Though a part of me wishes thd winner to be NG. For one simple reason. To see Abhimanyu’s reaction (after all his stuff about MK-2=NG).

Sorry Abhi…couldnt resist. 😉

Well, vikas no I don’t mind. Yes, its true that a part of me will be very angry and frustrated. But then again as it’s one of the cheapest of the lot, that may be some consolation.

IAF will also realize the Tejas’ equivalence (or superiority) to Gripen, and may restore some faith in the indigenous industry. This may avoid future follies like PAK-FA and MTA.

Don’t be silly. I refer you to the ASTOR discussion. You were all het up over the suggestion that a class of sensor used by the UK, Brazil, Israel & several other countries might be useful to India, but throughout, you attacked ASTOR, apparently obsessed with its use by the UK.

No, you clearly referred to the C-17; you mentioned ASTOR only now, in a fit. And then change the context of discussion as you see fit. Besides, if you’d bother to ferret out older posts of mine about ASTOR (long before pages of JF-17 quarrels), you’ll remember very well, that I argued about it in it’s total uselessness in the Indian context. OK ?

Now please, stop. Your ASTOR may be just fine for the US/UK in Afghanistan, and for detecting your Brazillian smugglers in the Amazon forests. It’s not needed in India, and besides with an indigenous AEW&C on the anvil, it’s all the more unnecessary, given that an ASTOR-type plane is the next step.

The C-17 offers volume. Its range is nothing special. For global deployments, it needs frequent refuelling. The Il-76 can fly loads just as far, & as fast. The difference is in the size of loads it can carry. Whether for disaster relief or military use, that’s valuable.

And the difference in size of the payload means difference in operating costs, which are leveraged best over ultra-long distances. Otherwise why have different classes of transporters at all ? Why not have 1 standard transporter for transporting everything from pins to tanks ? Ever think in these terms ?

Of course, India could invest in restarting An-124 production, & get something able to carry even bigger loads. India’s choice. It could offer advantages over the C-17, & personally, I would have liked to see the UK & other European countries push the RR-engined An-124 once proposed, & buy a few dozen between them, but that’s water under the bridge now. However, for India, being limited to the comparatively low & narrow Il-76 cargo box is an inconvenient restriction.

Il-76 works fine for the Indian armed forces, thanks. They don’t need a dinosaur as of now to transport within India.

For some time now, Indian and other strategic analysts have repeatedly been ruling out the possibility of a full scale conventional war in the region. In sum, while a high impact threat of conventional war has receded, that of a low impact threat of catastrophic terror attacks and border skirmishes loom high on the strategic horizon. At this time it is perhaps possible to make some bold suggestions to delay and, if possible, even rethink some of the proposed purchases.

The above is fully accurate, and must be the cornerstone reason for the armed forces to stop pushing panic buttons while going on an import spree, and instead take some bold and unprecedented steps with the indigenous industry. This step would be very beneficial for the long-term indigenization of the armed forces.

Let us first take the case of the ten C-17, which the air force and, I suppose, the army too wants for strategic mobility. The IAF already has some 30 IL-76 heavy and 80 odd An-32 medium transports and will soon also have the six C-130J capable of operations from short runways at high altitude airfields in the mountains. In 1984 when these transports (IL-76 & An-32) began entering the service, the air force had only the antiquated An-12, C-119 Fairchild Packet and C-46/47 Dakota and sundry other aircraft. At that time the Indian commercial fleet consisted of a mere 35 or so Boeing and Airbus aircraft. Today that number is nearly 300 and it is possible to requisition most if not all of these to transport troops in an emergency. The emergency evacuation of Indians from Kuwait during the First Gulf War in 1990 is a case in point when the IL-76 and commercial airliners were pressed into service. Why then do we need the additional C-17s in such a hurry?

I fully agree with the above. Apart from 30 Ilyushin-76 planes, our commercial fleet also consists of over 300 planes that are not yet at the end of their service life, and can easily be converted into troop and medicaid transporters. On top of this, we are already purchasing C-130 J transporters.

Hence, the C-17’s are totally unnecessary purchases. C-17s are actually used by countries that wage war in faraway lands, like what US and UK do in Iraq and Afghanistan. They circumnavigate the globe every day to transport tanks, armoured vehicles and mini batallions to Iraq and Afghanistan. India, which has to only defend it’s own borders, has NO use for these planes. Il-76s will do the job well, thank you.

