RiiIran has already expressed interest in Su-30SM.
If Iran wanted to acquire a second platform in the same timeframe then J-10B/C would be an excellent complement, but I don’t expect they will go down that route. They will pursue Su-30SM then take another look at the market circa 2025.
RiiThe fact that they got themselves in to the J-20 program as a subcontractor after handsomely losing out the J-XX competition is scary.
Why? SAC and CAC are strategic assets. You don’t let one of them fall behind the other to the point of being non-competitive in future endeavours. China has the resources and internal market to support both, and therefore should do so.
RiiThe French response seems … unusual?
Riihttps://ria.ru/economy/20161007/1478757703.html
Expenditure under the “National Defense” Ministry of Finance plans to reduce in 2017 to 2.84 trillion rubles in 2017 against 3.889 trillion rubles in 2016.
27% reduction in funds doesn’t exactly sound like happy times.
RiiNo doubt it could become a highly capable mid-size VLO fighter, but by all accounts the Chinese armed forces aren’t interested. And that’s that.
As for why China isn’t interested in J-31, my hypothesis is that they don’t believe that they will require a manned combat aircraft smaller than J-20 going forward. Or rather, what requirement remains can be filled by J-10s. Of course there are other possible interpretations.
RiiHAL has a bad record when it comes to production , look even lately they have faced issues with ALH production as recent CAG report indicated which they have been building for more than a decade now.
I’m not saying that HAL and other parties are blameless, only that the IAF also has a role to play yet seems to escape scrutiny from 90% of commentators.
The Tejas in current form did not meet the ASR laid by IAF , and to meet those and keep it current for next decade they have to do the Mk1A
Another aircraft that didn’t mean the requirements of its parent nation’s air arm was F-35. What did that air arm do? They relaxed the requirements.
This is exactly the point. If you set the bar too high than the industry can never get off the ground and lessons can never be learnt and progress made. The Chinese didn’t get where they are today by “punishing” its industry for being unable to deliver aircraft on par with F-16, Su-27, etc. — it accepted what that industry was able to produce at the time, and built upon it.
If India ever wants to be a serious player in this world then it needs to stand on its own two feet. You can’t beggar your way to Great Power status. And the IAF (in contrast to the Indian Navy) appears to be major problem in this respect, working to undermine the national interest in favour of its own myopic ends.
That this same air arm has been screaming blue murder about simply not having enough aircraft — as MiG-21s and other elderly platforms continue to fall out of the sky taking pilots lives with them — is merely the icing on this absurd cake.
RiiThe bottle neck is HAL’s inablity to surge up production
Why would you have large-scale facilities able to surge production of a plane you don’t have a customer for?
Tejas Mk1A is still under works
And who dictated that further developments (i.e. the Mk. 1A standard) were necessary?
Oh right, the IAF. The same IAF that says the sky is going to fall in because they don’t have enough planes.
RiiWhat’s wrong with Tejas?
From all appearances the IAF is what is wrong with Tejas. The latest roadmap does nothing to change that impression, delaying substantial procurement further and further down the line, no doubt hoping that when the time actually comes budgetary and development circumstances will allow for the purchase of something else instead. It’s pretty appalling, really. I wonder how much IAF top brass are making in kickbacks from all these cashed-up foreign vendors knocking at their door.
RiiDuring the MMRCA process it was widely trumpeted that the cost-analysis of the two shortlisted proposals was the most sophisticated such exercise ever conducted in India, including consultation with the Harvard School of Business and an unspecified foreign air arm.
It beggars belief to imagine either that MoD incorrectly assessed which of the proposals was cheaper, or that they did so by allowing “miscellaneous” un-costed items to sail through in one bid but not another. What is likely is that both bids included similar lists of such items which were un-costed for similar reasons (i.e. both because it was plausible to leave them un-costed and to give the vendor room to extract additional profit). That the total eventual cost of Dassault’s bid could well have exceeded Eurofighter’s “uncosted” bid is unsurprising, but it says nothing about how much Eurofighter’s bid would actually have ended up costing had it been selected. Indeed, the fact that something like the day after the announcement in favour of Rafale, Eurofighter came back with “we can do a better deal” should raise some eyebrows regarding their previous submission in and of itself.
And then of course there is the other theory which I presented even prior to the downselect, namely that the decision would be in favour of Rafale for strategic reasons rather than the official criteria.
RiiThey are being overhauled/slightly modernized, apparently with Gefest.
Seems a bit strange to go to the effort of retaining and upgrading a mere half-dozen Su-33s in service with unique training/logistics requirements when you have those shiny MiG-29KRs. It isn’t like Russia has extra flattops lying around begging for an air wing…
RiiNew engines of any kind for exhausted Su-33s doesn’t make much sense to me. Isn’t that what MiG-29KR is for?
RiiHmm I think the face on pictures are actually quite good, I like how the canards, tails, and ventral fins are all sort of splayed out like an X wing from the front, or like a fighter from ace combat, and the angular look of the intakes too.
Hmm, clearly we see very different things. I see an ugly box with what appears to be a jumble of protrusions coming off it — this impression is at its worst when the dorsal fins are set differently from one another.
And of course side shots are great, where the smoothness of the plane gets to show itself off:
My aesthetic judgment is that it looks too long from this angle (no interest in the debate over how long it actually is.)
I think the worst angles of the plane are ones which are angled slightly to one side, where the other side’s air intake is not seen, making the aircraft look somehow distorted, like these:
I agree that those angles are also unflattering.
Unfortunately we don’t have that many good pictures of J-20 truly maneuvring in the air to judge what sort of angles in the air compare :/
We’ve got enough — especially recently — to know that from several angles J-20 is an attractive aircraft indeed. :applause:
I’m afraid that over the years, you’ve become a fanboy with a strong bias towards Chinese aircraft. Maybe not to the extent of JSR, but maybe more along the lines of Nicolas10
I don’t know why one would question Deino. Clearly Chinese aircraft and developments are his primary interest, but I have never seen any evidence of bias. Perhaps you two have some kind of history — I know how that works. But I am currently running a 39.2 degree fever and it is all very tiring.
RiiThanks for the suggestions guys. This site has a lot of good quotes about airpower. A few that caught my eye as prospective candidates:
“Frightening the Horses”
The cavalry, in particular, were not friendly to the aeroplane, which it was believed, would frighten the horses. — Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
“A symphony of light and flame”
A thing of orchestrated hell—a terrible symphony of light and flame. — Edward R. Murrow
“To lay waste the sky”
Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. — Henry David Thoreau
“For the morale of us all”
They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all. — Winston Churchill
RiiAdmiral Arun Prakash (former Chief of Staff, Indian Navy) comments on lack of buy-in and long-term commitment to indigenous programs from IAF.
RiiFood for thought:
Over the next five years China will commission more major surface combatant tonnage* than the UK has total. Assumptions below:
UK
Type 23 4900t x13 = 63700t
Type 45 8500t x6 = 51000t
Total = 114,700t
China Next Five Yrs
Type 054A+ 4000t x8 = 32000t
Type 052D 7500t x8 = 60000t
Type 055 12500t x2 = 25000t
Total = 117,000t
* Where, given the transformative capabilities of the ships relative to the antique rust buckets they’ll be replacing, this can all basically be considered “new” or “additional” capability.
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