fftI don’t agree that only in terms of aircraft exports China has a more developed aircraft industry than India, In fact, in almost all aspects of aviation industry, China is far ahead of India. If you want to evaluate the strength of a country’s aviation industry, you should look at its aviation industry’s infrastructure instead of looking at how many exciting projects the country is doing. Chinese is not high-sounding people, Chinese people like to bend our head over doing substantial works. China spent 30 years to have built two world-class infrastructures for aviation industry. One is large scale’s wind tunnel group; the other is aero-engine’s simulated altitude test facility group. In today’s world, only USA, Russia, EU (British/France) and China own such a complete aviation industry’s infrastructure. China can independently test its airplanes, missiles, manned spacecrafts, turbofan engines, turboprop engines, turboshaft engines, etc by using its own infrastructure. But India does not have such vital infrastructures. India has to send its LCA and Kavri to Europe and Russia for wind tunnel test and simulated altitude test. Can India afford the high cost of the tests for thorough tests? Nobody is willing to teach real high-tech and real know-how to you. Especially for aerodynamic design and aero-engine design, you must have long-term test data and experience and long term’s technical deposit. You can not say you have an indigenous aviation industry without these infrastructures. China already has a basically self-contained aviation industry: from aircraft general design, material, aero-engine, radar and avionics, weapon to rocket eject seats, etc. My opinion for China-India comparison in aviation industry is: China already graduated from university, India is still in junior high school.
In terms of so-called Russian license built fighters, transporters, I’d like to say it’s re-design. An example is MIG-21/J-7 case. In 1960s, China- Russia relationship broke before Russia completely transfer MIG-21 technology to China, China had to newly calculate force intensity of airframe structure, do lots of wind tunnel test to understand the characteristics of delta wing…….Now China know MIG21 and delta wing very very well and inherited and applied delta wing technology to new J-10. In end of 1990s, when Romania wanted to upgrade its MIG-21MF fleet, it asked China to provide consultant instead of asking Russian. China made the best MIG-21 variants in the world and successfully exported 600 sets to world market. As contrast, India got the complete MIG21 technology at the same time as China’s, however, up to today India even can not make a qualified MIG21. Lots of MIG-21 made or upgraded by India aviation industry crashed as serving India Air Force and hit a shame high record. China was embargoed by both east (Russia) and west (US, EU) for 30 years, however all world’s resource is open and available to India, but why India’s step in aviation industry is far behind China???? Who knows?
Some facts in my mind make me against your comment on “China and India’s avionics is in the same level”. Let me list them. May be not so systemic.
1.China’s fighter jets all use home-made radars and avionics(J7,J8,J10,J11,JH7,Q5,FC-1/JF-17,etc). For imported fighters Su-27, It is well reported that China refused the avionics upgrading proposal from Russia, and will upgrade the early-imported Su-27 using Chinese own avionics. India has no such story.
2.China has two type indigenous AWACS planes (dish and balance beam) in mass production. India has none and has to buy Israel’s.
3.The World Radar Seminar is by turns hosted by USA, China, British, France, Japan (or Russia??), the 5 strongest countries in radar technology. I never heard India has this honor.
Besides exporting airplane, China exported lots of radars to the world since 1980s. Egypt Spent 1billion USD to import China’s YJ-91 radar to build its nationwide low altitude surveillance radar network. Other customers of Chinese radar are: Pakistan, Iran, Malaysia, Jordan, Venezuela, etc. Another example is China’s AEGIS in 052C DDG.How is India’s radar industry??
A very appropriate answer, I must say. The thing is that Chinese aviation industry is fairly self-contained. While India is definitely on track (especially in avionics area), it still has to catch up with china overall.
fftPerhaps.
India is economically almost three times smaller than China inspite of being a democratic and free country. China could aspire to be like Hong Kong and Taiwan as a model and widen it great lead even further. There is NOTHING that India could change to advance beyond the system it has now since democracy is the optimal system (as evidenced by the immense wealth of Europe and the US.)
India was accorded a great advantage for 50 years by being a “free” nation while China was held back by communism and its disasters like the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. But that advantage left India only one third as wealthy as China. Maybe that is the best India could do with the optimal system.
