If one of them are chosen and a single aircraft suffers from some small issue the people and leftists here would be up in arms big time. While for the Russian jets its OK to keep falling out of the skies :rolleyes:.

Does anyone have any information about the progress of the NLCA. The Indian Navy often favours indigenisation more than the other two branches of our armed forces. May be HAL can sell a few from the first batch to the Navy.
Then again the Mach 1.1 sea level performance may not be good enough.

So in about 20 years time for the west all air combat would be like playing video games with a joystick, how nice. May be the UCAVs and Unmanned combat vehicles will be the only way to combat the growing population of potential enemies.

But i know this, that when machines replace men totally in aerial combat I would stop being an enthusiast.

Even in star wars they used manned vehicles :confused:Please don’t go all UCAV.

Eurofighter is over priced and its A2G capabilities are suspect. Rafale would have been the obvious choice along with the MIG. But under the current circumstances the SH have a great chance.

You never know, and it would be stupid to choose the Gripen anyway. India has inhibitions about American stuff because it fears of sanctions so why buy Gripen which will also be succeptable to those. Better get F 16 or SH in case of the latter you can have engine commonality with half of your fleet.

Possibly but that engine is custom designed for the Gripen and may be Americans will be pissed off for rejecting their jets and won’t allow the Gs to be integrated into LCA.

I understand. All I am saying is that, there will be a counter for that as well. I am sure people are working on it as we speak. :diablo:

In a competition atm, such as India’s MRCA , the F-18E/F type looks very, very strong. The idea that it has in service AESA, full AtA and AtG functions, massive US support, very competitively priced etc…is all very impressive, however Rafale now offers the same basically, but with more enhansed abilities. If EF wants to compete they just need to SPEED the program up.
If EF were offereing, atm, an EF2000 with AESA, basically full AtG and AtA functions many of the competitions currently running would be over.;)

EF has very little chance because of its price. The SH and Rafale offers the same or more at less price. ToT will be the stumbling block for the SH.

First see and then believe. Claims that Iran was receiving S-300s have been made regularly for many years. Almost exactly a year ago the Iranian Defence Minister claimed there was a contract. This was later denied by both the Russians and the Iranians (not that I always believe what Russian and Iranian sources say.)

The sources do not contradict each other. One says an agreement was signed the other says delivery beginning soon.

RIA Novosti is usually a very reliant source. And we had an article on a news paper here today saying how the S-300 delivery will act as a deterrent, from the same source.