hatchet job means something quite different to what you mean here. 😀

Weren’t HAL’s own licence-production lines set up from scratch for foreign tooling and training? I can’t see any more difficulty in setting up one under, say, Tata or Mahindra with foreign assistance.

HAL in its earlier avatar as hindustan aircraft already had considerable experience with propeller planes. they didn’t just start manufacturing fast jets one fine morning. it doesn’t happen that way.

Heck, back when the Mirage-2000 was in the MRCA competition, Tata had an agreement to shift the whole assembly line to India for manufacturing them.

which, for all we know would have involved turning screw-drivers on a SKD kit. also, I think you are confusing between the F-16 and mirage-2000.

I find it rather annoying that HAL alone is being asked to handle over a dozen development/licence-building/upgrade programs at the same time when even IAF personnel and they themselves have stated their manpower limitations. Why can’t the production and upgrades, at least, be farmed out to the private sector to let them cut their teeth in aerospace manufacture?

HAL is off-loading as much work to the pvt sector as it (pvt sector) can handle at the moment. you need to go through each program to get the details.
one can’t expect the pvt sector co’s to start building su-30’s in a week starting from a non-existent base.

swerve, which are the transports that the israelis can fit a refueling kit ?
or is it that the system is flexible enough to do it in any aircraft ?

if the US insists IAF will simply say no to american birds. even when it was in a much weaker position economically and militarily India didn’t compromise on its sovereignty. it is not going to start now.

source ?

Well Scooter..India seems to have run into bit of trouble with IAC-1.But still no news on getting outside help for IAC-2.

http://www.bharatrakshak.com/NEWS/newsrf.php?newsid=13897

this delay is already accounted for in the latest reports. it’s the CNS’ annual press conf and he will pick up from where the CNS left off last year.