Democracy will simply reflect the collective wish and/or the priorities of a society. It won’t help a country in becoming an aviation powerhouse – by itself – if the leadership or the collective mentality of a society either can’t realize the importance of aviation or simply have other priorities.
One postive aspect with China was that their leadership realized early on
the *critical* importance of science and technology (there are many cultures around the world that have yet to realize this), and then made efforts to achieve this target.
Being cutoff and sanctioned from the rest of the world was in fact a *blessing* in the guise, in that it forced China to develop it its industrial base. This industrial base, despite being crude and inferior, allowed Chinese engineers to learn lessons that otherwise would have been difficult. An additional benefit was psychological, in that it allowed the nation to believe in it self.
fftNice shots!
For PAF, the J10 option will be the strongest bargaining chip to secure their best F16 offer from Washington.
Though it’s not true that PAF wants to use J-10 as a “bargaining chip”, even if one assumes so, that says a lot about the calibre of J-10. After all, not many aircrafts can be used as bargaining chips for such a *magnificent* aircraft, as F-16.
fftI guess the problem is more to be on the right place at the right time. Additionally, you will most of the time deal with a cloud of missiles. Imagine an B-52H attacks a pricy target (for example an uran enrichement complex :diablo: ). It can carry 12 cruise missiles. There are 2 B-52s. They launch all missiles at once and target is expected to be destroyed with 4 cruise missiles reaching it (so, interception of 20 missiles is acceptable). The defense has to deal with 24 targets, going low and subsonic. To intercept at least 20 cruise missiles, you need more than 3 MiG-31, perhaps rather 6 because they can hardly go after them with SRAAMs. How many MiG-31 does anybodt have available? One MiG-31 probably costs the price of all cruise missiles.
Even SAM will be a little bit stressed out. 24 targets low level, how many missiles are on station and ready?
So, happy uranium enrichement facility was lucky and all cruise missiles were downed. So what? Mighty USAF sends next B-52H 20 minutes later and look if they can intercept the next 24 Tomahawks.
That all is a big dollar-burning spectacle, but the guy with most dollars will probably win. Compare to similar scnearios like CVBG against Russian Tu-2x or National Missile Defense.
Edit: That is not unlike the strategic bomber campaign against Germany. Just change “cruise missile” to “B-17” and “MiG-31” to “Luftwaffe” and adjust the price-tag of the systems.
A sensible answer, it is also obvious that it’s high-number/big-money game. Further to the “money” issue, why only Mig-31 can fill this role, it’s a fairly expensive a/c, why, for example, an Su-30 MKI with BARS radar and R-73/77 can’t do the job. This will surely reduce the overall cost of such an interception exercise.
fftSure you can shoot them down. That’s the whole purpose of the MiG-31 FOXHOUND. The trick is finding them. Locating a Tomahawk is one thing, finding a stealth AGM-129 ACM is another thing entirely.
I know that Mig-31 has capability to shoot down cruise missile, but since the cruise missiles are subsonic, most fighter aircraft of the present era should be able to do that. Provided, of course, they have the ability to detect the missile.
By the way, tomahawk is well known, how common and effective is this AGM-129 ACM.
fftAgain, I am not in the know on this field. But I can tell from my professional experience that the ANSYS software I am working with has recently introduced parallel performace solvers which are able to exploit the parallel processor architecture much better than ever before. I have read that by linking several units specific solvers can achieve 1.2 times rude performance margin, ergo linking 4 units results in up to 4.8 times performace growth. I would estimate that this is mainly a software related problem of how you work out addressing.
First of all the nature of the problem of the problem should be such that parallelization is possible (i.e. having two CPUs will do no good, if the CPU 2 has to wait the results from CPU 1). Then one has to come up with a implementable algorithm that can scale well, then fine tune it (a very time cosuming task) to the underlying hardware, be aware of the issues like cache-coherency etc
But, again, there surely are people here who can explain those things much better than I ever could.
Defintely there are people who can explain it, such as yours truly 🙂 as I am an Electrical Engineer (though not a CPU designer). Elect. Engineers, you should know are always *more* intelligent than mechanical/automotive engineers :p :p
fftRussians are willing to depend on Western CPUs as their clients often require Military standard 1553 databus, the times of isolated systems are over.
For export markets it is definitely a workable solution. But for their internal usage, they may have some “emotional” hindrances.
