High cost of Indian Mirage 2000 fighter upgrade causing a rethink

http://www.defenseworld.net/go/defensenews.jsp?catid=3&id=5303&h=High%20cost%20Indian%20Mirage%202000%20fighter%20upgrade%20causing%20rethink

So – does this pave the way for a Rafale purchase? Since the article claims 1 Rafale is somewhat = upgrade price of one Mirage? Nice

USS.

The Tejas issue, is a puzzle for me. You start wanting something in the Mirage class. There are delays, but you make a competition. In parallel, you run a program for the Tejas, which is actually more near to the original Mirage class and so it cancels the need for the competition.

And then the question comes again about what IAF really lacks? Find the answer and buy accordingly.

IMHO, if they lack in A-A then there’s no need to buy in this competition anything that fills the role. Buy more PAK-FA, it’s where the money will be more spent.

If they want a primarily strike platform, the Rafale has the advantage of staying with 1 russian and 1 french tech support line and weaponry. But it will have high costs.

The US come more balanced and if India wants to buy American, maybe the SH is best choice as strike platform given that Pakistan has F16s and at least when you have different aircraft type the other knows about it only what you show him or what he can learn in foreign excercizes (where he can’t learn in the same depth what an operator knows).

The Gripen comes as a more modern solution, cheap, with less US strings if SAAB is ready to present warrancies about ToT (i suppose they must have obtained written warrancies from US).

I say, buy the most suited aircraft for the role that is more needed and spend the rest on more long range weapons. In a conflict, there is no such thing as “i have enough stand off ammunition”. Ask the Israelis that expended their stock over Lebanon in 10 days and asked for urgent US replenishment.

Good point Aspis, the whole thing is like a long drawn out soap opera. But there are certain things that need to be remembered – a) India was not in half the commanding position (economically/strategically) 15 years ago that it is today. b) Technologically too it was not there. The Tejas program was to a large extent designed to alleviate this situation. At the same time, operational readiness was a must hence MRCA. All this has has to play out in the middle of a confused and dramatic democracy – elections, power plays, politics and a byzantine bureaucracy, which simply means that decisions take place rather slowly. By the time decisions are made, requirements have changed.

IOWs, now IAF sees a different role from that of 15 years ago – so it wants something more powerful at every level. New strategy :
a) bulk up on flankers and FGFA (the IAF has never had such a top heavy fleet, ever),

b) Get a medium sized bird that can almost touch the heavies but play the role of lightweights too – hedge your bet strategically, technologically, and operationally by getting a western, 2 engined bird, that can do some heavy and light roles (Rafalesque), and can act as a backup in case there are delays in gen 5 procurement

c) Get an LCA that can touch ever so slightly upon the work done by the MRCA hence a Mirage type capability. But the Tejas will continue to be predominantly an LCA that can be procured in large numbers at low price.

IMHO, the medium category in this case – will have to be big Eurocanards to meet all the requirements (technological – uber tech, 5G backup, strategic – independence from Russian hw, US politics, and operational – combo of heavy/light duties, arrest falling numbers)

USS.

I think your deitification of the flanker platform is a bit too far. Now you say that the RCS of the Flanker was reduced from 15msq to 1msq in SU 35 without any radical redisgn (no intake redsign no canted tails), can you even site offical sukhoi sources saying this no, its basically just fanboy speculation.

I am certainly not deifying anything, but you are certainly defying the odds and common sense. The Su-35 brochure actually advertises the airframe as a “low observable” bird thanks to the use of adequate materials. Now how far they have reduced the sig is anybody’s guess. But based on ITAE literature and articles posted by flateric and sweetman in various places, the difference is in orders of magnitude. The last I checked they mentioned around 1-3msq. I am not making this up. Again,

Russian stealth researchers have developed materials and techniques that can reduce the head-on radar cross-section (RCS) of a Sukhoi Su-35 fighter by an order of magnitude, halving the range at which hostile radars can detect it. The research group – working with Sukhoi, but based at the Institute for Theoretical and Applied Electromagnetics (ITAE) at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow – has performed more than 100 hours of testing on a reduced-RCS Su-35 and has also experimented with the use of plasmas – ionized gases – to reduce RCS.

Intl Def Review

The modified Su-35 also has a treated cockpit canopy which reflects radar waves, concealing the high RCS contribution from metal components in the cockpit. Beyond these changes, radar absorbent material of greater durability allied with the structural changes, mean that it is expected that the RCS of the aircraft will be equivalent of a F-16, that is, around 1m (Reduced RCS (b/w F-16 (about 1m^2).

– Globalsecurity

Happy? As you can see – no deification, it is all open source! Btw, there was an article by Andrei Chang, who mentioned that the Su-30MKK had an RCS of about 4msq! Can’t find it though.

If there are RCS measures done on an airframe its quite visible, like in the case of the Rafale or Super Hornet, there is no Magic Paint to just reduce the RCS of a Flanker 5 fold without redesigning parts of the airframe.

What magic paint? You mean russians can’d devise/design/invent something that is a bit different from their western counterparts? From Sweetman:
We all know that the MiG-21 showed some rather amazing results in terms of RCS reduction, despite being a full metal bird (reduction claimed was well above 10X). And exercises done using latest fishbed variants tend to support this claim.

IOWs, using such techniques in conjunction with a jammer (and there is no question who carries a bigger jammer), the Su-35 has some major potential.

You talk about AWACS while ignoring that may be available on this side of the equation as well, as well as the fact the the Gripen possess a superior datalink to anything Chinese can field anytime soon.

I ignored nothing, you simply did not comprehend what I was saying. If both sides have AWACS, marginal differences in RCS are further nullified.

