…unless Tejas is sub-par,
if my country only got village idiots, but my country desperately needs infrastructure,
should i let the village idiots build the bridges or should i hire a qualified engineer from abroad to do it ?
is it even in my nations interest to have them idiots constructing the bridges ?

Even if Tejas is sub-par.

If you wait until Indian industry can produce a world-class product before backing them in then they will never produce a world-class product. The sales and guaranteed funding that accompany commitment from the end-user (i.e. the IAF) are crucial to undertaking further R&D and retaining learned skills, while the feedback from operational units is equally important when it comes to working out what needs to be improved and how. You can’t build a world-class industry off a series of prototypes.

China is the name on everyone’s lips these days. And yet until very recently Chinese forces were reliant upon sub-par, indigenously produced equipment across the board: H-6s, J-8s, Q-5s, etc. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature! — it’s why China is now in the position of building J-20 while India is still importing radomes(!) from London. Of course China benefited from external transfers and relationships in several significant ways, but at no point (post Sino-Soviet split) has the Chinese story been able to be described solely in terms of those transfers. They got what they could from more experienced others, and used it to advance their own interests. India could stand to learn a lot from that. China did the hard yards and did them ruthlessly over the course of fifty years. India is perpetually looking for the quick fix.

Market access is a trap for the unwary — it enshrines relations of dependence and submission. That’s why the recent American decision to ban the shipping of Xeon processors to China was so short-sighted. The development of Chinese high-performance computing architectures has been hamstrung by the existence of already dominant players with whose highly-evolved products China cannot compete with in the short-term. The Xeon ban makes American Congressionals feel good, and in the short-term will cause Chinese end-users some headaches, but in the medium-term all it has done is create a protected market in which Chinese products can develop, and that will eventually burst onto the world scene as world-class competitors, taking revenue (and moreso profit) from previously dominant American companies. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Every Air Force needs better battle management, communications, ISR and PGMs.

While everybody loves shooters, its the basics of management, communications, recce and precise weapon effects which provide the greatest improvement in war fighting capability.

It is the IAF itself which is wedded to the arbitrary number of 37/39/42 squadrons which in turn drives all this discussion. The generous interpretation is that this focus on an impending and supposedly apocalyptic shortfall of combat aircraft is calculated to maintain pressure on the government to fund and pass procurements. The less generous interpretation is that things are exactly as chaotic and efforts as misdirected as they appear to be.

The existence of projects such as DRDO’s AEW efforts, UAV programs, PGMs, etc. gives reason to hope that the lights are indeed on upstairs, but progress remains glacial and seems to lack the focus needed to bring projects to service.

There is no shortage of criticism on the internet of the role that politicians, DRDO, HAL, etc. play, but I think the IAF itself gets off far too lightly. For its part the IAF hardly appears interested in advancing the broader national interest by committing to indigenous programs, appearing far more interested in whatever shiny foreign toys are being waved in front of them.

I think head on is one of the best angles of the plane tbh; I think the forward 20-45 degree angle is the more unflattering angle for it.

I think the bad angles for J-20 are those that emphasise the sheer length of the plane without simultaneously showing the breadth of the wings and canards for balance. And also angles that make the plane look heavy and brutish, lacking in elegance or any sense of motion — this is the category that the head-on angle falls into IMO.

depends, math suggest gripen E out ranges EF significantly and rafale slightly in A2A configuration,
but will be inferior to both with heavy loads.

I have no difficulty believing that Gripen E/F has impressively long legs with light loads, comparable to the larger Eurocans, but that was not the claim.

on the rafale M1.4 SC, i dont buy it, simple as that, its a repeated myth IMO,
i would think it can do around M1.2

I have never heard Rafale associated with a claimed Mach 1.4 supercruise. Mach 1.4 for Typhoon, yes. I do recall reading of Mach 1.2 for Rafale.

With weight gain since the Gripen Demo, the production E/F is apparently incapable of supercruise with the standard F414. Future supercruise prospects depend on someone funding GE’s development roadmap for the engine, which nobody appears eager to do.

Russia has been and always will be a clear step above China in Aviation. Any suggestion otherwise is just pure folly.

Leaving the present aside, the suggestion that Russia “will always be” ahead of China in military aviation is indefensible. R&D is not magic, there is no “secret source” to which China does not have access, no peoples of sacred blood destined to claim the heights forever. It is a matter of resources and national will, and China has both. Ultimately Russia is destined to become the junior partner in its defense-industrial relationship with China. This should not be a source of shame, nor is it to question the skills of Russian engineers and researchers, nor is it to deny the significant role that Russia and its defence manufacturers and scientists will continue to play in the world going forward. It is simply the way of things to come.

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.” — George Santayana.

There is a reason why China purchased a Russian designed aircraft carrier.

Because it was the sensible thing to do in order to accelerate the development and fielding of an indigenous carrier capability? No intelligent person denies the great debt that Chinese aerospace & other military development owes to the Soviet Union, nor the ongoing contributions of Russian industry to Chinese capabilities. It is your suggestion that that this is an immutable state of affairs destined to continue indefinitely that is in question. Things change, as they always have.

Yet people want to use this thread to mock Russian aviation and claim that China is ahead of Russia in aviation.

As someone who is pro-Russia, and pro-China (and pro-India, and…) there is nothing more tiresome than one-eyed nationalists regardless of which side of the fence they are on.

Time to rethink Indonesia’s submarine dreams

Whether Indonesia really needs a dozen submarines is indeed a reasonable question given the nation’s limited resources and other, more urgent priorities, however the wisdom of maintaining and renewing a submarine capability is beyond reasonable doubt.

If they are trying to hide the IRST seeker, that means that the frontal RCS of the plane is probably of the same order of magnitude or less than a standard IRST seeker. Otherwise why bother doing that? So what it the RCS of IRST seekers usually? Probably still quite low. That could mean that the PAK-FA RCS from the front is lower than some would assume.

Unfortunately this conclusion requires a fair bit of reasoning, something that most who question T-50’s VLO characteristics are demonstrably averse to in the first place.