Bharat Rakshak

I HOPE our dear neighbors have not realized that it is only because it was a "flying display" that it was canceled.

I think they should attack during the monsoons.

....................

I guess we encounter such posters every year.

That was the archetypal dhoti-shivering post, if it was not plain trolling.

"Yikes! I'm so worried. Things don't look good and the Pakis are laughing. We must be wrong as usual"
There is piskology here that makes a person look for truth in Paki sites because anyone positive about India is blind to reality. With 1 billion plus people we are bound to have several decades more of this although things have become a lot better in the last decade with dhotis stiffening up and not trembling quite so much.

Pali ji. I was once at an airshow in bright sunny conditions where the F 22 demo team was performing. After a couple of loops they announced that there was a technical problem and cut it short. Being TFTA they also said the Raptor will have the worlds best service team waiting for it when it lands! $h!t happens.

On a side note, the LCA and F 22 share this feature of hydrophobia. We wanted the LCA to be equal to the best in the world and HAL has delivered.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html

Was reading something on another forum and came across this text that is quite revealing. I hope BRF posters keep this in mind when we will (for sure at a later date) hear about defects in production of fighters at HAL. I'm not defending HAL's quality or manufacturing processes in any way, but this is just so people have some perspective.



Turkey produced 278 F-16s and only 29 had no mistakes in them and only 3 were perfect- and to date only 9 F-16s were produced as perfect, out of 4000+ manufactured to date.

Haven't we heard about HAL having to do some jugaad at times (at least in the past) for fighters it manufactured ?

Indigenous aircraft to be main draw at Republic Day parade

I hope by next Rd parade we might have a fly past By Tejas aircraft's

towing a cheetah poster to rub it in.

It is better to be 3 legged Cheetach then a brainless monkey

Have we seen this? Link

Plus 1 million to that.

Boys (n Girlz) presenting to you The LCA Tejas Trainer

a flying cheetah needs only three legs to land.

Chacko, could we please have a few more pics of the beauty in your albums? I just love that configuration.

It is rare to see an article in Indian media that has anything positive to say about Indian maal. I like it.

Roger that. I have been promised file pictures. Wonder what that might be



DRDO just got classy on its PR act. I didn't write a word there. I just congratulated them on their press release writing skill while requesting Marten's photos.

I did some thumb rule calculations using conversion of Indian Rupee to US$ and adjusting for inflation. It gives an indication that the amount spent on LCA from 1983 till date is around US$ 2400 Million dollars in around 27 years (at present US$ value) or around Rs 10,000 to 12,000 crores in present rupees. This means that we are spending around US$ 50-100 million per annum on this programme. Compared to Rafale, Eurofighter, Gripen etc, this amount is around 1/5th to 1/20th of the their costs. With new Sanctions in 2010, LCA programme has been allocated around US$ 1200 million additiional amount to be spent till 2018 which again means around US$ 80-120 million per annum adjusted for inflation.

The LCA programme when launched was very ambitious by Indian standards being given Rs 560 crores (US$ was around Rs 7 in 1980) with small Indian economy & limited foreign exchange. Comparing the present size of Indian economy & foreign exchange resources, the AMCA programme should be given around US$ 5 Billion to & US$ 10 Billion but it has been given only US$ 1 Billion and even this is just a symbolic figure. The actual amount is only Rs 100 crores for next 18 months to project study.

Chackocha, thank you very much. Looking forward to some more joy and happiness on the Trainer front.

Re chackojoseph

Hi, would it be possible for you to ask ADA or GE about the thrust ( other specifications) of 414 "INS6" variant purchased by India. The figures of anything from 95kn to 120kn are doing the rounds.

Girls? Are there any girls over here? I sense disturbance in the force.

As far as article is concerned, I felt it could have done much more justice to the aircraft by giving some details. We are praising the article because it has stayed away from criticising the Tejas like so many others in the media.

It is not an article- is a DRDO press release. Shiv Aroor has the exact same text posted on his blog.

Yes.

First they said the plane would never be designed
then never fly
then fall out of the sky
then it would never be useful
And now when we have the plane, it is too expensive

dhoti shiver after dhoti shiver
these continue for ever
with all the wet qameez and goats
can't have the ordered dhotis again.

Saw the display of a trainer in R Day parade. I could not see to full parade. Did the show any flying?

Without going OT, let me ask this question to folks who so eager to discuss the 'real cost' or 'actual cost' of LCA. First please define what you mean by 'real cost'. Then tell me - What was the real cost of raising you ? and your siblings if any? How many hours did your parents toil daily, good times they gave up, the health issues they had etc.. please I want all these monetized .

