The only engine that would meet that criteria as of now is RD-33MKM with about 93KN thrust and 3D-TVC.

Snecma with 90KN engine is atleast 5 years away if French finds someone to finance it. TVC and Snecma, unlikely…. Eurojet is atleast 5 years away from fielding an operational TVC engine, which is suppose to happen in 2018.[In short the first production standard TVC engine from the western side is atleast 13 years behind RD-33.

… and? AMCA isn’t due to enter service until 2025, who cares what is and isn’t available today? It’s not like you can’t fly prototypes on lesser engines like J-20, PAK FA, Rafale…

Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. are wars of convenience. If it is too expensive to wage such wars — that is to say, if one cannot wage such wars without enduring significant domestic hardships — so much the better to dissuade them.

Wars of necessity, on the other hand, call upon all the resources of the state and, if the state and the war are just, the hardships associated with it will be born with grace. If they are not — as in Russia in World War I, or America in Vietnam — expect problems.

Libya Campaign Shows Need For Lower-Cost NATO Strike Assets

Anyone remember what NATO was founded for? A nuclear-tipped Tomahawk is your ‘low-cost strike’ option!

Irrespective of Avionics:confused:

That ofcourse highly depends on what Flanker you use as your benchmark.
You see.. one Flanker can be world apart from another Flanker;)

You misunderstand me. Any notion of aircraft generations must dispense with avionics fit, because such is malleable. You could fit EO DAS and AESA to an A-7 if you felt like it. The gross aerodynamic characteristics of a platform, however, are fixed and thus serve as the baseline. Ergo, any Flanker is of a later generation than any F-15, and any Rafale is of a later generation than any Flanker.

This is if one is interested in salvaging anything at all from the ‘generation’ nomenclature. The alternative is to acknowledge that it’s an internal American system that doesn’t make much sense outside of it, and to restrict its use to that sphere.

is the role its designed for no longer relevant in current situation?

With Mk.2 deep in development even before Mk.1 reaches service… yeah. Size is where Tejas Mk.1’s ridiculously protracted development really shows. Technology has changed, world has changed, India has changed…

is HAL incapable of meeting targets?

Tejas is DRDO program, not HAL. The problems aren’t in manufacturing…

True but more recent planes like the SH, Rafale and Typhoon are either built with AESA or with growth potential to handle AESAs.

This in combination with built-in systems like SPECTRA, PIRATE, etc, and reduced RCS and a few other things like rudimentary sensor fusion is the reason I feel the Rafale (latest release), SH, (and in the near future Typhoon and Gripen NG) deserve the notation “4.5 gen”.

Rafale, Gripen (not even NG), Typhoon and J-10 are a generation ahead of the teen series and Fulcrum/Flanker irrespective of avionics fit.

djcross is right: if you’re interested in hanging off America’s coat-tails (which is what NATO is all about) there’s only one real choice.

If, on the other hand, you’re a sovereign nation with no interest in (usually worse than useless) grandstanding on the global stage, but a keen interest in defending the legitimate security interests of your nation then virtually anything is preferable to the F-35, with the possible exception of one of those “the first hit is free” offers of used F-16s which various nations have been suckered into, which bring all the dependence and most of the cost with none of the capability.

It’d be interesting to know what the figures would be like for an aircraft optimised for the supercruise regime. Perhaps Typhoon (clean) would be a closer approximation of such than the F-22.