SamudraguptaIf he was not part of the crew and wasn’t familiar with the ships DC equipment he should of stayed out of the way of the people who knew what they were doing. It sounds like he rushed in without proper fire fighting gear (whatever the Russians use) and was killed for his stupidity.
With all due respect, we don’t know the facts of the incident. Let’s extend the sailor some respect — he did give his life in line of duty.
SamudraguptaYou mean on paper. Because if it were reality, the LCA would meet up to requirements and wouldn’t be nearly dead, would it? Might as well say your X-Wing fighters are more than able to cope with the JF-17s of the world.
I said “will be”, not “is”.
Of course, a currently operational aircraft is better than one that isn’t. But that being said, I still don’t see the JF-17 having advantages that LCA will not be able to cope with when it becomes operational.
SamudraguptaNobody is asking for the IAF to mothball its entire fleet and wait for the LCA to show. The fleet will get 230 MKI, 126+ MMRCA. Plus the MiG-29 and Mirage-2000 fleets are getting deep and pretty impressive MLUs. Add in the 130+ Bison, Phalcons, fleet refuelers and you’ve got your threats covered.
The bottom line is that no country ever developed a Mil-Industrial complex without some local patronage. India’s aviation complex is still immature and is not likely to cough up a full-formed world beater after decades of neglect. That said, it would be downright stupid to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The LCA will be more than able to cope with the JF-17s of the world.
Given the composition of the rest of the fleet, the difference between 126 MMRCAs + 150 LCA vs 300 MMRCA is small in the short-term, but will have immense implications in the long-term.
If for no other reason, consider the amount of time it is going to take India to evaluate the MMRCA contenders, make up its mind, sign a contract, get manufacturing facilities and then start cranking out aircraft. (For a point of comparison, it took 20+ years to get the Hawt AJTs — and that was a small deal.)
By then, the LCA will have several squadrons in full operational service. 🙂
SamudraguptaIf, India want to keep up the skills, institiutions, and infrastucture of the LCA. Then start over………..join another major Aviation Power and develope a new aircraft.Which, sounds very much like what India is in fact doing with the Russians with the PAK-FA.
The two approaches will have to go on in parallel. You can pick up some expertise by partnering with other aviation powers, but not the end-to-end self-sufficiency that India seeks.
If you believe that other aviation majors will give you their hard earned skills so that you can become self-sufficient (and hence lose a potential market), I’ve got a bridge to sell you. 🙂
Personally, I would have cancelled the LCA many many years ago. Then maybe joined with say “France” and help co-develope the Rafale
Really? So the French, who refused to play equal partner with their Euro brethren, will treat India like an equal partner and pay heed to our specific requirements?
Sorry, India is a great Country. Yet, it always seem to take the wrong turn??? Maybe she should consider a major re-think of her defense priorities. Otherwise, she going to wake up far behind the Chinese and its not going to be to far from now…………..:( As they say “wake up and smell the roses”
And exactly how did the Chinese build up their industry? By giving up everytime they had a setback and partnering with another aviation major? No — they did it the hard way (and the only way) — by making mistakes and learning from them.
We have to take the product from design through development, production, and operationalization. If India gives up now, we will not have learned all our lessons, and will have to leap three fighter generations instead of two — and all mistakes will be that much more expensive.
India has turned the corner on this program. There is no way that this program will (or should) be cut.
When this is the strongest argument for continuing the program you know it is over
How do you figure that that is the strongest argument for continuing the program??
SamudraguptaReally, a good point………….just quit wasting money on the LCA and just increase the MMRCA Order. Clearly, one MMRCA is worth two LCA anyday of the week. So, instead of 126 MMRCA and ~500 LCA. Just have a common fleet of say 300 MMRCA’s. Really, at this point the LCA is just taking money away higher priority programs………….
Scoot,
With all due respect, your argument makes absolutely no sense. This is not simply a question of saving money on an airframe. You refuse to see that the LCA is not only an airframe, but also a crucial program for India. After decades of painstakingly developing institutions, skills, infrastructure and a manufacturing base, does it make any sense at all to gut the whole program down and simply buy foreign? That will only mean that all these mistakes will have to be repeated at another date.
