The contract for upgrading SHAR with EL/M-2032 was signed in March 2005. The rational thing to do would have been to delay a decision on the ex-RN SHARs, & begin negotiations with Israel for a follow-on contract for the fitting of radars to the ex-RN aircraft.

The UK retired the Sea Harriers between 2004 & March 2006. With that timeline, there should have been no difficulty in procuring them, with a linked Israeli radar replacement contract. The rejection did not take place until after the withdrawal of all RN SHARs from service, over a year after the signing of the EL/M-2032 contract.

It is not credible that this could not have been managed to enable India to buy the lowest houred SHARs & replace their radars. All it took was the will. The Israelis would have been keen to get the extra business, so co-operative, & the UK wanted to get some money for the aircraft, so also co-operative. And by enabling India to have a fleet with common radars & weapons, it would have been in India’s interest.

But such a deal would have been even more of a dead end than Vikramaditya. Even if FA2’s had been acquired, number would have been barely adequate to fill up Viraat-sized carrier, and building a new STOVL carrier for them would have meant that the planes expire much earlier than the carrier – rather questionable position.

There is another chapter of the light supercruiser: Pierre suggest a turbojet rather than a turbofan engine,
because this fighter will stay supersonic at all time in action.
It makes sense both with regard to the intended speeds and they should also be cheaper,
problem is supercruising as a standard operational speed only became reality recently,
so to my knowledge there has been no development or research on turbojets for the last 30 years, or has there ?
Is there any modern turbojet around suited ?

Well, F119 is probably rather close to turbojet. It has very low bypass ratio (believed to be around 0.20).

For more than 40 years, the RAF has taken the view that given the cost of training a modern fighter pilot, it would be folly to send him to war in anything else but a full-specification warplane.

RAF’s 1980’s warplans included Hawks armed with Sidewinders, not to mention Tornado ADV’s with their awesome concrete block radars 🙂

But that aside, given how expensive fighter units are to raise & train, it’s true that warplane performance is probably wrong place to save money from. Sprey’s analysis reflects the era when stopping the Soviet hordes in an intense all-out brawl was paramount, and it reflects the experience of Korean, Vietnam and Yom Kippur wars. There it was important to create large number of sorties to ensure best effectiveness in limited spacetime, in both saturating the defences and overcoming enemy offensive capability. In confused knife fights, small agile fighter could still be very competive. (US “Light Fighter Mafia” was enraged when F-16 was “watered down” from it’s original cheap, super-agile day fighter into much more expensive & heavier multirole fighter.)

Unfortunately, Sprey’s analysis is timed in the era when this paradigm was beginning to fade so much of it seems anachronistic or downright wrong. AEW planes, datalinks, improved fighter radars, computers and better displays made it easier for fighter pilot to achieve kind of long-range situational awareness which was lacking in the ’60s and ’70s and preventing effective BVR combat. Air combat moved to longer ranges and focus shifted to tactical maneuvering instead of quick turn fighting. Also, scenarios shifted away from all-out blitzkrieg through Fulda gap, to more calculated, limited set-piece operations.

Was it a similar offer to the one made to Taiwan in 92, effectively C/D variant downgraded to an MLU standard and called an A/B Block 20?

Aside from the obvious attraction of a twin engine configuration up north considering the intended long service duration the beefier carrier airframe of the Hornet was probably attractive.

Originally they offered A/B MLU, then when F-18 entered the competition they switched it to C/D.
Finnish requirement was that planes were to be assembled in Finland, to gain technical familiarity with them, even though this increased cost of the contract. When General Dynamics picked up that they were losing, they offered a discount deal where planes were assembled in USA, but it would have been substantially cheaper option. This was very attractive given that the country was in severe depression, however even this was rejected. F-18 won largely because its best radar, longest service life and lowest attrition rate – combination thereof made it actually cheapest option over entire lifespan. Also, it was probably much better suited for road bases than F-16: Swedes came to same conclusion in the ’80s. Swiss also chose F-18 (so did South Korea before GD bribed them), so result of the competition was not a huge surprise for the people who were well acquinted with matters. Gripen was more expensive than either and also could not have been delivered in required timespace, Mirage was even more expensive. MiG-29 had very low service life compared to others which made it very expensive over projected service lifespan, also at the time there was no missile available which would have fulfilled Finnish requirements.

EDIT: Also any news as to progress on F-18 replacement? I’ve heard formal process is meant to commence in 2015 with potential service entry date being 2025.

2025 is looking increasingly optimistic. There has been talk about modernizing the Hornet and giving them 5 to 10 years more service life.

However, the threat posed by these is still not that great:

– US operates over 2,000 combat aircraft all of which are either 4th generation or 5th generation.

– US allies in North Asia (Japan/Korea/Taiwan) operate a further 800+ fourth generation aircraft as well as several hundred 3rd generation aircraft being replaced by 4th/5th generation aircraft.

Including Vietnam and Australia, SE Asia has a further 300+ fourth generation as well as a similar number of 3rd generation aircraft (mainly in Vietnam).

– China’s geographic and political situation means it still requires reserves of fighters for India as well as Asian borders (e.g. a conflict against Japan would still require a maintenance of reserve against Taiwan as well as Vietnam and Spratleys.

This makes concentration of force difficult.

Umm, isn’t this kind of intellectually dishonest comparison? Sure it may be hard for China to concentrate its fighters to one theatre, but apparently it’s not a problem for USA?

I’m not sure what is the definition of ‘scary’ here what PLAAF is meant to be, however, looking at the trend it is certainly somewhat discomforting. If you look for example PLAAF vs ROCAF in 1996 or so, it was very obvious that China had almost no ability to threaten Taiwanese skies, in fact Taiwan might have even achieved air superiority over Taiwan strait all by itself in case of all-out war: fast forward to present day and the situation is much changed, with PLAAF having undergone massive modernisation whilst development of Taiwanese air power has been almost stale over that period. Maybe the PLAAF is not all-powerful quite yet, but obviously the balance of power in SEA has been moving to their favour.

The post which prompted this specifically referred to the possibility of ex-US F-18C/Ds (not F-18s operated by other countries) being retired earlier than scheduled & sold to Brazil.

It is also assured that there is no chance of Finnish or Swiss F-18’s being retired prematurely and coming to 2nd hand market. If anything, those countries would buy more of them if they could. They’re also not flown with particularly forgiving flight profiles.

In the 21st century, there’s been a trend of replacing larger numbers of small ships (frigates) with a few big ones (Air Warfare Destroyers) and then ignore such basic concepts as mine countermeasures.

Fleet structures have changed, but it’s partly because technology allows for truly multi-role vessels. Up until 1980 or so, Cold War era vessels tended to be single or dual-role at most: frigates were usually ASW only, some few were ASuW or AAW frigates. Destroyers were usually AAW, with some ASW ones like Spruances and Udaloys. By contrast nowadays, virtually all frigates built are multirole, capable in all aspects of the warfare. This means that for same capabilities, fewer vessels are needed which means savings, even if individual vessels are larger & more expensive than their predecessors.

Having cheaper, more plentiful 2nd line warships to handle 2nd line duties is fine, but the thing is, 1st line warships can fight 2nd line threats, but it doesn’t work vice versa. In fact same was true in WW2 too, for many escorting and patrolling duties sloops and corvettes were usually fine – but when the big air attack came, or surface raider, then your corvettes were useless.

And not all Western navies concentrate solely on expensive for high-end ships, look at French Navy: front line warships include Horizon and F70 frigates (to be replaced by FREMMs), middle capability is represented by La Fayette and Flor�al light frigates, then in the low end there are avisos and OPV’s.