In the midst of persistent recent rumours of frontrunners in India’s medium multirole combat aircraft (M-MRCA) competition, an explosive new piece of buzz — and an assertion in the latest issue of India’s most widely read news magazine — now suggest that the Lockheed-Martin F-16 is no longer in the reckoning for the $11-billion 126-fighter prize.
http://livefist.blogspot.com/2010/11/mmrca-buzz-f-16-out-of-mmrca-bid.html

LoL…..

Now everyone has been eliminated atleast once.

Oh, dear god let this be true, that F-16 y/z block:infinity super geriatric should have been eliminated a long time ago.

Your sense of humor aside, there is a constant attrition rate of MiGs in the Indian ranks. Even with the Bison upgrade the MiG-21s are of limited military value, when pitted against FBW designs. Despite your claim the F-16 is either the upper end of the light-weight classs or the lower end of the medium size class. But your last sentence show, that you are not serious about the Indian claims at all. 😉

MMRCA, everything from F-16 to Rafale is a medium.

F-16 is a dead plane right now, no point buying it or the MiG-29, once Lockheed stop supporting the plane for USAF, they will stop all efforts into upgrading the plane, and upgrades will become enormously expensive.

2012 is not a year when all MiG-21s will come crashing down, even if one starts inducting the Tejas LCA in 2010, it wont be able to replace the Mig-21 bison by 2017 (at the rate of a squadron per year), The immediate job will have to be done by the Su-30MKI squadrons being inducted every year, from 2014/15 InAF will have simultaneous induction of new squadrons of Su-30MKI, MMRCA and may be the Tejas LCA coming up every year, takes care of the gap for good. (that is around 40 planes minimum or 60 planes maximum per year).

Hey you never know, InAF is in all or bust mode, its either multi role or nothing.

MiG-21 Bison is quite viable against much of Pakistan’s arsenal, and a decent portion of China’s. No world beater, sure…

Dont you know, Pakistan has replaced all its old french planes and chinese mig copies with JF-17 in one year, its amazing what our good chinese friends can do in a factory, instant production.

China already has a 5th generation air force, bah! you know nothing…..

Considering how the Indians work they will no doubt consult with Thales, BAE & DCN over IAC2 probably along with Newport News as they tend to get advise and opinions before evoving their own design.

From an armchair observers viewpoint it quite hard to keep track of Indian projects as they tend to keep the details rather quiet (just see how little info there is on IAC1 or the current series of Destroyers & frigates currently under construction).

I rather doubt they would use the CVF design as such, but rather go with an enlarged IAC1 which is optomised for construction in Indian shipyards and then consult overseas companies with existing experience on the changes and the impact on they would have on the current design.

One aspect that nots been considered is the Russians, the Indians may well be talking with Russia on a common design with an eye for navalised Pak-FA for both navies?

I think that is a very accurate observation, however if the IN goes for catapults system there might be a lot of changes on the current design, i think the complete system takes up a lot of space and requires extra power.
The carrier groups might be quite haphazard with two completely different types (STOBAR and CATOBAR) requiring two completely different fighters.

PAK-FA naval might take its own good time, i think Sukhoi will put its complete resources on developing the land based version first, they already have a couple of deadlines in front of them. The IAC-2 will require fighter squadrons around 2017-2020, and if there is another carrier sanctioned by the Government, i think it would be absolutely criminal to add yet another type to the naval fixed wing fighter type, the two types will be trouble enough.

It seems strange to me that a country trying to achieve a sophisticated fast jet capability should ignore the world market. Tejas Mk2 could be a very capable light fighter with a price tag no other aircraft could match for the capability offered. Investing large amounts of money over several decades to produce an aircraft whose performance is acceptable to the IAF and then to limit production to 200 or so for home consumption does not make sense to me.

How many light fighters will be retired over the next couple of decades – 1000? 2000? Is the US developing a moderately priced successor the F16? No. Is there a moderately priced successor to the MiG-21 being developed? Not that I know of. There is the Gripen NG but I would hazard that it could not compete with the Tejas Mk2 costwise.

I imagine that there is quite a learning process in supporting export sales of sophisticated aircraft. I suggest India embarks on that process with the Tejas Mk2. Should the MCA ever come to fruition, it may be that India would be interested in exporting it. Its prospects in the export market would be much better if India had already demonstrated its competence in supporting exports. One reason Russian civil aircraft have not been successful in export markets is because spares support etc has been lousy in comparison to western types.

With a high performance GE engine, an AESA radar, and all the other gizmo’s that the InAF is going to ask for in the mark 2 version, i doubt it will be come cheap. Possible advantage would be the integration of both Russian and Israeli weapons (both amongst the biggest weapon suppliers), i doubt that HAL would integrate sensors and equipment from multiple sources once they start the production lines.

The FC-1, with the Russian engine from 29, older tech. mechanical scanned array radar, Chinese weapons suite, and other cheaper options, would be a better option for nations looking for a cheaper package. The biggest advantage is that China has been selling cheap MiG-21 copies for a long time.