Maintaining them after purchase, would be an unnecessary strain on resources, besides being nearly useless during wartime. That’s why the armed forces must not blindly panic, and purchase anything that US and UK companies offer them. Most of the hardware developed by these nations are for their own specific use only, and may be totally useless in India.

With a steady if slow induction of the Su-30MKI and now the MiG-29K for the Navy and later the 20 Tejas LCA, the IAF should not be too badly off in the fighter department also. The 66 BAe Hawk AJT also have a limited strike capability and can be gainfully employed once air superiority is established. The proposed 126 MMRCA deal worth US$ 10 billion would translate roughly into each of these modern fighters costing a whopping US$ 80 million or Rs. 365 crore each, compared to around US$ 30 to 35 million for the Su-30MKI and perhaps even less for the Tejas. Some experts would immediately point out to the technology transfer that would accompany the purchase of the MMRCA, but one wonders if simply getting an advance Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar would make a difference between victory and defeat in a local, limited conventional war where numbers might prove more useful.

The 126 MMRCA purchase is the single biggest wasteful expenditure that the IAF has embarked upon. IAF is already purchasing over 40+42 Su-30 MKIs, and 20 Tejas units are scheduled to be delivered by 2011. This number alone comes close to 126 fighters, and these are ALL 4++ generation fighters.

Besides, with the choice of Ge-414 or Eurojet, the cost of operation of the Tejas MK.2 will equate the Gripen-NG and come close to the F-16-IN. We have already discussed numerous times before how the Tejas Mk.2 will equate the Gripen-NG and F-16 C in range-payload specs, as well as avionics specs.

Thus, when Tejas Mk.2 will be introduced in 2014 — the same timeframe as the first of the MRCAs start arriving — there is absolutely NO need to purchase the 126 foreign MRCAs. As regards the AESA radars, if the IAF has such a pressing need for it, it can import AESA radar units for Tejas Mk.2s instead of importing entire jets that come pre-installed with them.

This fight over “US-loves-me-more-than-you” must stop. USA looks after it’s own interests, like every country does, in a highly globalized world post cold-war.

Powerful nations are always self-reliant, and Never made under someone’s protection or largesse.
As an example, there is a country that has many batteries of Patriots, squadron after squadron of F-15s and Typhoons, and many other US and UK armament. One would think that this country must have a lot of military projection and reach, right ?

That country is Saudi Arabia. Not even a regional power by any stretch. Even Oman and Yemen don’t look up to it with any awe.

Now, there is another country which, crippled with decades of sanctions, salvaged old fighters to come up with a fairly new fighter jet. Because it wouldn’t get any nuclear technology, it painstakingly developed enough on it’s own to be able to enrich some uranium. It even launched a modified ballistic missile as a ‘rocket into space’ (though not very successful). One would think this nation must be a laggard and a “rogue” state.

That country is Iran, and one which is able to project enough power regionally, to have US and Israel on their toes all the time. Iran is only going forward from here, what with it’s satellite that carried 3 animals into “outer space”. Besides, atleast I have far more respect for the Saeqeh than JF-17, atleast given the conditions under which the former was painstakingly developed. Latter was just a paid-for project, developed by China.

Power projection does not come by having the latest-est weapons bought from US and Israel, and then coming under their protection umbrella. That’s because a nation is reduced to a “stooge” in such cases. But it comes from self-reliant developments in defence, space and nuclear technologies, like India’s. Our space programme is neck-to-neck with Japanese and ESA’s in the field of satellite launches, remote sensing and lunar missions. We give them, as well as other Asian nations value added services in launching their sats into precise orbits. In this way (and numerous other small and big ways), our interests cannot be challenged easily.

A country has to do all this on it’s own. No Lockheed or Rafael from outside will ever help you do it.

so basically what you are saying is that the Govt PSU’s cannot compete with the private industry…there is no surprise in that. The 100% FDI is the greatest thing the govt could do.

No, the above is not an implication at all that PSUs are inefficient than private sector. Products of private companies are preferred not for their perceived quality, but because they bring with them “commissions” and “addtional income”, new overseas accounts and “party funds”.

Not that I fundamentally oppose it; I wouldn’t mind if DRDO also “stoops” to the level by hiring pvt. lobbyists who do similar “dirty work”, given that the armed forces, the bureaucracy and government are known to be corrupt. No harm if some DGMF or MoD official or political party make a couple of crores (of course, not a few hundred crores, as that would seriously hurt the exchequer. I’m dead against that, though). If this gets the Tejas say, some much wanted green signal or more orders, then so be it.

