The WS-10 has noticeably larger nozzles than the AL-31FN. The engine as a whole also seems to be heavier. Does that have any affect on performance?

The Saras is a sad example of the Indian aerospace industry. It had a promising start but ended up overshooting its deadlines and parameters again and again and has become a quiet dissapointment.

I consider this a glaring example of why having a single state-owned aircraft maker isn’t going to exploit India’s potential in the aerospace industry. Private companies like Tata Advanced Systems and Mahindra have formed partnerships and acquired foreign aerospace firms in the hopes of filling this gap. The Socialist MOD babus should let these firms leverage their international contacts tp compete where HAL’s fallen short(Airliners, transport aircraft, MPAs, UCAVs) instead of now and forever propping up HAL as ‘India’s sole aircraft maker!’(Feel any pride reading that description? I don’t.)

It’s up to us, says Collins class submarine boss

THE Australian Submarine Corporation has “no god-given right” to design or build future submarines.

ASC builds the beleaguered Collins-class submarines, and chief executive Steve Ludlam says it has to prove itself worth y of new contracts.

Mr Ludlam defended the Collins submarines as “world-class” in a speech in Adelaide on Friday, but said ASC had to be competitive to get a slice of the navy contract to design 12 new vessels, estimated to cost about $36 billion.

“We have to recognise that people from offshore will be interested in providing (the submarines) and we have to beat them,” he told an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch. “We’ve got no god-given right — we’ve got to prove ourselves in a competitive environment.”
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I can’t blame them for feeling that way. Even with foreign collaboration with nearly all the major systems the Collins class ended up a huge dissapointment. Trying to get Australian industry to come up with a state-of-the-art submarine design all on its own is a disaster in the making. The Aussies should just buy American(well, in this case, European) and build locally, like they do with most of their defence systems.

From the latest pics the Varyag looks more complete than the Gorshkov/Vikramaditya! That says something about the speed and advancement of Chinese shipbuilding.

But even after all these years there’s still very little technical data available on it. For example

-How did the Chinese build the ship’s propulsion system? The Varyag was designed for steam propulsion with Russian KVG-series boilers. What did the Chinese substitute, given there’s no news of a Russian sale of boilers and steam turbines?

-How are the Chinese planning to obtain hydraulic chocks, jet deflectors, arrested recovery systems and other carrier take-off and landing gear? Will they buy it from the Russians?

^LIke snake65 said, they seem to have abandoned or at least shelved its development for now. The Lada has more urgent problems to solve before that(the sonar) and what the Russian Navy needs is a larger number of slightly less capable boats to make up force numbers, It’s likely that any export Amur will have the option of installing a western AIP system, like the S800/1000 that was apparently offered to India with an Italian AIP.

It’s only a prototype, so the lack of folding wings can be excused. Compared to the other problems of navalising a fighter developing a hydraulic wing folding mechanism isn’t such a great problem.

Actually IAF had already indicated an option for 20 more Tejas some 3-4 years back, in addition to 28 units (these 28 ones were committed more than 6 years ago). The option of 20 additional jets was to be exercised if the performance of the Tejas to IAF justified even more orders — which it has.

The IAF needs a Mk.2 version, just as later tranches / batches of new & improved Rafale and Typhoon were asked for, by their respective air-forces.

More specifically, the Kaveri is the reason why a Mk.2 version was asked for. Kaveri is a flat-rated engine, meaning that it could provide reasonably high thrust even at low altitudes and high temperatures. But so far, the max. thrust of Kaveri is only 81 kN, whereas the IAF needs 85-90 kN FLAT-RATED.
Thus, the IAF asked to float a tender in which GE’s F-414 and Eurojet’s EJ-2000 are participating. Both are of 95-100 kN class, and will compensate for the lack of the flat-rated attribute in Kaveri.

——

Having said the above, the IAF must order a total of 350-400 Tejas units, and not just 150. In this day and age, when Chinese J-7s alone outnumber the ENTIRE IAF’s fleet strength, the time of having a few hundred units of 1 type has come. Even DRDO’s former chief Dr. Natarajan had emphasized this.

Quality over quantity.:p The Chinese will be phasing out the J-7s soon and replacing them with FC-1s/J-11s/Su-27SK/Su-30MKKs. I see the IAF’s view on Tejas as more like how the PLAAF’s handling the J-10; a small order of the initial version as a pat on the back, followed by using it as a springboard for a developing more modern, cutting-edge version that closes the gap between Indian aerospace tech and the rest of the world.

A V22 based MASC has been envisioned already, and the hypothesis never really was ruled out, but it is higly unlikely to happen.
The Cerberus radar suite has some chances to end up on a V22 Osprey only if the american special forces or marines see the Sea King 7 in action as tactical AWACS in afghanistan and find it impressive enough to think about making their own tactical radar planes. Not impossible, but again, unlikely.
Anyway you can learn about that in the awesome Richard Beedal’s Navy Matters website: http://navy-matters.beedall.com/masc.htm

Er, I wasn’t talking about the Osprey.