CAG reports take no stand on the feasibility of an acquisition or local considerations.
their approach is solely from the viewpoint of what the force says it needs and if the final acquisition matches those needs, in addition to audit of related financial matters.

it’s unusual perhaps but it’s one way of doing things.

each have their own standards, it might even change from one aircraft to another.
the basic definition would be that configuration in which the aircraft would be useful to the air force in question.

H_K, India is a repeat customer, no qualifiers are necessary, the initial deal was for 40 airframes including 4-6 two seaters. as many as 17 were bought later, including the last batch in 2004. the last instalment of about 10 2 seaters was used to equip a 3rd mirage squadron, the wolfpacks, which many believe was tasked at the time in nuclear delivery role.

Madrat, not for IAF for sure. IAF is in fact looking to replace the magic on jaguars with ASRAAM. it is also likely on the mirage upgrade package.

Hellenic Air Force is flying both Mirage 2000’s and F-16’s and they decided to continue with F-16 after 2009….

I’m sure the fact that the mirage is no longer produced in 2009 has nothing to do with it. :rolleyes:

ROCAF is currently studying replacement for Mirage 2000, and may retire the fleet early or mothball most of the fleet. . Technical problems, high crash rate and extremely high operational costs and availability. They say ‘ We need urgently new Vipers preferably Block 60..

see above. france hasn’t had the best of relations with taiwan due to the china factor. elsewhere, the mirage has a stellar safety and operational availability record, the falcon on the other hand, rightly or wrongly, has a reputation as an unsafe bird. (lawn dart ?)

The UAE having acquired 80 Block 60 recently are trying to get rid of their M2000-9’s as quickly as possible and looking for customers.

because they are going for the rafale. they might even fund the next iteration like they did for the block60.
lastly, sheikhdom’s military purchases aren’t always guided by rational thinking. bribery, prestige etc, all play a part.

Ever heard of a country who wanted to replace its Vipers with MIRAGE ??
I didn’t.. Remember this, all the countries who bought Mirage 2000 have done so because of two reasons;
1- The US refused to sell them fighters.. India for example
2- The US delivered them fighters with restrictions so they needed a second independent source of supply..Taiwan, Greece ect . Not because they thought Mirage would be a better fighter in any way.

with very similar arguments we can conclude that F-16 is bought only by US client states and everyone else buys other aircrafts when they get the opportunity. even US client states buy mirages if possible, egypt for example.

sounds silly right ? exactly my opinion about your argument.

btw, did India ever express interest in the F-16 ? how does one refuse something that’s not requested in the first place ?

The reason is that the VIPER is and has always been a much better overall fighter than MIRAGE . The Block 60 and Super Viper eats -5 and -9 alive any day .

fanboyism apart, most people consider the two aircrafts to be very closely matched, with the mirage leading in A2A while F-16 leads in A2G.

HAL chief test pilot (rotary wing) Wing Commander Hari Nair on LCH (from the bharat-rakshak.com forums)
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5477&start=840

The CAG is definitely NOT a bunch of hare-brained babus as has been made out to be. I have found some of their remarks and analyses on certain aircraft acquisitions surprisingly precise and accurate. Don’t underestimate them, they are good.
However, in the case of the ALH (Dhruv), I do believe their conclusions on 80-90% imports (probably by cost percentage) being a point for audit is incorrect. Yes, most of the avionics and quite a few systems are imported but then, consider this:-
The critical high-tech main & tail rotor blades are made locally.
The entire transmission systems are made locally – all the gear boxes including the Main Gear Box (that holds the helicopter up and provides the drive from the engines to the rotors. All these essentially amount to the very core of the helicopter. Worldwide, there are just a handful of countries making these components & we are actually one of them.
The fuselage & undercarriage are all made locally – including the very critical crashworthy sections.
The ALH has been made to a very exacting Air Staff Requirement of the IAF & Indian Army and to meet all the stated objectives, it may not be possible to use everything indigenously made. In any case, a whole lot of systems & avionics are just simply NOT available locally.
Barring the US of A (and erstwhile Soviet Union), most countries do NOT make the A to Z of an aircraft. Consider this – open up a BAE (British Aerospace) navigation system LRU and don’t be surprised to find cards & chips made in Taiwan! Check out the European helicopters – all of them are multi-country projects!
It’s a globalised economy and its just plain stupid in these times to try to make every single thing at home.
The game really is to make a reliable and maintainable helicopter – that meets the performance requirements of the Services & also has a reasonable indigenous content at its core (which I believe the ALH already has).