India has turned the corner on this program. There is no way that this program will (or should) be cut.
SamudraguptaPersonally, I doubt either the F-22 or F-35 have that much frontal drag in the first place. As appreances can be very deceiving………….For example if the F-22 has such high drag. How can it reach over Mach 2 and Super Cruise for extented periods over Mach 1.5……….with claims as high as Mach 1.7 to 1.8! The F-15S is very close in power and can’t do that……………
That is no contradiction, per se.
There is a difference between form drag and wave drag. At low speeds (requiring higher angle of attach), induced drag dominates. At higher speeds, form drag dominates. At transonic/supersonic speeds, wave drag dominates.
For the most part, aircraft with larger cross sectional areas will have larger form drag. It is quite possible that the Raptor has higher form drag and skin friction drag than an F-15, albeit with less interference drag, but this is probably more than compensated with the ample available thrust.
At transonic/supersonic speeds, it is area distribution (i.e., hence area ruling) which drives wave drag. The Raptor is optimized for this regime of flight.
SamudraguptaThe reason the Cope India results were stilted is because the USAF was supremely overconfident. They came fully expecting to bitch-slap a third-world airforce and show them how a real airforce fights, and didn’t think they needed more than rookies and desk-jockeys to do the job. (Well, that’s exactly what the F-15 pilot said in the video.)
They discovered to their surprise that the IAF is extremely professional, uses very innovative tactics, trains bloody hard and fights ferociously.
The difference between then and Red-Flag is that the USAF took the IAF seriously, and had more experienced crew on the job, while the IAF sent many more rookies. It isn’t surprising the the experienced crew defeated the rookies.
Cope India 04 was NOT as one-sided as the Flanker fanboys want everyone to believe…
Well if you choose to believe Duke Cunningham, a 9:1 exchange ratio is pretty convincing. 🙂
SamudraguptaGuys any comment on this ……..some time back RSM55 also stated in RuN thread that PAK-FA will be different from FGFA
Austin,
That article is by Prasun Sengupta …. BS’er extraordinaire.
He actually thought that the Paralay and Jozef Gatial fanart that he proudly included in his article were officially released pictures. 😀
Don’t walk … *RUN* to the nearest bucket of salt.
Samudraguptahttp://www.fas.org/man/congress/1997/h970318n.htm
An interesting read.
But far more important is the improvement that the Soviets have made in submarine quieting. The problem is not that Soviet submarines are now quieter than ours; they are not. But after decades of building comparatively noisy submarines, the Soviets have now begun to build submarines that are quiet enough to present for us a major technological challenge with profound national security implications.
The Improved Akula SSN, which went to sea in 1990, soon revealed that the Soviets had surpassed the U.S. Navy in some areas of acoustic quieting–the Improved Akula was quieter than our newest attack submarines, the Improved LOS ANGELES class. Admiral J.M. Boorda, the Chief of Naval Operations, told the House:
This is the first time since we put NAUTILUS to sea that [the Russians] have had submarines at sea quieter than ours. As you know, quieting is everything in submarine warfare.
While we are told that the SEAWOLF is the quietest submarine in the world, one wonders if we have “all” the data needed to evaluate the acoustic signature of the Akula II, and the potential noise level of the Russian SEVERODVINSK, now on the building ways. If the past is any guide to the future, it is likely that the SEVERODVINSK will be significantly quieter than the Akula series–and quieter than the SEAWOLF, which was designed several years before the SEVERODVINSK. Discussions that I have had with senior officials of Russia’s Rubin and Malachite design bureaus reinforce the view that future Russian submarines will be quieter and have significantly improved performance.
SamudraguptaThe use of the LEVCON is as a slat and it works by deflecting the leading edge and keep its vortex attached to the wing upper surface, same as a slat, negative inflections are only useful to reduce drag as the F-16 does and create a supersonic profile.
No. The LEVCON does not work like a slat. The LCA has a completely different three-segment slat, which you can see deployed here.