Today’s Russian architectures are based on militarized COTS processors by Texas Instruments.
Processors or achitectures, the later implies that they have copied the architecture and are making processors in their own foundries. Besides, if I am not mistaken, TI is known for DSPs not generic processors. The most favoured generic CPU for military application seem to be PowerPC 603/604/7447/907 and these are from IBM/Motorola.
Similar like those you will find in Playstation II. They are absolutely easy to get, ergo politically independant and can be paralelly linked with other units so that you always can get the necessary performance. .
They are definitely easy to get, they need to be “ruggedized” to be useful for mil-spec applications, defintely not a problem for russians.
However parallely linking lots of slow CPUs to get more computational power is very complex subject, suffice to say it may not work always.
This is a long term problem for Russians. They have money these days and they should solve this problem. In fact, some time ago, there was a rumor on web that Russians have a 64-bit CPU design of their own (elbarus or elbrus) and they were planning to have it fabricated by French.
fftI don’t think I understand. From the article it is obvious that the new processor from ADCP modification is greatly superior to the old variant coming from 1988. How does this relate to Russians?
Poor processor performance has been always a problem with Russian radars. It appears that, the more they have fallen behind in this area, the more they have leaned towards manuverability, instead of correcting this fundamental weakness.
Now that every-body is moving to COTS, Russians should be able to correct this problem, though I don’t know, how willing would Russians be to always rely on western CPUs.
fftI can understand that. Afghan women are probably not used to earn attention from boys.. How exactly do you guys choose your women, then? Choosing someone blind through the burqa probably ain’t the best solution.
Hi Flex, though the questions are not aimed at me, allow me to explain some general points. Regarding choosing someone blind thru burqa; You are allowed to see the face (in fact as per Islamic teachings, it is encouraged). You can even talk within the limits of decency (e.g. your future plans etc)
No, but I really think it is too thick and too long for hot days and dark colors do not help, either.
You definitely have a point, but usually heavy clothes protect you from the piercing sun that is there for most of the year. Also, keep the technology/economy factor in mind.
Besides that, female nature dictates them desire to attract the environment and to become distinctive. This is carried to excess in Western culture where during official meetings males are required to wear absolutely unified smokings while females are encouraged to do exactly the opposite – to prevent wearing the same dress as someone else. How does this nature comply with the -rather boring looking- burqas?
They are supposed to attract their husbands only.
Hmm, are women allowed to do the same too, by surprise, for instance? Or is it considered as some kind of aggressive sexual behavior?
Some may percieve it as a bit aggressive, some may not.
Ouch, morning sex as standard? Not quite my kind of the game.. 😎 But I respect that.
OMG, where the original text says anything about some “morning standard”. It simply says that husband can join. Please keep in mind that english is not the first language of many of the posters here, and they may not be able to express themselves clearly.
Finally, while humanity is a fairly diverse entity, a lot of things are common, if something appeals to “common sense”, then probably it is universal.
HTH
fftThe sensors that everyone will harp on about as a guaranteed stealth detector are of only limited indicator use – anything operating in the A-Band is going to be seeing shadows from attenuation of all kinds of objects, and reflections from the likes of flocks of birds will look solid for example.
That exactly was my point in above post. The lower is the frequency the higher is the probability of false alram (i.e. poor relaibility of obtained information).
fftThe Chinese don’t have to do any more that they have already done. Their coastline is lined with P-14/5N84A radars operating in A band. Nothing exists that is stealthy at that low frequency.
How relaible is the target detection in A-band, and is it just a target detection system or it is also a fire-control radar.
fftThe Brits can wants all they wants but since they only paid a pitance wants isn’t gets. And exactly who is it that is getting nearly 100% tech transfer on the JSF?
UK is an ally of US and as such should be treated somewhat different from an ordinary customer.
fftSince the main problem in Su-xx series is engine, can’t China improve the Al-31 engine for greater MTBO. China has mastered the ‘single crystal’ technology for the turbine blades – I suppose.
fftI guess close to 300 hundred pakistani soldiers have died in dealing with these guys, in and around wazirastan area, and yet there are people who think Pakistan is doing nothing.
fftI guess close to 300 hundred pakistani soldiers have died in dealing with these guys, in and around wazirastan area, and yet there are people who think Pakistan is doing nothing.
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