval. That there was no tracking is doubtful.

However the Hawk is an old bird so part of its documentation might have been on paper only, or microfilmed and difficult to access from a remote assembly facility to be updated for the modification made and then let at rest with the general idea that it would be updated latter. That only seems a viable possibility. However it means that the tracking is there but simply in the limbo.

But you’ll never know. I have been from one (bad) surprise to another in my entire prof life as many here I guess.

[…] They would have been far better served if they hadn’t tried to do so much with one contract, tech transfer, local production, etc etc. They should have kept MMRCA as close to an off the shelf purchase as possible and left the LCA as their indigenous/foreign effort.

If they would have gone for an OTS contract they would have paid double to get the technology needed on the LCA. The ToT is all about feeding their industry base.

National Interest

The Russian Air Force’s Super Weapon: Beware the PAK-FA Stealth Fighter

“Individual systems connected together to form a self-forming/self healing ‘combat cloud’ and able to leverage their respective strengths, while simultaneously circumventing specific system weaknesses and vulnerabilities […]”

Interesting

@Aurel: +1

But we have to concede that the Typhoon shld have been that NATO fighters. It had all the fairies leaning around its cradle (Minus Saab and MD). Such a sad story indeed.

Instead of making sweet dreams of easy deals and hegemonic position, AirbusM shld take the bull by the horns and start correcting its flaws. That’s what everyone are expecting from an industry leader: aggressive re-positioning.

And a few Mi-35M export to Pakistan, will not change anything here.

It’s even in the interest of India that Pakistan have the military strength to counter any armed extremism components.

Canopy give a clue about the lack of any RCS treatment.