I am in Program Management (Sorry I dont have a PhD in International Management) and from my very humbling experience in this field, I feel that this way of calculating cost on a technology development program is just bound to fail. LCA started as a Technology Development/Demonstrator program. Then it went into the next phase - Prototype vehicle and then - production run (PV). You mean to couple the cost of the entire phase into one !!. That is assuming there is no more development after PV. There will be spin offs from TD phase into other areas like AMCA, UCAV, FGFA (10% ?) etc. The cost should be spread into that as well. So this cost increase of 3000%, 3300cr, $2.5 B etc is just nonsense, it will never make sense to calculate the invested Rupee so long as we dont know when and where the Tech Development ended and when the Product Development phase started. Which I guess we may never know.

Why are we dhoti bearers so hard on ourselves ?

Probably comes from a massive inferiority complex.

I saw the Republic Day Parade Yesterday..I felt India was trying to be apologetic with its military might, lest it hurt feelings across borders! Few tanks, Brahmos, Pinaka, LCA and some Nautangi..thats all. Why have it at all?

cost containment too - shipping all the gear to delhi, with proper people and security cannot be cheap. we have shown stuff like agni in the past, not much need to flaunt it again like a soviet parade with 1000s of trucks rumbling across red square even replica models are not cheap.

what counts is real production, QA and deployment in numbers and no effort must be spared there.

All started in APJ time i think, cut down the parade to hr or less.

Yes, I felt it too. Wasn't fun for a hardware jingo.

But when the whole idea is to showcase the Military MIGHT, where is the question of cost? Either have it in full swing particularly when you have a foreign head of state as the chief guest, or don't show anything..not something in-between.

Whine start ..

Given that this is the only civil - military parade in this country that showcases not just our wonderful armed forces but also the wide cultural diversity of our country, I think it should be expanded with more armament on display, more regimental marches, more floats and dances from each state and ministry ...all leading to a massive colourful concert at JLN Stadium - music and dances from each state, contemporary classical and popular musicians etc etc. This is one occasion when the average abdul starts to feel jingoistic and appreciate India for its diversity - need more and more jingoism in India.

We are happy to put show for CG for visiting atheletes but not for our own citizens even on the Republic day.

Its sad to see the parade ending so quickly. The Media - TV has nothing else to report / show in the name of celebrating our republic day except reruns of "Lakshya" and "Border".....15th August in any case becomes Political due to the speeches....the republic day at least should be celebrated in all possible glory, otherwise it will fast loose its meaning.

whine end.

yeah yeah...but before demanding parades we should demand DAVP be brought out of comatose state , do some nice meaningful military videos and mandate that all multiplexes and cinema halls show these as fillers before the show starts. that would have a more wider and permanent impact that just a yearly parade watched by a small section of TV viewers.
before every soft kid watches transformers3, I want him/her to see visibly indian guys in balaclava masks fast roping down from Dhruvs with tavors and shipons to do a room by room clearing or arjuns doing on-the-move gunnery practice at night etc.....or a line of Pinakas at dusk blasting dozens of rockets into the night....that will take the sheen off the "chuck norris > yindu coward paradigm" until bollywood catches up.

+1 to that singha sir...

something more better will be bollywood movie like transformers where a couple of Bramos hitting Decepticons.....
Rambhas fighting Starscream with their TVC ..... etc.

Wonder weather US Military industry complex sponsors Michel Bay!!!!!

Sorry for daydreaming guys!!!

it started during op parakram since mil folks were busy with the real thing. nothing to do with APJ himself.

We need mission statement change for this to happen. It is all pisskology. They go after "God bless America", and ending up more for searching the truth. We go after "Satyameva Jayate", and end up pleading to be blessed by God.

Clutter happens when mission statements merge with firangi invasions. Same was the stagnation of in-vedics.. and so would be our samskriti. Call it a war, then things will shape up slowly

Too aggressive, will not be that...anyhow may be a much efficient stance that can be..!

Aggressiveness depends on how you wage it.

In addition, two more factors contruibuted to the parade being curtailed:

1) Incessant complaints by dilli-billis about how their precious morning commute was a huge hassle due to the long parade, and the attendant road blocks etc, extending for almost 2-3 weeks. Till last year, the page 2 in HT and page 3 in ToI was to be seen to be believed. Bunch of morons kept moaning about long commutes and the like...

2) The second reason is, once having foreign Presis/PMs as Chief Guests became de rigeur at the parade, some of the foreign missions "requested" that the parade be shortened since it was felt to be too long!

Any news when we will have the Experimental LSP-6, guess with the Kaveri engine ?

OT: It could have been made short to spare the president from standing for long periods of time. I don't know about recent years, but in early to mid 2000's the parades had a lot of weapons and systems.



LSP 6 will fly (when it flies) most probably with 404 as it has been earmarked for the crucial high alpha and g tests. After those it could be used for Kaveri testing (but IIRC Kaveri itself is expected to be ready for that towards the end of this year only).