Not just the Bisons, a good 6 squadrons of MIG-27s too. Combine those with the MIG-21s and you are looking at 12-14 odd squadrons that need replacing over the next 5 years, and SU-30s being produced at just underneath a squadron a year, 40 LCAs and perhaps no Rafales, then you can easily see why squadron numbers continue to fall for India over the next 5-10 years.

The hysteria over squadron numbers is just that — a tool IAF uses to press its interests. Clearly India needs a large number of aircraft, but it is ludicrous to have an accounting method that counts a MiG-21 and a Su-30MKI the same.

IAF will have as many squadrons as it can afford, and that number will almost certainly place it amongst the world’s most formidable air forces. The actual concerns are to get and keep acquisition, development, and upgrade programs on track.

Mi-26 at 11660 ft above sea level. It is carrying 8-10 tons of cargo every sortie to that altitude.

Nice pic, however this is clearly not a capability India values given its selection of CH-47F over Mi-26T2.

It seems clear to me that Canada will buy F-35, and it will probably be the most sensible choice — which is not to say it was the most sensible choice when the debacle began. It’s diabolical really — if you (meaning Lockheed Martin, the US government, and treasonous/penetrated/bought/flipped elements of the domestic politico-military elite) lie, distort, obfuscate and delay for long enough, a foolish solution can actually become a sensible one. It is to the credit of Canada’s political institutions and culture (in contrast to those of certain other nations) that things have managed to reach their present impasse, but eventually the music must stop.

That’s what Boeing said as well. Pity they haven’t been able to flog the SH to more than one export customer.

And that wasn’t exactly a performance-based evaluation.

Anyone have a link to that video/article where Some USAF Guy (Bogdan?) talks **** about the state of Lockheed Martin? Something about his office having to go in and clean the cobwebs out of the attic? It would be at least a couple of years old now.

i don’t see how you can justify the extra expenses on logistic with Raf when you have alrdy SH in your fleet… It does not make any senses.

If you had in mind that Au shld have bought Rafale instead of SH, then that could be discussed rationally.

But by the way, shld hve Australia bought Tiger and NH90 ? 😉

Australia did not have SH at the time, and only has so now due to the repeated failures of the F-35 program and government bureaucracy taking the path of least resistance (imagination, career risk, etc.) at each successive turn. So yes, the suggestion is that Australia should’ve bought Rafale instead of SH+F-35.

NH90 was clearly the wrong choice. Tiger is more complicated.

The synergy for PAK-FA/FGFA radar, EW & ESM systems is probably what the Russians plan for the ‘Super-30’ MLU. Along with domestic upgrades for Su-30SM, Su-35S and non-PLAAF ‘Flanker’ exports, the potential economies of scale for these upgrades are positively huge and make their current very expensive R&D programmes (thru to 2020), commercially viable.

‘Super 30’ seems to be an informational black hole, but I think it is unlikely that India will want to use Russian EW gear in place of the Israeli systems currently fitted. I think it more likely that they would pursue an indigenous solution, or another Israeli one, or some combination of the two. They will probably want the radar to be at least partly indigenous also. As evidenced by the recent RFP for large aircraft to support an indigenous AESA-based AEW system, India is quite confident in this area.

One possibility aired a while back was that Super-30 might result in two tiers of aircraft: those newly manufactured to the new standard, and those upgraded, with various differences in equipment fit between them. As more time has gone by without (visible) progress, the number of potential new-build ‘Super-30s’ has diminished to the point where it is questionable that such a two-tier strategy would be practical in terms of economies of scale. Extending production beyond 2018 as mooted could be one way of addressing this and restoring the viability of a new-build Super-30s incorporating airframe refinements similar to Su-35S. Needless to say, under such a two-tier system there would be many possible combinations of equipment fit: perhaps existing Su-30MKIs would receive indigenous/Israeli upgrades, while new build aircraft would receive systems sharing a high degree of commonality with those planned for FGFA.

In the continued absence of hard information, all we can say is that the possibility space is distressingly large.

Between, there was no way the Raf could have been cheaper than a SH.

Who said anything about Rafale being cheaper than SH?

Reading between the lines, DRDO’s ‘Year Gone By’ would appear to support the contention that the recent Nirbhay test used a Russian rather than indigenous turbojet:

Nirbhay, the 1000-km class long range sub-sonic cruise missile was successfully flight tested on the 17th October 2014. The flight lasted for over one hour and met all the mission objectives with missile following the predefined trajectory with very high accuracy throughout its path.

[….]

An expendable 450 Kgf thrust class Gas Turbine engine ‘Manik’ was developed for 1000 km class subsonic cruise missile [Nirbhay] and is undergoing endurance tests.

Lots of interesting stuff in this document.

If we can’t talk about economics and engineering and stay on technical, maybe we can talk about the Chinese “Anti-sealth” radar?

What part of “talk about the program” was unclear? Even if the OP had not offered explicit instructions — which of course he did — it is terribly discourteous to introduce marginally relevant topics in the early stages of a thread.