Now I await the arrival of Comrade Stalin to put all the capitalist runningdogski’s in their place.

Politics or not, its a fact of life that the Indian Air Force is heavily audited and I can find multiple references to its attrition statistics from Indian sources. Not from the rest of the world as you imply. This situation does not exist for some of its subcontinental peers for which finding accurate information is merely whistling in the dark or believing PR work without any recourse to regularly revealed official information.
And the above has everything to do with the current Indian democratic structure and layers of official audit vis a vis its peers.

Anyway, Tiger, I really think the time has come for me to ignore you and your oh so interesting thread diversions. :rolleyes:

Cheerio!

One thing I dont quite get is “the night fighter” bit. Whats that supposed to mean?
This is not WW2 with dedicated night fighters and the like.
Given a decent pulse doppler radar, integrated with decent ILS and night vision suitable cockpit instrumentation- any fighter can operate at night.
Often even more primitive methods can be made use of with suitable derring do. In 71 IAF pilots mounted attacks by moonlight and landed on airstrips lit by torches. (people waving them), navigation was seat of the pants to boot.
Does the nigh fighter bit refer to a two seater version dedicated to night time strike with eqpt like the Blue Sky pod?

Distiller,

Copy of the F7 or not- it surely looks interesting. There is a dearth of interesting looking a/c for one and the CY-1/LYC-16 has an interesting touch of the unusual to it.
It’d be great to see more pics and reports on it.

Sounds like a very reasonable summary to me!

Same here.

The IAF is open with its crash rate and attrition details, unlike certain other AF’s in dictatorships which fly less and hide details.

non beneficial to both parties? I think Russia also benefit throught Shanghai cooperation organization for stability in whole Euroasian region. I am not putting financial aspects as they will not be built by Sukhoi. Any way no body can count flankers inside China airbases. So if they can built extra for themselves no body is going to know it.
And J-11 is non issue no body is interested in that option.

Sure the incompetent Russians wont know if the Chinese renege on contractual agreements. The rest of your post is incomprehensible, as usual. :rolleyes:

Russia is even ready to sell there weopons backdoor to PAF.

Sure, sure.
I just counted a hundred MiG 29’s in the PAF Orbat yesterday.
If it takes that much pain to just get engines for the FC1, one can only imagine what would happen if the PAF sought actual integrated combat a/c..(not some logistics choppers etc).

I’d buy everything the Shah did and then some. What he did evidently worked- if a bare bones version of his AF could knock the Iraqis around at that point of time- them being equipped with some nifty French, Russian gear and all.

Concur on the F14! All those who disagree are blasphemers and are consigned to suffer an eternity debating with Tiger 01.

Light fighter? I’d have a fleet of Lawndarts or Mirage 2000’s thankyouverymuch. The Mirage is cooler than a Lawndart as well.
Secondary light fighter? The F5 with upgrades- a F20 if you will. That , if I cant afford them lawndarts in numbers. I am messing up the timelines a bit but hey, you did say this thread was not for the serious fellers.

I’d keep off the MiG23’s if I were you- even the 27’s. Superb rugged kit but takes time and money to maintain. Buy Lawndarts or rather F/A-18’s instead. Latter were clearly a gen ahead at the time and came with modular arch, LRU’s and BITE.

Of course- you do all the above and you end up with a staid mix. But it could k1ck a$$ combat power wise.