So far no problem. The problem really comes after the “commissions” part. Private companies usually enter into a “JV” with a foreign company, which is essentially a licence production agreement. The MoD will ask details about the ToT in these agreements. In response, these private players throw some “jargon”, some testing and validation and some local assembly, to pass off as serious technology transfer and epoch-making engineering contribs to a cutting edge product. Never mind that prior to this, they were making glass-panels for TVs or bolts and fasteners for Boeing.

Even Samtel has gotten there by buying off some sick units of Thales; otherwise this company was no more than a glass-panel manufacturer earlier, and had no R&D to speak of. It has now hired consultants from IIT for next-gen displays.
Ditto Taneja Aerospace, a maverick pvt. sector “hotshot” that won’t touch NAL’s projects with a bargepole. It’s happy marketing Cessans and licencing Italian aircraft. Not that it’s wrong or unappreciated, but if such players supplant DRDO (and they will, given that they will hire lobbyists and agents) then rest assured, these Tanejas and Samtels will become the front companies for Western Arms Inc. to market and licence-produce their goods in India — all in the name of privatisation and getting off the “inefficient” DRDO.

Big companies like this one, and this big one too are just little more than fronts for westen companies. And in this case, it’s a “clarion call” to allow new avenues for western companies to hawk their ware, all in the name for privatisation to get the armed forces off the “moribund clutches” of DRDO.

Now, I don’t hold a truck against private companies, and neither do I care for their “upliftment”. Our concern should be the indigenization of our weapon systems, which these private companies will NOT help at given the current scenario of commissions and the pace at which they’re signing JVs.

Now, only if private compnies do something like this, or even this then we must support it fully, because atleast it is under the aegis and purview of DRDO. Basically, as discussed earlier, the role of the private sector is to manufacture only. They regard all IP as a commercial commodity too, and so they will Never take risks to do their own R&D and so will be tempted to form JV’s with foreign firms to get a toehold; and we know where that leads to.

So, so long as the private industry “churns out” DRDO’s products, it’s fine and must be encouraged. But once they become front companies for Western Arms Inc., then the horizon is not good for self-reliance.

I don’t have any truck against private companies, and neither do I care about their well-being. But nowadays, things like pvt participation, 100% FDI are not only politically correct, economists regard them as morally correct terms : never mind that we would be surrendering our jawan’s well-being and our nation’s security to a few foreign private cos.

When you read articles like this

http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/2010/03/mod-sidelines-private-sector-in.html

It makes your blood boil…the govt psu’s should be withdrawn from all defense areas except for nuclear weapons and strategic platforms. Everything else should be made private.I trust the Indian pvt industry employees than the PSU employee.

Arey yaar, don’t “boil”. BEL will do as good a job with that, as it did with Rajendra radars and Akash SAMs. So rest assured, the project is in good hands. The government’s concerns about secrecy are genuine, as it cannot monitor pvt. companies by law (otherwise people like you will start protesting of growing “Big Brother” tactics), but it can monitor BEL inside out, 24/7.

————————–

Later Edit : I Fully agree with Roylarson. Samsara, don’t just rubbish state-run firms. We have ISRO, DAE, and BEL who’ve done world-class work that can’t be matched by even pvt. companies. In the civilian sector, we’ve got SBI bank, SAIL steel, BSNL, ONGC and NTPC which give sterling performances year after year.

But Aegis and Pac 3 will come much faster than DRDO “timelines”…I will bet my house that DRDO will not be able to implement the PAD/AAD system in 2012 or that it will able to get an indigenous AWAC system in the air by that time.

Firstly, PAD/AAD will meet timelines, given the successful tests conducted so far. Even if it doesn’t, there is no need to press “panic buttons” and start importing Aegis, PAC-3 etc, because if there is a co-ordination and co-operation between the DRDO and end-user, such situations will not arise in the first place. It may be hoped that lessons have been learnt vis-a-vis the Arjun.

Lets maintain some level of sanity in the thread. AEGIS is for Navy and not IAF.

PAD/AAD can be modified for the Navy (the more “indigenous friendly” of the 3 forces). As per a presentation made by Dr. VK Saraswat, the AAD can be modified into an anti-cruise missile weapon, which would ostensibly require significant effort. Thus, the effort to modify it to be fired off naval vessels can be relatively easier.