Re -The ceiling of the ALH
Actually its cleared to 6400 m for the older TM-2222B2 engine (although at a lower weight)
and its now cleared to 6500 m for the new Shakti engine version at a fairly high All-Up-Weight
I’m not sure how CAG got its figure of 5000 m – the 6400 m ceiling is clearly specified in the helicopter’s Flight Manual (older engine version) and is also practically achievable.

The US Army compiled statistics of crashes of their helicopters during the Vietnam war and they came with the US MIL STD 1290 for crashworthiness, which essentially charts out a percentile survivability in the event the helicopter is able to absorb specified impact loads in the vertical, longitudinal and lateral directions. As per Mil Std 1290, the highest (practical) percentile survivabile crashworthy helicopter is in which the helcopter impacts at 12.8 m/s in the vertical and the impact loads are progressively attenuated by the undercarriage (wheels & oleos), crush sections of the lower fuselage, fuel tanks and finally by the crashworthy seat that is mounted on two rails and strokes down-wards. At the end of it all, the aircrew should experience a maximum vertical deceleration of 14.5 G (tolerance of the spine). Such a design is expected to be 95% survivable – which means that for a helicopter designed to the standard, the crew should be able to survive 95% of foreseen crash conditions (with minor injuries – perhaps a broken bone)
There are other specified criteria, which I have left out to simplify- other parameters such as longitudinal velocity, reduction of cockpit volume, etc.

Incidentally, the Apache attack and the Black Hawk utility helicopters comply with the 95% crashworthy criteria (the Black Hawk actually exceeds this standard in some aspects). The Russian Mi-28 also claims to comply with 95% crashworthiness.

For the LCH, 85% survivability was chosen as a compromise between low and extreme high altitude requirements. Which essentially works out to the critical vertical impact parameter of about 10.5 m/s.

On the LCH, with both engines failed and rotors freely rotating (autorotation), it would be descending at about 10 m/s. Normally, the pilot would ‘flare’ close to the ground (raise the nose up to arrest the descent rate and increase the rotor RPM temporarily) to cushion the landing, which then would be at a far lower vertical speed. However, even if the pilot is unable to ‘flare’ to arrest the desent speed, the helicopter is still capable of absorbing the impact forces at 10 m/s.

There is another benefit – a helicopter designed to this standard essentially also turns to be a tough, rugged, no-nonsense machine.

Well, the LCH shares the same rotors of the ALH, however has a different fuselage and certain other different systems. The engines are the ‘Shakti’, used in the latest ALH version.
Overall, the handling is very agile, crisp and there is a whole lot of power on the tap – similar to the ALH-Shakti. There are, however, certain important differences -the tail wheel layout is very different, in terms of handling for landing. The straight line stability is very good and it appears to be rather exactly what’s desired for weapon aiming and launch.
The tandem seating, compared to the side-by-side seating of the ALH also results in quite different crew coordination (Crew Resource Management in flight safety jargon).
These are early days yet, and a whole lot of stuff on the machine is still evolving – so stay tuned!

Yes, you will see changes to the LCH – essentially pertaining to the tail-plane, the wings, outer-fins, addition of some streamlining (including a ventral fin incorporating the tail-wheel) and some other details.

Regarding the external view from the cockpit- we need to keep in mind that this machine is a prototype and optimisation of the cockpit transparency is a progressive activity. Its planned and is being evaluated – however, the prototype is logically expected to have the maximum external view possible – check out pics of the cockpit of the prototype Apache attack helicopter (YAH-64) and compare it with the cockpit of the production version (AH-64) and you will see what I mean.

Armour protection is obviously planned and will be incorporated.

Regarding max speed – no, we have not, as of yet opened the full flight envelope. We have not taken the helicopter to its max speed as of yet. Regards handling – already covered in my previous post!

one of the better journos ? when was that ? her reporting has been atrocious. 😀

Which version of the R-77 are you talking about here because when you say that the R-77 does not bring anything to the table and in the same line mention an R&D project like ARH things get confusing.

how so ? all versions of r-77 are ARH.

let me hazard a guess, russia is going slow on naval PAKFA because their new carrier is still some way off and this RFI from IN is to speed things up a bit, of course if there is a long delay from sukhoi then we might see F-35 in IN colours. even then I’m quite sceptical, IN isn’t funding the NLCA only to induct a completely foreign fighter in a few years time.