India to buy 20 more Mirages and upgrade rest of the fleet

Reported in todays DNA that they are going for this expecting delays in the 126 MMRCA project. The Indian MoD has already contacted Dassault during President Chirac’s visit about the purchase and upgrade.

Twenty Mirage 2000-5 will be bought and the rest of the fleet will be overhauled and upgraded to 2000-5 standard with israeli and Russian Avionics by HAL. 😀 😀 😀

Giving them a total of four squadrons of the type….

Come to think of it.. in 2015 IAF orbat might be like this….

140 – Su-30MKI
126 – F/A-18E/F or F-16E/F
125 – MiG-21bisON or 20+ LCAs or a mix of them
80 – Mirage 2000-5
40 – MiG-27ML UPG
40 – Jaguars IS DARIN II and IM

Wow…Some Orbat

They should have brought in the Hawks yesterday….

IMHO Mig 21UT and FL should be grounded. Let us first find the issues with these aircrafts, if possible upgrade them. But whatever we do we must do something. We are loosing a lot of our young guns this year.

Its really sad to see them go down like that…….The Hawks should have been brought in much, much earlier…..

Ethiopia and Eritrea

The only known combat of the MiG-29 involved Ethiopian Su-27s and Eritrean MiG-29s all allegedly flown by mercenary pilots. The Combat started BVR and ended up with R-73s, The MiG-29s were shot down…I think you can find more details on acig

Another rumour is that Indian MiG-29s painted Pakistani F-16s during Kargil war but were out of range of the R-27s

Wow what a tangle…this MFD and backup instruments business…..

People I HAD to put in my two cents to this…..

Lets get on with some RL examples…..

MKI
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If there is a single MFD failure….Yes they will switch to another MFD and get on with the job.

All MFDs fail…Thats and unlikely scenario because power buses to all MFDs including the WSOs will surely have redundancy buillt in. Nus yes this can happen if they take battle damage…

Backup Instruments ….Sure they are there…

And we forgot the HUD….Yes The HUD is there in the front seat and the HUD repeater in the rear seat…either of them can help in getting the bird down.

Blk 60 F-16
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Ditto

Gripen and Typhoon
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Ditto but no Backup Instruments…But no panic……

Military aviators practice something called shepherding….WIT ????

The Wingman flies in tight formation with the blind aircraft (total instrument failure, no indication of airspeed, altitude, rate of climb/descent or heading) and talks his buddy down till nearly touchdown before peeling off….

I have read of one incident in Vayu where a HF-24 Marut was talked down by his Wingman in the above condition.

According to the author, They used this technique with Mysteres to train rookie pilots as there was never a two seat trainer version of that Aircraft.

So Instrument failures are really not all that an issue

No one doubts the Mig-31/31M interception capability , Its perhaps the best out there , But the question is how does it fit into IAF strategy.

The IAF had evaluated the 31 in early 90’s and being a pure interceptro didnt find much use of it.

The Mig-31 is felt well in to the Soviet Strategy of long range and furtherst possible interception of Strategic Bombers and Low flying cruise missile with its R-37/37M and good for the huge land mass they had to cover , Not to mention its datalink capability and its ability to act as AWACS , Its highspeed Dash would have allowed it to reach the area quicker if need be.

All in All a very potent platform for the Russian , But For IAF I dont see a role.

The volume of airspace the IAF need to protect is very large similar to russia…that is why they have shifted to long range platforms and Inflight refuelling (Su-30MKI, Jaguars, Mirage 2000) So the MiG-31 makes all the more sense in the Indian inventory…and btw its not pure air to air…Russians had A2G and Wild weasel roles for their variants of MiG-25s and possibly even MiG-31s…I think its mentioned in WAPJ …….