Slats work like flaps in that they effectively create more airfoil camber, and are not vortex control devices (unlike LEVCONS).
SamudraguptaMLD,
You keep ascribing nationalistic tendencies to me when I have said nothing to that effect. All I have been saying is that it is not possible to characterize the relative performance of two different aircraft by inspection.
To wit, it may very well be that Gripen, JF-17, Typhoon, Rafale, J-10 and B-1B (eight fowler flaps, fourteen slats, eight spoiler sections, two all-moving tails and three rudder sections _and_ two canards!) can out-turn the LCA, bring their weapons to bear and convert it into a smoking hole in the ground. But it is not possible to know this for the fact that you claim it to be. An aircraft A that can out maneuver B at one airspeed and altitude may be out maneuvered by B at another airspeed and altitude.
Since you want to bring things down to fundamentals, consider the following: any acceleration of an aircraft along any axis (linear or rotational) involves two basics: force and mass. In the case of rotational accelerations, the additional factor is the moment arm. For example, for longitudinal rotations you need to consider:
a) the magnitude of the aerodynamic force being generated, which is dependent not only on sizing of the surface but also local airflow considerations
b) static margin
c) effect of airfoil pitching moments
d) inertial mass about the longitudinal axis
e) specific excess power
f) airspeed/altitude effects on the above
g) moment arm of the forces
You claim that you account for all these variables by:
1) counting the number of control surfaces
2) inspection of configuration
If this were possible, could you please enunciate why do aircraft designers:
– need CFD codes to verify the core aerodynamic parameters that define aircraft performance
– having done the above, still need wind-tunnel studies to refine their conclusions
– having done the above, still need flight tests to refine their conclusions
This has nothing to do with who can or cannot do integral calculus (although that definitely helps).
Since you are genuinely interested in these topics, I suggest the following books (which I think you will enjoy):
– Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach (By Dan Raymer); this book has a lot of discussion about configuration choices and their impications
– Mechanics of Flight (by Warren Philips); you can peruse the mechanical equations in this book to get a feel of the number of parameters that effect aircraft performance.
That is about as much as I can meaningfully add to the conversation, so it will be my last post.
SamudraguptaMLD,
Thanks for your fantastic rant (suitably illustrated, as always) — please also accept my congratulations for your keen ability to point out my inherent propensity for self-delusion and ignorance.
Now go back and read my post and point out exactly where I made any claims about the relative performances of LCA, Rafale, etc.
Let me repeat my claims:
a) The LCA designers fixed the current configuration by performing trade studies that established that it is better than a canard configuration at that design point.
b) The relative performance of any two aircraft (be they LCA/EF/Rafale/J10/F22 whatever) cannot be judged by just looking at configurations. You need a lot more data than that — data that we don’t have access to.
SamudraguptaCan we please give this canard vs non-canard thing a rest?
None of us have the data needed to make even reasoned speculations on this topic: just because designs W, X and Y use canards doesn’t mean that it is suitable for design Z.
We have no idea about LCA’s inertial tensor, wing performance (pitching moments, vortex formation), effects of elevon sizing, wetted area/parasitic drag, etc. Presumably, the people who designed the LCA had access to this data. We know that they evaluated canards and rejected the idea.
So, the debate comes down to:
a) the designers are incapable idiots, because all 4’th gen fighters after 1980 must have tails or canards, and performance will suck otherwise. (Gee — maybe we should get them a subscription to AFM so they can keep up with the times.)
b) we take the designers on their word that they performed the trade studies and concluded that the canards weren’t necessary for meeting the aircraft’s requirements
SamudraguptaFWIW, I suspect that when the PAK-FA finally gets into the IAF, it will probably be kitted with a (by then) MLU’d DARE/Elisra Mayavi EW suite.
That’s probably not going to be a slouch by any measure; Mayavi (“The Illusionist”) is being jointly developed for Israeli F-35s and India’s LCA.
SamudraguptaPAK-FA image from ILA 2008. Looks like the same image that Saturn had on its web site.
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