The bigger picture has got to be looked at. The Typhoon is not the only thing Europe produces for it’s military, so theres plenty of other projects for jobs & what not etc etc etc…

As far as I know, officially, India are being offered to be the 5th member in the consortium.

I still say Eurofighter have the best deal in this competition, it’s alright some people saying the US types are “mature” but so what, just means they’re old and have very, very little potential left and even then theres the US sanctions on top of that, and cheap too, well theres reasons for that…An awful deal IMO. Like I say, Eurofighter offer the better deal and if India don’t go with that, well, silly mistake. But we all know politics play a major role no matter how good or bad an aircraft is.

Still; Typhoon all the way IMO.

Yeah, then the Indians can charge whatever price they want for the ‘outsourced’ source code!! Brilliant!!

Regarding offsets EADS has the most to offer for both civil & military sectors, I highly doubt being offered partnership is some sort of cruel joke- you have to look at the wider picture of India as an emerged economic power this coming decade.

Just because the Tejas gets the F414, a US victory is not a given- far from it.

Barring any ITAR funny-business, my money’s (still) on Eurofighter Typhoon.

I agree, if the Europeans can transfer full technology, along with a guaranteed role in any future development of the plane (from planning to implementation stage) they offer something the US companies can never offer on any program, Super hornet or F-16.

However can the Euro-fighter offer such a partnership? With so many nations included in the program, and after all it is a euro fighter.

^^^^Maybe, just maybe, Kramer, you should have gone through my link first!
Then you’d know why Loke and I are perplexed as you are.

Here it is again : http://idrw.org/?p=1100

What is often said is that the Sukhoi is easy to spot on account of size
and not such a great low-low penetrator.
Personally, I’ve never “driven” one under such circumstances so i wouldn’t know.;)

That link was immature in its views, no justification given behind any of the immature views.

The Rafale is the Knight in shining armor. It is a proven ground attack platform, it has the best avionics, ECM and ECCMs, It’s soon to get a top rated AESA. The cockpit is a pilot’s dream. It’s proven its mettle in Afghanistan, and guess what, has a carrier version too, just in case we start drooling…

Proven ground attack capability because it proved its mettle in Afghanistan, and hence is ready for lobbing a few over the border.
Yes the plane with the clever ECCM which destroyed the bearded planes and SAMs of the Taliban.

The only thing that i would agree with in that rant is that US will not let its plane be modified for the nuclear role.

France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, really too many to mention.

what happens if uncle sam decides to sell both Pakistan and India F-35, like they are doing with F-16s (or at least attempting to). 🙂

fair is fair!

USA can decide to provide Pakistan with F-35, India has no say on that decision, its a US defence policy matter.

As far as F-16 are concerned even with the platform on offer to India which is the evolution of the block-60 planes , they had to provide a detailed plan for transferring the required amount of technology and manufacturing to India.

The discussion is in reference to Col. Shukla (a defence journo) suggesting that India should scrap the current MMRCA contest and have a government to government negotiation/purchase of the F-35 (for the 126 numbers required), there are arguments for and against this opinion.

It is not about denial of US government to sell F-35s to India under pressure from a third nation, or to balance the power equation in Asia (to assume that a single plane can do that is immature).

Buy a fighter for war, not air shows
A firestorm of criticism from hundreds of indignant netizens followed my last column (“Scrap the MMRCA, buy US F-35s”, October 19, 2010), which argued that the Indian Air Force is blundering in buying a 4th Generation Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) just a couple of years before Lockheed Martin’s 5th Generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter enters operational service. Given that the IAF will operate its 126 MMRCAs till about 2050, anything short of today’s cutting edge would become irrelevant long before that.

http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2010/11/buy-fighter-for-war-not-air-shows.html

As Mr.Shukla said, the F-35 represents a future proof platform, a design that has low observability as its design requirement, a 4.5 generation fighter can never get an upgrade to become a LO fighter like the F-35. A very valid argument as we have seen in history instances when a previous generation of military equipment was suddenly at a great disadvantage by the more advanced technology.

The F-35 will be available in a 2017-2020 time frame, with more news of more delays in the platform doing the rounds.

MMRCA represents (at the rate of a squadron per year) up to 5 operational squadrons (100 planes) by the time F-35 is available, which is very important for the InAF at this point (they have the money now and need new planes now).

Many nations in the region are inducting 4/4.5 generation planes in the region and MMRCA contenders meet or exceed these planes.

The IN could participate in the F-35 program for its carrier the IAC-2, it will complete its construction around 2017-2020, and there will be no other 5th generation naval fighter available in that time frame, so the government can go for a direct purchase with out a time consuming tender process, and from the current RFI for F-35 it seems the government is trying to move in that direction. This also represents a buy small enough(a couple of squadrons) to ignore massive transfer of technology.