Aegis is a system consisting of guns, rockets as well as ABMs. The ABM component is actually the SM-3 missile. The modified PAD/AAD can easily serve this purpose. Given the relatively better track record of the Navy in co-ordinating with DRDO, this project can be executed.

Currently, the Barak-1 on board some of our destroyers can handle the C-803 anti-ship cruise missile, fired off Pakistani coasts. And China is many years away from developing anti-ship ballistic missiles, which Adm. Sureesh Mehta said is not a threat.. By the time it does, an indigenous version of SM-3 can be developed. Thus, Aegis is not needed by the Navy at all.

Besides, systems like Aegis’ SM-3 are used by a coastal strip like Japan to nullify ballistic threats to the mainland from anywhere in the sea (should the ship happen to be in the “path” of, say, a N. Korean Taepedong). Besides, the US Navy would use it to target satellites in low-earth orbit, should the ship happen to detect one and be in position in anywhere in any ocean, to target it.

So, please think : Is what is fine for Japan coastal defence and US anti-Sat operaions necessarily good for India ? This explains why we should not blindly purchase anything doled out by western companies, and instead see it’s operational use first, and see whether an indigenous alternative exists.

Fortunately for Abhimanyu, PAC3 does not seem to interest IAF.

Arey, it is not “fortunately for me”, but “fortunately” for you also, if you don’t wish to see your tax rupees being spent in duplicative efforts, that are very expensive, and if you don’t wish to see your armed forces jawan tied up to a contract document with messrs Raytheon Inc.

@samsara.
PAD/AAD seem to chugging along nicely. Remember they did 8 years of homework before revealing the system in 2006.
They have been having successful tests so far. We will hear about it again in June.

Similarly with AEW. LRDE has been very successful in radars in general. So unless you know something we don’t, lets not make mindless accusations.
This speculation and holier-than-thou business gets out of hands at times.

The above is accurate, and must be explained to the ill-informed media, and Samsara alike.

KC-130J are they serious ? earlier they wanted good range in re-fuller now they ready to settle for this ? IAF is a big mess and biggest example is MMRCA

coldfire2005, one may accept the IAF’s induction of Super Hercules, or the P-3C Orion.
These were needed, as they have significant peacetime surveillance usage also, and with no indigenous alternative in sight till well into the latter half of the next decade, purchasing these were necessary. For example, the indigenous MTA will be introduced only after 2016, and inducted some years later, so till that time the Super Hercules will serve well to transport troops and supplies to the Siachen Glacier and the remote Northeastern states, which border China (China has been getting aggressive a lot in the northeast lately).

Similarly, though the DRDO’s AEW&C will be ready for testing by 2012; the maritime version will be ready many years later. Again, since peacetime surveillance of our huge maritime boundary is needed ASAP (to prevent incidents like 26/11), so they cannot wait till the indigenous maritime patrol technology is developed.

But that does Not mean that the IAF must purchase each and everything that is “doled out” by western companies, especially when a) the indigenous alternative is in sight and b) other substitutes make do quite well. Things like this and the ASTOR and PAC-3, and Aegis and what not are being offered unnecessarily.

Thus, there is no need to purchase PAC-3 and Aegis, as we are already developing the PAD/AAD, that will be ready for deployment by 2012. Similarly, with the plethora of these and these, an ASTOR is rendered useless in peacetime. Besides, with the DRDO’s AEW&C firming up by 2012, this thing is not needed either.

Hence, Indian armed forces must NOT purchase anything and everything that is “dangled” by private western companies. They must make judicious decisions, so as to increase self-reliance as well as save billions of dollars of forex on needless purchases. Otherwise, there would not be much difference between India and a banana-republic like Saudi Arabia, which has a fetish for these US and UK made “toys”.

ASTOR should work very well on the Indo-Bangladesh border. It is almost impossible to fence or fortify that part of India. We don’t want to be overrun by Bangladeshis.

Samsara, if the corrupt BSF guards do their job well, then we can easily prevent Bangladeshi villagers and factory workers streaming into India year after year. ASTOR is an overkill for all this. Besides, the Indo-Bangla border is heavily inhabited with villages with cattle herders streaming into the other country every day. Can ASTOR pinpoint the “good” from the “bad” ?

Besides, how much of a success has it had in Afghanistan or Iraq ?