how is the LCA delayed by DRDO ? please acquaint yourselves with the facts of the program. why don’t you tell us how long such a project should take (use similar projects elsewhere as benchmark) and how long LCA took ?

as for arjun, it was ready as early as 1998, this after the army continued to change GSQR’s every 5 years right upto 1991. it’s not their fault that the russian tank lobby sabotaged the program in every concievable way until the MOD put its foot down and showed them for the hypocrites they were. (don’t want to discuss tanks here as it will get deleted. we can continue by PM if you want)

reasonable date for AMCA IOC would be 2025-27. I don’t think anyone has given any official expected induction date so far, which makes the wiki dates fabrications.

unfortunately all these photographs are from before the era of digital photography, so I doubt you will get any better.

as for the DACT birds, that practice is no longer followed.

my favourite, an old one.
a hunter from No14 ‘bulls’

your best bet is bharat-rakshak.com ‘s IAF galleries. but I don’t think they paint the sqn emblem on the aircraft anymore.

the last one I remember is the su-30k’s of No24 hawks.

80’s image of mig-29 with No47 ‘black archers’ emblem on port engine intake.

mig-29 of No28 ‘first supersonics’

more mig-29’s of No28.

mirage-2000 of No7 ‘battle axes’

this emblem

that’s a lulz moment if ever there was one. 😀

it is not meant to counter IRBM (yet). the current objective is validating BMD against SRBM/MRBM class weapons. the modified prithvi can easily mimic that.

defending against IRBM is the next phase of the program.

Doesn’t change much.
Rafale is nearly half way on the way getting retired, with no customer,
and to further complicate things it comes with specific expensive munitions,
while at the same time being almost as expensive to operate as it’s costliest competitors.
Why would anyone want it now ?

on the contrary the rumour mill has it that dassault’s name has been thrown in by some enterprising competitor into what was originally an unrelated investigation.

Isn’t 20,000 roupies less than 500 dollars?

If some “official” came to me at the start of an airshow where I’m selling products worth tens of millions of dollars and offered a better spot (or perhaps simply threatened to move my goods to a bad spot), I’d pay such ridiculous amount without even thinking twice.

that amount makes the story look very suspect. no officer will risk anything for a bribe a fraction of his monthly salary.