And the Size and Power is not everything. Flanker uses the Brute Force approach when dealing with things. The Eurocanards like the Rafale and Gripen NG (if all the advertised systems go into it) relies on more advanced technology to counter it, a smaller DRFM jammer carried by the Eurocanards will probably do a better job than larger systems carried by any Chinese fighter. Also the Ibris-E being a PESA is more succeptable to jamming than the Raven.

Like I said, the Rafale/Tiffy stand a better chance hence i’d prefer their selection, but don’t put the Gripen in the same league, it is not. It is great bird for its size and good competition for a similarly upgraded Mirage a 2000 or even F-16/J10. But if you want to have self escorting counterstrikes emanating from the interiors of India or destined for deep strike in China, you’d be better off with an a/c with greater capabilities/capacities!

The Gripen NGs radar is a generation higher than the APG 80 class and it has a missile with longer range than any AMRAAM/AMRAAMski.

A whole generation higher is it? Prove it! Also, show me how the radar can have equal power when the engine is much smaller. I’d bet that the Apg80 has better range than the Raven. Unless they are a) using GaN chips or b) able to fit in far more TRMs – neither of which I have heard of yet.

If the size of the plane was all the mattered an Uber F 15 would be acing the Eurocanards in A2A even now but thats not the case.

Nowhere did I say that size is all that matters – no point putting words in my mouth to suit your argument. I simply pointed out that in case of top notch fighters, a larger bird has certain distinct advantages – endurance, power, size of sensors for example. As far as the Tiffy vs. F-15s go, I haven’t heard of anything in terms of a face off when it comes to latest F-15s (Singaporean for example), let alone the silent eagle.

Twice the thrust means nothing, if you have twice the weight & twice the drag. If biggest is best, why did the USSR replace the Tu-128? Why not just upgrade it with new engines & avionics? Or build a Tu-22M fighter? Think of the radar you could fit in it!

Duh! I am obviously not talking about large bombers here but an extraordinarily manouverable design that has become the nemesis of western fighters for over 2 decades.

USS

USS NOVICE

Do you have any authoritative information on reduced signature flankers, especially Chinese ones ?

Also The Gripen starting from a lower RCS point will always will retain its RCS edge over the Su 35. – how much of an advantage in reality? What marginal advantage of 4-5 sqm it may optimistically enjoy will be more than covered by a monster like the Irbis E, which will detect a 1msq target @ 350kms. The Gripen will be hard put to detect a Su-35 (5msq) @ 200kms) The Su 35 will not be flying clean either. The Gripen also has an edge interms of Meteor with the Russians no where near getting an equivalant.

I think the point of the MRCA is in essence to get a Western Fighter which has much lower lifetime costs and much higher availability than the Su 30.

Quad, there is lots of information out there re. Russian RCS reduction techniques. IIRC, they are now advertising a clean Su-35 @ 1msq fwiw! The marginal rcs reduction done on 4 gen frames like the e’canards may make a difference against avg. 90s flankers, which might not have had any RCS reductions.

Take for ex. your uber Gripen NG – after loading EFT and weapons what will its RCS be? To be optimistic let us say, it’ll be around 1msq. Take otoh, 1995 vintage SU-35 without any real RCS reduction @ 15msq. The Gripen NG with an Apg80 class radar will detect that Su-35 at a good 225 km. The Gripen itself might be detected at around 150-175km by the flanker.

So there might be a marginal advantage here. But then bring into the picture AWACS – what little advantage the Gripen might have is shot thanks to the AWACS. Now it is a matter of tactics, endurance, and power, areas where the flankers will enjoy advantages.

Of course, the above scenario is based on vintage 95 tech for the flanker, and being v.optimistic towards the NG (it does not have the kind of power that the F-16blk60 comes with). TOday, the Chinese are being offered the Su-35. There is the possibility that an AESA equipped J10 is already running around. Chinese airframes are increasingly using composites, and other advanced tech. There is little reason to believe that the chinese cannot start deploying J11/J10 variants with AESA and reduced rcs by 2015. To be conservative, these should have at least performance of gen 1 AESA with RCS reductions of 5 X. IOWs, you’d be looking at flankers that can detect 3 msq targets @ 300km and givng a radar return ~ 6 msq.

NOw the scenario has changed dramatically, the Gripen NG is suddenly available to the J11 @ 250kms, while it can be seen by the Gripen @ 175km. THis is of course a rather simplistic scenario. However, the larger point remains, and the worst part is, it only gets better with time for the flankers, since there is intrinsically greater potential to improve for a larger airframe via a vis a smaller one. For instance, the flanker thanks to its huge engines/size can carry much bigger/powerful jammers as well.

Nope, I’d rather see a Tiffy/Rafale type, these would stand better chances against such flankers.

USS.

The Uae fleet comes to mind. It would be a very cost-effective stopgap.

Nic

Is it truly on offer/sale? If yes, it would be a rather good thing for the IAF to pick up a few high end M2ks.

USS.

for comparison 😉

HAL tejas 250 kg/m^2

Is that at the original specced weight of 5600kg empty? Or is it with the newer weight of 6500kg? In either case, the bird has extraordinarily large wings – wing area = 38msq = MiG-29!

Now if they can keep that empty weight around the same, and get those F414s on, it will make one sprightly fighter. One other advantage that the Tejas has over similar size birds is the very large nose, allowing for a rather large radar aperture.

I simply can’t see why India would want to buy a Gripen, NG or whatever, when this bird is almost there.

USS.

Taurus will be integrated, because Typhoon is going to be the only combat aircraft in Luftwaffe service. Storm Shadow will also be integrated, because the RAF will face yet another capability gap otherwise, & the Saudis will need it integrated to replace their Tornadoes.

How exactly do they plan to circumvent the MTCR for the Saudi Taurus sale. IIRC, the Taurus has an advertised range of around 500km?

USS.